Public Relations Student Society of America at Texas State University

Writtenby: Callie Hill

Texas State PRSSA hosted an Ethics Workshop to review and exercise the PRSA Code of Ethics, which will advance the knowledge of professional values.

The meeting started with six questions taken from an online Ethics quiz,which tested the members’ knowledge on copyright infringement, ethical practices, plagiarism and the PRSA Code of Ethics. We reviewed the answers as a group, pointing out how and why each scenario was unethical.  A few of the scenariosdiscussed in the quiz were using materials for educational purposes, misstating key facts and how to correct the situation and what is considered copyright infringement.

The main activity of the meeting was exploring ethics through real-life scenarios. We applied the PRSA Code of Ethics Key Values and Code Provisions to the different scenarios.

The members in attendance split into groups and spent time discussing the scenarios. Special guest, PRSSA National Vice President of Advocacy JR Rochester, then spoke to us about the Code of Ethics and how it applies to each scenario.

The first scenario asked us to put ourselves in the shoes of a Chapter president that was being asked to supply funds, per the dean’s request, for a department event. The dean said PRSSA has always provided funds in the past, but there is no record of it.  Student organizations supplying funds to a department is against the student government’s policies. We discussed what we would do and how wewould handle the situation. The majority consensus was that we would follow the policy of the student government and not provide funds, but offer our services in other ways. We said we would offer to promote and help fundraise for the event.

The second is of an intern being asked to respond online to negative reviews of a client without disclosing that he/she works for the client. We asked ourselves if this was unethical behavior, and if so, how would we handle the situation? We decided it was unethical, due to not disclosing who you are. We would tell our boss that it is unethical, and hope that he or she would not ask you to post anonymously. We also agreed that most likely, the boss was not aware of this practice being unethical.

The third scenario was two interns at a holiday party. One was sharing information about a potential client and the strategy of the proposal with someone outside of his/her agency. We asked how we would handle the situation and what are the potential outcomes of the intern’s actions? We agreed that this could cost the agency the client by sharing too much information. You must safeguard the confidences of your agency and the client, as well as not provide information to possible competition. We would pull the intern away from the situation immediately, and let the boss know of the situation that just happened so the boss can put out any potential “fire.”

The full scenarios can be found here.

Rochester’sadvised us to “stay true to the rules.”  When working with a client or affiliate group, you must safeguard confidences.  He also brought up an important point in regards to social media and how it’s constantly being used inappropriately today. Rochester said that as social media continues to be used in client relations, it is important to keep guard on how you distribute information and maintain solid disclosure of information.  He suggested that when tweeting, you should use a web tag to let your audience know that the content in your Tweet is about a client or the company you work for.

Breach of contract is “always a huge no-no,” according to Rochester.  If you sign a legal document you are safeguarding your confidences.  If you should intern for someone, you should keep in mind that you are responsible for your own job and not discuss any of the business development with anyone outside of the team working on that client.