No lipstick please..
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is challenging the Presidential candidates to commit to maintaining the highest standards of ethical practice in their campaign communications by inviting them to make a formal pledge to abide by the PRSA Code of Ethics.
“The use of innuendo, incomplete information, surrogate messaging and character attacks, whether in political discourse or other forms of commercial free speech, raises serious concerns for our organization and its 32,000 members, each of whom signs a pledge to the PRSA Code of Ethics. In fact, ethical practice is the most important obligation of PRSA membership, and we maintain that our obligations extend not only to those we represent, but also to the publics they serve. We view the code as a model for other professions, organizations and professionals, including political campaigns.”
The PRSA is also inviting its own members to show their support for ethical campaign communications by signing up to a PRSA Facebook group – Clean & Fair Campaign 2008 . The association says that by joining this group its members are telling the political campaigns (and the media) …
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I want accurate, truthful and transparent information that will allow informed decision making.
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I want healthy and fair competition and an ethical climate fostering a robust political environment.
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I want confidential and private information protected.
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I want all those involved in the campaigns to avoid real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest.
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I want the campaigns to strengthen trust in the United States of America and its electoral process.
An opportunity, perhaps, for PRINZ to lead the way in a similar fashion on communication ethics during our election campaign?
Tags: election, ethics, political campaign, PRINZ, PRSA
October 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I think it would be great for PRINZ to start a similar initiative – if it helps in boosting its own profile as communications leaders in NZ at least. I’m not sure how relevant it actually would be though or if clean and fair is the right name for the group. You can be ethical and unfair at the same time. It’s unfair to John McCain for Obama to capitalise on the current economic crisis for votes but it’s entirely ethical for Obama to attack him and his record in television ads over it. Also character attacks are simply a normal part of politics and reporting that have always been around. While comments or attacks about race, gender or appearance are always just plain idiotic and transparent, attacks about judgement, experience, past associations or investments of political candidates are legitimate. The ‘lipstick on a pig’ comment by Obama that recently came up in the media was not a character attack on John McCain nor was it a reference to Sarah Palin as some channels portrayed it (unfairly) as. I already feel that Mcain, Obama, Clark and Key are already reasonably ethical in their communications but the media will always be unfair. If the PRSA initiative and its Facebook group objectives are to facilitate discussion about ethical communications then they may have achieved that however I don’t think it will have any effect on what does actually comes out of candidates or the media. A political campaign without character attacks or misleading ads with incomplete information would be just plain boring.