The Legal Environment and Ethics

'The Legal Environment' forced me to address to legal side of PR, which I had previously underestimated its complexities. The readings established a clear importance of understanding law in the PR domain. Practising without a basic understanding of laws such as contract, copyright, negligence, torts, defamation etc could easily lead to unlawful behaviour which is potentially destructive to a PR campaign, sponsors, careers, relationships and reputations. These elements run hand in hand with public relations practice and thus signify the up most importance of both understanding legal obligations and practicing within these obligations. The unnerving part is that a PR practitioner can break these laws without even knowing or intending to due to the complexity and intricasies of the legal environment. This emphasises the need for mindful practice and the execution of thorough care when working with clients- especially when reputations are at stake. A practitioner must obide by their duty of care. When failure to exercise reasonable care takes place a litigation may arise costing time, money and potential damage to relationships.

I think the key point to take from this reading is that it is important to engage with the legal environment. Although it is complex and there are unavoidable legal problems in PR, practicing with sound legal advice is almost certain to minimise damage.



Johnston and Zawawi explain 'ethics' with a straightforward idea, "Ethics are standards of integrity. In a nutshell, ethics is about doing the right thing." This is simply the main point to take away from the chapter, however i understand that deciding what is right or wrong is not always an easy task. Decisions must ensure a balance of commercial objectives and responsiblities to stakeholders. When making a decision, companies must consider the concept of transparency and professionalism in order to achieve a sense of genuity and trust with stakeholders and publics.

I found the 'Cash for Comment' case study the most interesting and a clear guide of what not to do in orer to practice ethically. Deception of publics and those enlisting a sense of trust in an organisation is a sure fire way to damage reputations, relationships and consequently careers.


See Emma's blog for critique.