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As the understanding of ‘professionalism’ is often too broad, this essay will examine the role of professional organisations’ standards for enhancing the reputation of the PR industry.
To perform this task properly this paper - together with reviewing the notions of ‘professionalism’ in PR and the definition of ‘reputation’ in the modern business environment - will investigate how the overall rules and standards are defined and communicated within the PR industry for its specialists and clients / customers and what it means to PR practitioners.
Examine the role that professionalism can play in enhancing the reputation of public relations.
Introduction
As the understanding of ‘professionalism’ is often too broad, this essay will examine the role of professional organisations’ standards for enhancing the reputation of the PR industry.
To perform this task
properly this paper - together with reviewing the notions of ‘professionalism’
in PR and the definition of ‘reputation’ in the modern business
environment - will investigate how the overall rules and standards are
defined and communicated within the PR industry for its specialists
and clients / customers and what it means to PR practitioners.
Definitions of PROFESSIONALISM and PROFESSION in regards to Public Relations
The abuse of the word ‘professionalism’ is not limited to within the PR industry. People sometimes deploy this word as a means to communicate that somebody is ‘good at something’ or ‘polite’, etc.
BusinessDictionary.com
says that professionalism is “meticulous adherence to undeviating
courtesy, honesty, and responsibility in one's dealings with customers
and associates, plus a level of excellence that goes over and above
the commercial considerations and legal requirements.” (www.businessdictionary.com
[accessed 15th April 2011.])
PR literature gives
even broader definitions of ‘professionalism’; they are general
and could have individual interpretations. Some of them describe PR
as a profession (p.66 Theaker, 2004; Wilcox, Cameron, 2004) and many
refer to the notion of ‘professional ethics’ (p.143, Cutlip et al,
2000). Indeed this fact is related to the existence of many different
definitions of Public Relations. “What these findings appear to suggest
is that public affairs is a function in which practitioners and academics
are still defining and redefining the boundaries – in effect it is
a function still searching for a clear identity.” (Conor McGrath et
al., 2010).
Does professionalism in public relations really exist? How can one be considered a professional in PR?
Really, public relation practitioners are not required to obtain any defined educational standards as doctors are of course expected to, for example. Almost anybody can become a PR practitioner; there are no barriers to entry, no need to be registered or licensed, no obligatory verification of knowledge etc.
Tench and Yeoman (2006) confirm that (PR) practitioners have difficulty explaining exactly what their jobs entail. Sometimes it seems that PR is used as a synonym of Media Relation only. “That is probably because publicity and media relations are the top of the public relations iceberg – the most visible part. Many important strategic functions of public relations are less visible” (White and Park, 2010). Wilcox and Cameron (…) say that many practitioners are limited in their professionalism by what might be termed a “technical mentality”.
These people
narrowly define professionalism as the ability to do a competent job,
executing the mechanics of communication (preparing news releases, brochures,
newsletters and so on) even if the information provided by management
or a client is in bad taste, is misleading, lacks references, or is
just plain wrong.
During last decade PR became “an increasingly recognized form of professional practice both within the corporate as well as not for profit and voluntary sectors.” (Conor McGrath et al., 2010)
According to Sager (2003, cited by Bey-Ling Sha, 2011), professions are distinguished from simple trades in that the former requires specialist knowledge, continuing education, codes of ethical conduct and ability to enforce those codes (i.e., accountability).
Cutlip et al (2000) set a list of requirements for a profession which seems to be quite adequate for this essay. They say that the following criteria apply to all professions:
In the same source
the following statement is found, “Whether PR qualifies as a profession
is a less important question than the extent to which practitioners
do good and do no harm. If practitioners as a group are to measure up,
they will have to practice positive public relations.” (Cutlip et
al, 2000).
Professional organisations
and Codes of conduct
As seen from the previous
paragraphs, generally, a profession requires an education and set of
professional and ethical standards. Professional organisations such
as the Public Relation Society of America (PRSA), the International
Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in US, the Chartered Institute
of Public Relations (CIPR) in UK have done much to develop the standards
of ethical, professional PR practices and to help society understand
the role of public relations (Wilcox and Cameron, ….). Professional
organisations propose extensive PR education programs, some of which
even provide certification. The most important role of professional
organisations is to set and monitor standards, rules and values which
all their members should adhere to, (commonly referred to as ‘Codes
of Ethics’ or ‘Codes of Conduct’).
Cutlip et al (2000)
emphasises that any discussion of the professional status of those within
public relations begins with ethics; it is his opinion that adherence
to a code of professional
ethics separates professions from other skilled occupations.
There are several codes of conduct developed by professional bodies. These sets of the rules describe what the requirements for a member of a professional PR organisation are. There are always some debates about the efficiency of such codes. Some argue that the existence of codes of ethics and standards of professional conduct is pointless if those codes and standards cannot be enforced (Bey-Ling Sha, 2011). So it seems that the codes of conduct of PR professional organisations are necessary. Cutlip et al (2000) state that ethics and professionalism are global concerns, with social responsibility no longer dismissed as merely a local issue. This is why it appears that codes of conduct within PR professional organisations are necessary too.
Reputation of Public Relations
According to Collins English Dictionary, cited in Public Relation Strategy by Sandra Oliver (2007), reputation is “Notoriety or fame, especially for some specified positive or negative characteristic. Repute is the public estimation of a person or thing to be as specified, usually passive.”
In the modern world public relations often have a negative reputation. Paul Vousden, cited in Theaker (2004) says that PR has got an image problem that, ironically, has been fuelled by the very audience our industry claims to influence – the media. He says that PR fluff or spin doctoring conjures up images of insincere attempts to manipulate the media and to distort or hide the truth.
White and Park, in
Public Relations Review (2010) writes that in 1993, Spicer analyzed
84 articles that contained the term ‘public relations’, and found
the term was used in a negatively embedded context more than 80% of
the time.
Why does the reputation of PR suffer despite of the existence of many professional bodies which regulate rules and standards within the PR industry? It is very probable that PR has gotten a bad reputation due to the actions of a few non-ethical people or because it is associated with some corporations which never have received much public admiration. The list of possible reasons for the poor perception of PR is as follows:
An example is the remark
of Ms Moore (former advisor to Stephen Byers, the Transport, Local Government
and Regions secretary in 2001) within hours of the attack on the World
Trade Center that it was "a very good day to get out anything we
want to bury" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk
Mark Penn got embroiled in a conflict of interest while working on the Hillary Clinton campaign when it was found out that he met with Colombian officials as part of his agency work despite the fact that Clinton was against a trade agreement with the country. (http://edition.cnn.com/)
For example, the PRSA’s
accreditations are not obligatory; there are no sanctions or means of
enforcement.
Probably the market itself sometime allows unprofessional and non-ethical PR practitioners to be engaged. The customers are not often experienced in buying PR services, so poor selection results. Such PR practitioners spoil the reputation of the entire industry - jumping from one client to the next - under-performing but staying in business.
On the other side of
the coin there are positive views for the PR industry to entertain;
the results of research made by White and Park (PR Review, 2010) show
that public relations are perceived more positively than media portrayal
would suggest. Respondents viewed public relations as an important activity
that benefits society by providing information and disagree that it
is damage control, an attempt to hide or disguise something, or a non-substantive
activity.
Conclusions
How can a PR practitioner build a good reputation and fight against the arguably spoilt image of their industry? Kitchen suggests that the professional public relations manager must communicate in a professional way, thereby safeguarding the company's license to operate - in an honest and sincere manner - even when there is disagreement. So first of all, a PR professional should conduct his or her activities with a high regard for ethical standards.
Standards and rules of professional ethics are described within professional PR organisations’ the codes of conduct. Usually they correlate with a common and general understanding of ethical standards of any profession.
If all PR professionals
follow such good judgement, the profession of PR will gain a good, if
not better reputation than it currently lives with and people will be
proud to call themselves public relations professionals, rather than
explain their profession with words like ‘communicators’, ‘public
affairs officers’ or any other synonym.
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Bibliography