Study: PR Pros are Unjustly Perceived as Liars—Scoring Higher in Ethics than Surgeons and Accountants
Spin doctors. Flacks. B.S. artists. The list of derogatory slang terms for public relations professionals goes on and on. And the perception among the public—and especially journalists—is only getting worse, with highly publicized criticism in the last few years from Wired's Chris Anderson and The New York Times's Joe Nocera. But new research shows that this criticism is off target: "It turns out that public relations professionals are good ethical thinkers," says Renita Coleman, a Legacy Scholar at Penn State's Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication.
Coleman, along with another Page Center Johnson Legacy Scholar, Lee Wilkins, is the author of a new paper called "The Moral Development of Public Relations Practitioners: A Comparison with Other Professions and Influences on Higher Quality Ethical Reasoning." The study appeared in the July 2009 Journal of Public Relations Research.
PR people, Coleman says, "show similarity to other professionals with comparable levels of education such as journalists, nurses and dental students."
In fact, PR pros scored better than orthopedic surgeons, business professionals, accounting students and veterinary students.
This research is the first to measure empirically the moral development of working public relations professionals. Coleman, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, and Wilkins, professor of journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, took a random sample from the 400 largest public relations firms.
The test poses six ethical dilemmas and asks respondents to rank 12 statements after each dilemma according to how important each was in making a decision. The measure was a five-point scale where one equaled "no importance" and five equaled "great importance." The Defining Issues Test (DIT) measures ethical reasoning in five areas: business concerns, internal motives, truth and respect, religious influences and external influences.
Test scores of the public relations professionals were compared to the scores of 19 other groups whose members had taken the DIT test in the past. Seminarians and philosophers are the runaway winners on the moral development scale as measured by the test. After that come medical students, practicing physicians, journalists, dental students, nurses and public relations pros.
Last on the moral development scale? Junior high school students, one notch below prison inmates.
"But that's not surprising, because age and education are the best predictors of moral development—the more you have, the better you do," says Coleman. "And it shows why middle-schoolers still need their parents' guidance."
Despite popular conceptions, Coleman and Wilkins say that ethics are particularly important for PR practitioners: "Public relations professionals see their role as connecting clients to the larger world, primarily though journalists or to the news media. To accomplish this function, they need to maintain the trust of both parties, but particularly the trust of journalists who are already skeptical of their institutional role and their individual motives. Consequently, honesty and a lack of willingness to deceive those who receive information are critical in effective public relations practice."
Comments:
Thursday, August 13, 2009 9:44:34 AM by pprlisa
This is a terrific article that I am talking about on Twitter - this line especially captures what I always tell people who call us flacks, liars, etc "To accomplish this function, they need to maintain the trust of both parties, but particularly the trust of journalists who are already skeptical of their institutional role and their individual motives."
Exactly - why would we lie or deceive because in the long run, this will hurt us and our client. If anything, I see us as protecting our trust relationship even more with the media because it is counterproductive for us to lie.
Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:33:37 AM by Martin K. Pottle
Thanks to you and this article, I will be stuck in my office for the next 24 hours, at least until my head swells down so I can fit back through the doorway.
Just kidding, of course, but this article truly made my day, especially as I near the end of my 30+ year career in PR that started in the 60's at B-M in New York City and evolved into my own international biz-to-biz agency here in New England these past 22 years.
With perceptions that our profession is rife with shysters, I and my (favorite) associates always realized that one even slightly deceitful move would blow a relationship with our much-needed editors, not to mention perhaps an entire career.
I've truly fired clients for asking me to cross the line, employees too, never with regret. Thanks for sharing this article with us. I still have a great deal of respect for my knee surgeon, however.
Thursday, August 13, 2009 1:10:48 PM by Anonymous
The tests show PR pros are "good ethical thinkers." So that's what the tests reveal about each of the groups - can they recognize what is ethical or not. They don't test ethical behavior. Do you act ethically, are you often challenged ethically in your profession? Those are the the questions I'd like to see, not that I'm picking on PR pros, but I'd like to see it asked of the other groups too.
Friday, August 14, 2009 11:25:15 AM by Renita Coleman
Good question about the connection to ethical behavior. It's a lot harder to measure behavior, but some studies have been done that connect scoring high on this ethical thinking test to ethical behavior and shown there is a high correlation. It hasn't been done with PR people that I'm aware of but it's probably safe to say that those who scored high are more likely to act ethically. I haven't tested this, but it's my own suspicion that carrying through with ethical behavior is a lot harder to do, especially when economic consequences are involved. I'd love to study that!
Friday, August 14, 2009 1:28:00 PM by Ben
I don't see why this is so surprising. PR people have no reason to lie to journalists or their clients. It would just ruin good relationships: http://racetalkblog.com/2009/08/14/report-shows-pr-pros-are-ethical-why-is-this-a-surprise/
Saturday, August 15, 2009 3:36:02 PM by Joette Storm, APR, Fellow PRSA
This doesn't surprise me because PRSA has a code and openly discusses it to educate members. I have had no less than five requests to facilitate ethics discussion this year at professional organizations and private companies.
Monday, August 17, 2009 7:43:20 AM by Tom Madden
I used to get so much criticism for calling my autobiographical book "Spin Man." Yet, if, as Hemingway once observed, "journalism is facts and fiction is truth," than I always felt that spin is more an artful blend of facts and truth.
Monday, August 17, 2009 10:12:14 AM by Ronald E. Childs
Nearly three decades into my career as a full-time PR practitioner and part-time columnist, I find it disheartening that we are still having this inane discussion. I don't recall any PR people being involved in the plagiarism scandals that have plagued the Fourth Estate over the past several years (i.e.: The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today). I don't recall PR people fabricating sources and winning Pulitzer Prizes for reporting. I further don't recall any PR people consenting to being "embedded" with U.S. troops in Iraq to tell a one-sided story of a war. Please stop raking the public relations profession over the coals for ethics, while giving journalists/journalism a pass as if their craft is eternally above reproach. Someone is publishing a study like this almost every year. When will they comission a study of journalists and their sense of ethics ... or lack of same?
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