Sunday, March 30, 2008

Ethics in Communication


The establishment of a strong code of ethics is extremely important in the field of public relations as well as all other fields that deal with the public on a daily basis. As we approach the 2008 presidential election it is interesting to look at how politicians uphold ethical values when dealing with the public. The article below was posted on PRSSA.

Is Ethics in Politics and Oxymoron?

I really believe that ethics is politics is an oxymoron. Political leaders in our country are faced with making ethical decisions everyday, and I think most of the time the make decisions on a pre-conventional level. Although I am sure there are many politicians who value ethics and do not consider self-interest when making a decision, there are enough leaser who think like this to make the entire profession look unethical in my eyes.

Politicians are forced to make so many decisions behind closed doors. They have many different advisors who seem to do a lot of the decision making for them. Each decision is ultimately based on how favorably the public will react to it. Rather then looking to see if the decision is ethical, they go back to the basic pre-conventional and conventional level of thinking and look at what their reputation will be after they announce their decision.

I think politicians should have a code of ethics that they abide by. Although I am sure it would still be broken on occasion, just like all codes of ethics are, I think it would make some politicians really think about the ethics involved with the decisions they make. I think it is hard for a profession as a whole to enforce ethics within their field when they have no foundation (code of ethics) to guide them. If a code of ethics was created and politicians had to sign it I feel as though they would be held responsible for ethical considerations.

1 comment:

Yelena Katchan said...

I completely agree with your statement that many times politicians make unethical decisions. I also think that campaigns are somewhat unethical because the candidates make promises that they never keep, just to get more votes. They need to start looking at consequences of their decisions if they want to get support back.