Not an April Fool’s joke in March when Volkswagen lied.
You’re an automaker who lied again and again about your emissions testing. You’ve paid more than $33 billion in fines and to buy back many of the 11 million cars you lied about. Your chief executive officer was forced out, saying he was “deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and […]
How should news organizations respond to non-responsive responses for comment?
Ethical news organizations follow the tenet in the Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics that says good journalists “[d]iligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.” More and more of those subjects don’t actually answer the questions, however. Companies, politicians, and others often respond to […]
Facebook’s public relations efforts raise ethical questions
The New York Times took a penetrating look at how Facebook has handled the continuing questions about how it deals with its own shenanigans, and its difficulties in stopping the shenanigans of those who would use Facebook for its own propaganda and misinformation purposes. The Times‘ “Deny, Delay and Deflect” story makes the world’s biggest […]
Today in evil PR: A student loan company invents a guy who talked to journalists
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that LendEDU invented a guy named Drew Cloud to run The Student Loan Report, which purported to provide fun insight and good information about the burgeoning student loan industry. Cloud was quoted by multiple media organizations, including MSNBC and The Washington Post. There was a picture of Cloud on […]
A Call to Arms: Using ethics in digital media
By Judah Martin I would hesitate to call myself a practicing journalist. In fact, I think such a claim would be patently wrong. In the years that I have worked as a student writer for The University of Alabama’s engineering college, I have written news releases, research articles, award announcements and “In Memorium” obituaries for […]
What Cam Newton could learn about public relations from Satchel Paige
There are some things you cannot control, as Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton learned during Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016. The only thing you can control is how you respond. And Newton showed little control in one of the few things he could control – how he dealt with journalists after the 24-10 […]
Cross-dressing PR: Why trust in government continues to decline
Trust in local government tends to be higher than state and federal government, but is there a relationship between decline in trust and the rise of PR in government? That’s too big of an issue to address on a Friday afternoon. Instead, here’s a story from Cranston, R.I., where a male van driver for a […]
76ers, Redskins and Wells Fargo: On the ethics of not calling things by names that others use
From Philadelphia comes news that the 76ers basketball team refuses to say “Wells Fargo” when referring to the arena where it plays. Wells Fargo, which bought the bank that bought the bank that made the original deal in 1996, owns naming rights until the 29-year, $40 million deal ends in 2025. But that money went […]
On the ethics of doing public relations for the Russian Federation
A Bloomberg story reminds us why transparency is an imperative for ethical communication–but sometimes a bad thing for public relations companies who might rather not tell us that they are working for governments that would not allow them to exercise the same freedoms they have in the United States. The reporters searched federally required disclosure […]