{"id":3891,"date":"2020-04-07T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/?p=3891"},"modified":"2020-04-08T13:20:42","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T17:20:42","slug":"is-pr-inherently-unethical-an-investigation-into-black-pr-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/2020\/04\/07\/is-pr-inherently-unethical-an-investigation-into-black-pr-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"Is PR Inherently Unethical? An Investigation Into \u201cDark PR\u201d Firms"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Magdalene Soule, Account Director\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of a number of my PR classes at BU, a contentious question always seems to arise: Is PR inherently unethical? In my PR Ethics course, CM525, I was taken with a disturbing <\/span>BuzzFeed <\/span><\/i>article we were assigned to read \u2013 <\/span>\u201cDisinformation for Hire: How a New Breed of PR Firms is Selling Lies Online.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Peng Kuan Chin is one of the increasing many who are using Artificial Intelligence to manipulate public opinion. Chin controls thousands of fake social media accounts. He uses them to facilitate lying to bolster his less-than-reputable clientele \u2013 comprised of brands, political parties, companies, and candidates throughout Asia. Manipulated content is his forte.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCustomers have money, and I don’t care what they buy,” he said. Chin leverages manipulated content to alter public opinion through deceit. This practice is best known in the industry as \u201cdark PR.\u201d\u00a0 Chin\u2019s website is a self-described public relations firm. In a recent <\/span>Ethical Voices Podcast episode<\/span><\/a>, the authors of this article discovered: \u201c\u2026that since 2011, there\u2019ve been at least 27 of these kinds of digital information operations that have been partially or wholly attributed to PR or marketing firms. And 19 of those happened in just 2019 alone. It seems to be an accelerating trend.\u201d Paid trolls are deployed, spreading information. Not all of it is false necessarily, but individuals masquerading behind fake accounts can subtly or dramatically alter public opinion through making it appear this individual, business, or campaign has substantial backing when they indeed do not. The 2016 election can make it feel that this is predominately a political-arena issue. However, individuals have been using bots to try and show social dominance. Instagram is fertile ground for these activities. In an increasingly saturated market space where follower ratios can impact one\u2019s paycheck for posting sponsored content, influencers have turned toward these bots to give their accounts an apparent edge. Unfortunately, all of these questionable \u201cPR businesses\u201d taint the quality and ethical work being done by most PR professionals. There must be a differentiation to disassociate what is legal from what is ethical. Just because a practice is legal, does not mean that it is ethical in of itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is there standardization for what is ethical? A universal set of principles to always abide by? The short answer is no. How, then, do those doing PR establish a common ground on what is ethical or not? There is no licensing required for PR professionals because of the range of jobs underneath the PR umbrella. It would be challenging to create mandatory regulations. But PR professionals \u2013 those who have studied PR and are members of an organization like the <\/span>Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)<\/span><\/a> and who pursue <\/span>The Accreditation in Public Relations (APR)<\/span><\/a> \u2013 must work overtime to expose unethical practices. Extra care must be taken to look at manipulated content infiltrating \u2013 explicitly or not \u2013 one\u2019s social media feeds and minds. Yes, ethics can feel innate, but the ethical mind also must be trained and constantly used. Ethical decision making begins at the micro-level with the self. People make up businesses and set the foundation of its ethical principles which should be integrated into its mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To circle back to the central question at play, is PR inherently unethical? It is important to examine the anecdotal evidence aforementioned. \u201cdark PR\u201d firms are thankfully <\/span>not<\/b> representative of the vast majority of PR agencies. Although individual players may engage in unethical behavior, PR itself according to <\/span>PRSA<\/span><\/a> \u201cis a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.\u201d The challenge for PR professionals is to hold themselves and fellow colleagues to high moral standards encapsulated in the <\/span>PRSA Code of Ethics<\/span><\/a>: Honesty, Advocacy, Expertise, Independence, Loyalty, and Fairness.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Magdalene Soule, Account Director\u00a0 Over the course of a number of my PR classes at BU, a contentious question always seems to arise: Is PR inherently unethical? In my PR Ethics course, CM525, I was taken with a disturbing BuzzFeed article we were assigned to read \u2013 \u201cDisinformation for Hire: How a New Breed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15996,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15996"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3893,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3891\/revisions\/3893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/prlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}