What happened to public responsibility? The lack of society in public relations codes of ethics

The issue of ethics is complex and contentious. For public relations it is also critical, as the industry will only win the struggle to salvage its own reputation if it can clearly demonstrate not only a commitment to ethics, but also some means to enforce ethical standards. There are many ethical reasoning tools, both intricate and useful, that public relations practitioners use to try to make ethical decisions, and these have been widely discussed in textbooks and specialist articles (e.g. Johnston & Zawawi, 2000; Bivins, 1992; Wright, 1989a; Pratt, 1993; Kruckeberg, 1996). This article does not attempt a comprehensive overview of ethical schemas; rather, it takes one corner of the ethical practitioner’s kitbag of tools, the association code of conduct, and examines one aspect of code content; its stand on social duty. As practical ethics tools, codes clearly have strengths and weaknesses beyond their incorporation or otherwise of a specific ‘duty to society’ clause (c.f. Roth & Stravpoulos, 1996;Wright, 1993; Zupko, 1994). However, this article suggests that the absence or flimsiness of such clauses in some of the world’s leading PR association codes is too important a weakness to pass without comment. This article is intended not as a definitive word on ethics code requirements, nor an overview of their effectiveness and enforcement, but rather as a means to ensure that the important debate about ethics continues.