Answer to Question #228832 in Management for Dee

Question

Provide the key functions of the following professions:

•public relations

•journalism

2.In your own words, explain why the media is important to public relations.

3.Explain the importance of journalistic skills for a Public Relations Practitioner (PRP)

4.Discuss in an essay of 800 words how and why ethical considerations should be part of our everyday conduct as public relations professionals.

Answer 1

Public relations serve to develop trust and credibility of the stakeholders to the organization. They communicate on behalf of the organization to promote its products and defend its reputation.

Journalism serves to gather, document and report information with evidence and facts with credibility.

Media acts as the path through which information of organization can be disseminated to the target audience. Companies can advertise the capacities of the organization through media therefore developing a great public relations.

Several journalistic skills required for public relations practitioner are

-getting the story right and straight

-finding the most interesting angle

-ability to connect with different audience

-synthesizing information fast

Ethics are important in overall perception and therefore acceptance of the organization to community that includes stakeholders and shareholders.

Ethics in public relations plays a vital role in human communication. It brings the credibility to organizations. It helps to establish faithful relationship between organizations and the public. Without public relations, miscommunication of and misinterpretation about the company can circulate around and eventually tarnish the reputation of the company. This translates to loss of customers and therefore loss of profits.

Ethics improve public trust to the public. Once a public relations practitioner communicates the truth to the community, trust can be developed. This means the organization is not promising beyond its capacity to produce and accomplish. Some firms expect that the more they paint a beautiful world to achieve in a short time that they will earn preference over the others but once installed they fail to deliver this becomes bad for public relations. Truth matters as it brings transparency that improves public relations.

There is need for transparency in an organization as stakeholders yearn for assurance in their value and expectations. Once issues develop, investors can pull out so to solve this, engaging in ethical issues that can improve public image. This makes the company likeable and preferable among many other. A company that participates in open interaction with stakeholders on issues they are not happy about and opening the company to scrutiny then eventually acts on theese issues, will create a channel of communication which is so valuable to the organization.

Having a conducive working environment for all employees and healthy relationships has become a key issue in perceiving an organization leaders and therefore its products and services. This develops a good image on harmony and synergy in the team, cultivation a culture of innovatiion, sharing and caring in the organization. Since public relations depends on perceptions based on seeing, a conducive and kind working environment serves as a good public relations to individuals around.

One important ethical consideration is equality across all persons in service delivery. Discrimination and harrasment only serves to discourage one section which has a bad reputation. This limits service seekers who can tarnish the organization picture to the public. A firm seeking to achieve fair public rating will have to deal continuously with arising issues of segregation and harassment and favourism that reduces the public view of organization's conduct. There has been an increase in discrimination detected on the employee promotion. Ladies reported harassment in that superiors required sexual engagements so as to recommend them for better job positions. Others include financial attachment of promotion or in employment. There lack merit in many organization and this is unethical.

Honesty is an ethical issue that is essential in all public relations practitioner of a prospective organization. Acts like relinquishing confidential information of the customers to the unauthorized persons are unethical such that they can cause damage to these very stakeholders. With deligence and honesty, public relations practitioner can overcome such temptations and eventually developing good public relations. This is a prove that the organization are accountable to upholding genuine and commendable action.

Ethical conduct transcends geographical and geopolitical boundaries, and a common standard for ethical conduct should apply across different countries and regions. Thus, international ethical standards should be closely examined and followed. Of course, cultural variables must be considered when public relations professionals practice abroad. However, practitioners should be cautious about determining that questionable practices are “culturally bound.” Rather, public relations professionals should carefully examine whether these practices are indeed commonly adopted within a culture and are considered to be ethical by the majority of local professionals.

 Ethics is an integral part of public relations. Ethical practices build the trust between internal and external publics of any organizations. Success of any organizations depends on people’s trust and confidence gained by ethical practices in public relations. Although different public relations bodies have their own code of ethics, still they need to improve the situation by practical implementation. The findings of the study show that the organizations set different codes of ethics but they lack the strict execution techniques. Only the beautiful words are not enough to establish ethical practices in public relations.