In short, public relations refer to managing an individual's or an organisation's reputation and image. This involves communication with the media, consumers and fellow business entities. Besides helping to build a desirable image for the individual or organisation, PR practitioners are also involved in crisis management, where they monitor and respond to issues which may potentially damage the organisation's reputation.
I have also learnt that declining to comment is taboo in the public relations industry, as maintaining silence can create more speculation and rumours among consumers and the media. This can potentially harmful to the organisation's image, which will in turn have a detrimental effect on its stakeholders.
From this, I can infer that public relations is a delicate task which requires a high level of eloquence. PR practitioners have to choose their words carefully, especially when responding to crises as the organisation's reputation may be at stake.
While it is important to build a positive image, I feel that ethical dilemmas may exist in public relations practice. Since the organisation's image is of utmost importance, I daresay that there is a possibility of information manipulation in PR communication.
Here's a possible scenario: an organisation comes under fire for defective products. Naturally, consumers would demand an explanation for that. Wouldn't it be possible for the organisation to deliberately omit some information (eg. the defects were caused by deliberate negligence, but the organisation leaves this fact out to make it seem like an unfortunate accident) in order to protect its reputation?
I wonder if there're any solid examples to back up my claim though. I'll leave readers to comment on that.
I agree that some organizations may manipulate some information as a smokescreen to protect its reputation especially in the case of well-known firms. However, I felt that such manipulations may not last long as the media would discover that some information are distorted.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, given your example of a company's defective products, if the PR of the said company tries to cover up by claiming that the defects are caused by an unfortunate incident, the media would question the ambiguity of the term "unfortunate incident". Journalists would want to find out specific details that caused the products to be defective.
Hence, it is important that these organizations learn to deal with the truth because manipulations will only aggravate the problem as the media would question the organizations' integrity.
What do you think?