Week 5 - Legality and Ethics

This week's reading looks at the importance of ethics and legal boundaries in PR. There is a lot about defamation laws, which is important to understand to avoid being sued. Basically, defamation covers any inference that puts a negative dent in anyone's reputation. Defamations laws are complicated because they don't just apply to the obvious. As well as the expected 'Joe Bloggs is a bad person' thing, defamation can also apply to any negative indication of a person or company which a person of average intelligence can identify, despite whether or not the individual or organisation was directly mentioned. For example, a cartoon depicting John Howard licking George Bush's shoes is defamation, even if the individuals are not named, if the public can recognise the characters as John Howard and George Bush.
Ethics, on the other hand, applies to anything that may be legally sound, but stirs uneasiness in the individual. Something is legally wrong if it's against any laws (obviously) but something is ethically wrong if it makes you feel guilty or uneasy. Often, the two go hand in hand. It is the responsibility of the PR practitioner to ensure that every part of a campaign is both legally and ethically sound, because if something is a bit iffy legally, chances are your client is going to be sued, and if something is a bit iffy ethically, chances are it's going to put your client in a bad light in the public eye.