Ch. 4 & 5 - Legalities & Ethics

I spent a short period of time working as a personal assistant to the managing director of a company who had developed and was in the process of trialling an innovative product. While reading Ch. 4 - The Legal Environment, I found quite a few of the passages familiar, as they had been issues that we addressed while developing this new product. One in particluar was the issue of Intellectual Property - we had to ensure that not only the product itself was protected by copyright laws (patents etc), but that the ideas, research and development surrounding the product was also secure. Even ideas that hadn't started being developed were protected by intellectual property laws.

When we took the new product to a trade show some 4 months into my joining the company, I was advised that although I could talk to interested parties about the product (what it did, briefly how it works, where we're planning to use it etc), I was not able to open the machine at all, nor discuss any schematics or exact details of how it works because the INSIDE of the product was still under work being patented. Even now, having left the company years ago, I am still bound by a contract I signed when I started there that I will not divulge any details about the product.

I am grateful to have had that short span of experience in the early workings of a company, where I could see a product, and indeed the company itself, work from the ground up. It gave me some interesting insight into the importance and legalities of developing and developed products and ideas. Although my role was primarily administrative support to the MD, I often found myself working a PR role, especially in situations such as the trade shows and investor meetings. It was important for me to have a working knowledge of the laws and copyrights that protected us.

------------------------------------------

I'm sure many of us had heard PR practitioners referred to as "spin doctors" before we began this course. Indeed I think it is something that would commonly spring to the mind of anyone who heard the term Public Relations. It's refreshing to read a text such as this that stresses such great importance of the role of ethics in the practice of public relations.

I liked the Josephson Institute for the Advancement of Ethics essential values - honesty, integrity, promise-keeping, fidelity, fairness, caring for others, respect for others, responsible citizenship, the persuit of excellence and accountability. They are standards of integrity (p.106). So when you think about it, it's not just our practice of public relations that should be ethical - our lives as a whole should reflect a strong ethical stance. I think it would be difficult to truly practice ethics in the workplace if you cannot practice ethics in every aspect of your life.

I liked reading how a public relations practitioner can have a great hand in ensuring an organisation acts in an ethical manner - also as counsellor, advocate, corporate monitor and corporate conscience. Understandably, ethical challenges will arise in any PR role at some time in our career, so it was interesting to see how these can come about. It's good to know that there are organisations such as PRIA that monitor the ethical practice of public relations, and that practitioners are held to a common code of conduct.

In the end, as the conclusion of the ethics chapter states, it comes down to a move toward genuine professionalism for PR. If PR practitioners act in a professional manner, the ethics will work hand in hand with it. Ethics will no longer be considered separate to PR, it will instead be considered part-and-parcel with PR.