kristina

Law/ethics go hand in hand with public relations.  There is so much to take into account and worry about while being a public relations practitioner that I had never even thought of before.  You have to make sure you are not copyright infringing on someone else’s work.  So, you need to be aware of the many copyright laws. There are also many different “burdens of proof” in libel that you have to take into account in your practices, because you do not want to be slapped with a claim of libel in your PR practice.  Defamation is important to avoid.  With this claim, you are tainting someone’s image with an untruth.  In this case, McGuninness, the PR advisor for the Mcanns, was allegedly accused of overdrawing the funds in the “Find Madeleine Funds.”  It was found to be untrue, and tarnished her character.

That is just one of the many cases, but a study provided by Sweet & Maxwell, it is said that defamation cases have increased by a third over the past year.  They said it could be attributed to the economy and the rise of new media.  If a company wins a lawsuit it could bring in a lot of money for them, so it would be great to win a defamation court case in the time of economic crisis.  Companies have been much more on the defense about their reputations during this “credit crunch.”  But, in that defense, Jason Lewis says that companies have begun to make use of the libel courts as their overall PR strategy.  It is a way for a company’s name to be seen if the case is explosive enough.  New media, such as Twitter, have lead to the steady up-rise of new media defamation cases.

In the book it talks about how LPR is a practice in the courts these days.  An example used in this survey by Sweet & Maxwell talks about a defendant setting up a Facebook account that accuses the claimant of lying.  The company took him to court, because this was giving their company a reputation and was a lie.  This is important to remember, because the new media and social media provide a whole new list of ethics to take in or at least another set of responsibilities to have as a PR practitioner. David Meerman’s Social Media Guidelines are a good, short list of things to remember when using social media:

1. Transparency-don’t be someone you are not
2. Privacy-unless given permission, don’t blog about something that someone disclosed to you
3. Disclosure-disclose ANYTHING someone might consider a conflict of interest
4. Truthfulness- NEVER lie
5. Credit-give credit to bloggers (and other sources) whose material you use.