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Daniel Batchman

Doctor Carolyn Kim

Journalism Research

14 May 2014

Public Relations Ethics for the Young Generation

Abstract

Public relations is a practice that requires a large amount of physical and

psychological dedication from the practitioner. Whether in a firm, company, or non-

profit; whether in public affairs, investor relations, internal relations, or crises

management; the practitioner has to make a series of decisions based on what he or she

thinks is ethically beneficial for the company. The current generation has been raised with

many different forms of instant gratification like social media platforms. The question

proposed is do the young generation practitioners find themselves ethically challenged

when entering their public relations practice. In other words, do the practitioners who

were born from the 1990s to the early 2000s have solid ethics in the public relations

industry?

Literature Review

The Definition of Public Relations

Public Relations is defined in many ways. Ron Smith presents an interesting

visual in his book Public Relations: The Basics where a bunch of blind men are each

grabbing a different part of an elephant, each coming to a different conclusion of what the

object they were touching was (3). The point of this visual is present that there are many

different parts of public relations is a mix of different practices made into one profession

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and the profession itself can’t be defined by its many parts.

The text Cutlip and Centers Effective Public Relations states that public relations

is “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial

relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure

depends” (Sha, Broom, 5). In relation to Ron Smith’s visual of public relations, Cutlip

and Centers Effective Public Relations elaborates on the different parts that make up the

entire whole of public relations. The text states that marketing, publicity, advertising,

press agentry, public affairs, lobbying, issues management, and investor relations are all

part of the whole public relations practice (5-16).

Sandra Oliver states in her book, Public Relations Strategy, that public relations

can’t just be simply defined because of all of the concepts that embody the practice (1).

She recognizes that what a Public Relations practitioner does is “influence organizational

aims”, that his or her “decisions involve a major commitment of resources”, and

decisions for the practitioner are long term, and relationship strategy is involved (3-4).

The text Public Relations and Communication describes the public relations as

being split into two sections, internal and external. According to the text, internal public

relations is the management of the relationships between the management and its

employees and external public relations is the relationships between the organization and

its outside publics like “stock holders, dealers, customers, consumers, and jobbers”

(Nayyar 55, 65).

The AMA Handbook of Public Relations simply describes public relations as the

“art of influence” especially when it comes to digital communication in todays society

(9). Andy Green’s Creativity in Public Relations describes public relations as a creative

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process in communication between publics (36). In the end, there are multiple definitions,

but all of them come to the same conclusion: public relations is process of

communication between their client and their clients publics.

The Definition of Ethics in the Public Relations Industry

Because this study scrutinizes how college graduates can be ethically affected, the

literature reviewed elaborates on how the public relations industry defines ethics as a

whole. To begin, the Public Relations Society of America code of ethics states that their

public relations members must reflect advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence,

loyalty, and fairness (prsa.org).

The International Association of Business Communicators, an organization

dedicated to advancing communication professions, believes that communicators must

support free speech, cultural values of others, refrain from undertaking, obey laws, give

credit where credit is due, protect confidential information, not accept undisclosed gifts

or payments, protect confidential information, not to guarantee unreachable results, and

to be all around honest (iabc.com).

Ethics in Public Relations: a Guide to the Best Practice shows how ethics isn't

just about being a yes-man and having good manners. The author explains how

competence was a very important value to the overall ethical makeup of a public relations

practitioner. “...there are two main objectives to achieving competence... one is to protect

the public...the second objective of ensuring competence is to secure the future of PR's

image as an ethical persuit.” Protecting the public and securing the “PR image”,

according to the author, can be done through these three steps:

1. to ensure that we have the skills necessary to do the work that we take

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on at any given time;

2. to ensure that we avoid giving employers or clients the impression

that we can guarantee specific results; and

3. to keep our knowledge, skills and expertise current.

The three steps are a simplified version of what could be done to avoid incompetence

(Parsons 57, 58)

Public Relations Ethics Observed in Society

Though there are certain standards established by well renowned communication

groups, ethics are referred to as guidelines and not necessarily the maker or breaker of a

public relations practitioner. One of the founders of Public Relations, Edward Bernays,

states in his text, Crystallizing Public Opinion, “The only difference between

“propaganda” and “education”, really, is in the point of view.” (Berneys 200) In the

biography, Father of Spin, Edward Bernays demonstrated this point of view in his public

stunt, “torches for freedom” where he sought to further promote smoking by having

women parade with cigarettes in the streets (Tye 29).

An article in The Public Relations Journal volume five, ““Millennials’

Approaches to Ethical Decision Making: A Survey of Young Public Relations Agency

Employees”, the writers observe the ethics of the millennial generation, people born in

1982 to the late 1990s, along with how they compared to their predecessor generations.

What the writers concluded is that earlier generations observed the millennials as being

selfish, ungovernable, and dependent on their bosses, while research showed that though

millennials are dependent, but at the same time they “value ongoing education and

mentoring” (Curtin, Gallicano, Matthews 15).

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Media Ethics: Issues, Cases, a text discussing ethically controversial issues in the

media, shows certain examples of ethical decision making and why these decisions were

made. An example of media ethical decision making portrayed in the text was the

accepting of product samples in the Newsroom. The Weatherford Daily News accepted a

variety of samples from an alcohol distributor, Grey Goose, in order to write a review on

their products (Patterson, Wilkins 73).

This is PR, a text discussing the realities when working in the public relations

industry, the authors discusses what Propaganda and Persuasion Appeal strategies are

used in this present century. According to the authors, some of the many strategies such

as “Name Calling”, “Bandwagon”, “Emotional Stereotype”, and “Illicit Silence”, are “a

variety of persuasion appeals… commonly used to mislead publics.” However, the

authors continued stating, “Although, it encompasses some techniques that are used to

mislead, the word propaganda should not be thought of as totally negative.” They then

refer to Hadley Cantril, a social psychologist, and her five laws: “(1) events are most

likely to affect opinion; (2) demands for action are a usual response; (3) self-interest must

figure heavily if people are to become involved; (4) leadership is sought, and not always

objectively and critically; and (5) reliability is difficult to assess.” In other words, certain

looked down upon strategies are more of a scientific approach of how to change public

opinion, which can be used ethically or unethically (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg 124-

126).

The Millennial Generation

The definition of the noun, Millennial, according to dictionary.com is “a person

born in the 1980s or 1990s, especially in the U.S; a member of Generation Y”. The

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Oxford English Dictionary on its home website, oed.com, gathered quotes from authors

where the term Millennial was established as a noun describing a rising generation.

William Strauss and R.J. Matson, stated in their book, Generations: a History of

Americas Future, 1584 to 2069, which was published in 1991, “First wave millennials are

riding a powerful crest of protective concern” (335) alluding to a generation that was

being recognized in the 1990s.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recognizes in its article, “Millennials Are

More ‘Generation Me’ Than ‘Generation We,’ Study Finds”, that Millenials tend to be

more interested in “money, image, and fame” (Chau, 1). Respondents to the article had

mixed reviews, many of them leaning towards disagreeing with the side Chau addresses

in her article. One of them read, “I mildly disagree – the millennials in my classroom

should not be characterized as the generation me. I would describe them as “generation

egocentric” (Chronicle.com). This comment lightens the blow and provides an example

of what many people truly think about the millennial generation.

Chau refers to a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, titled

“Generational Differences in Young Adults’ Life Goals, Concern for Others and Civic

Orientation, 1966-2009”. The authors of this article, Jean Twenge, Keith Campbell, and

Elise Freeman came to the conclusion that people born in recent generations are less

concerned about others, more concerned about themselves saying, more recent

generations evidence lower levels of community feeling as seen in less intrinsic and more

extrinsic life goals, less concern for others, and lower civic engagement” (1060). They

basically portray the millennial generation as a mostly selfish and caring only about

themselves.

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Other surveys also reveal that the Millennials are described as a dependent

generation looking to the help of their superior advisors instead of figuring issues out

completely on their own (Curtin, Gallicano, Matthews, 13). Times Magazine went as far

as to call the Millennials a “Me Me Me Generation” expressing that Millennials only care

about their own well being (Jenkins, Stein, 1). What can be observed is that the

Millennials seek the wisdom of their elders but they may be seeking their wisdom too

often because making themselves feel better seems to be the normality.

An article and discussion from Time Magazine and PBS take a more of a positive

spin on observing the millennial generation’s ethical values in the United States. PBS

recognizes in an interview titled “How the Values, Uphill Optimism of the Millennials

Compare to Older Generations” that though the Millennial Generation is socially liberal,

mostly choosing to not be affiliated with any religion, not getting married, and don’t have

strong political views, they are still “upbeat about their own future” even during the

United State’s current economic crisis (pbs.org).

Time Magazine recognizes the negatives in Millennials, but also looks towards

the positives explaining that the Millennial generation is very adaptable when it comes to

technology and they also, as compared to PBS’s interview, are very optimistic (Sanburn,

1). They also feel obligated to get better jobs not necessarily due to the fact that they want

to rich and famous, but mostly because of the current economic times (1).

Ethics and Diversity Among Millennials

As mentioned above, ethics for specifically Millennials is looked down upon by

older generations because they are known to be dependent on their superiors and they’re

more focused on what happens after work than what happens during work (Curtin,

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Gallacano, Matthews, 15). When we switch the point of view around, we can see that

Millennials have their own story to tell about how ethical the public relations

environment is in their work area.

When it comes to racial and ethnic diversity, the millennial generation is the most

ethnically diverse at this point in time. The article “Millennials Perceptions About

Diversity in their PR Agencies” reports that Caucasian millennial practitioners reported

feeling less strain then other race practitioners, which still shows that there is a racial

issue in the public relations industry today (Gallicano, 41). The issue elaborated in the

article is not that practitioners are being paid or treated professionally in the work place

based on the color of their skin, but more that certain races are picked mostly because of

racial iniquity in the work place (Gallicano , 41)

Gender diversity is also observed among the millennial generation especially

among young women today. Gallicano observed that women were mainly picked for their

job based on their physical attributes more than their performance (44). Women also

seemed to notice this issue more than men, which means that the gender issue goes on

without being noticed or observed in the public relations industry (44). Women in the

millennial generation also report to have lower salaries than those of men, though the

salaries don’t differ as much as a generation ago (44).

Ethics and Social Media Among Millenials

The article, “Millennial Counselors and the Ethical Use of Facebook”, looks at

why counseling students use social media and what they use it for. The authors observed

that one possibility for the millenials using social media is because millenials, according

to some case studies, tend to be very narcissistic (Brew, Cervantes, Shepard, 95).

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Narcissism was concluded as the reason due to the fact that millenials contain so much

power in how they connect with friends, how technically savvy they were, an how much

they could trust other institutions for holding their information (95).

It was also observed that millenials use social networking primarily social

interaction and entertainment more than as a motivational tool (McCorkindale, DiStaso,

Sisco, 70). Millenials have also admitted to not having an authentic persona online when

it comes to how people view their online profile, which makes their identities socially

desirable, but not necessarily real (71).

McCorkindale, DiStaso, and Sisco also observed a study on who millenials

interacted with professionally on social networks and found that millenials tended to

mostly interact with smaller organizations and nonprofits more than larger organizations.

The scholar they observed also argued that millenials tended to use dialogue that would

not have been appropriate in the use of the work place (71).

Collecting Quantitative Data

Because most of the research won’t be collected through interviews, emails, or

any human interaction of any kind, quantitative research, instead of qualitative, will be

my method for finding information. Choosing quantitative over qualitative was mostly

due to time limiting amount of research. Also, quantitative allows for the opportunity to

observe a larger sample size (Sale, Lohfeld, Brazil, 45). Quantitative analysis helps

identify the more scientific aspects like numbers, groups, and statistics. Richard

Tewkbury defines in his article, “Qualitative versus Qualitative Methods: Understanding

Why Qualitative Methods are Superior for Criminology and Criminal Justice”, says that

the main goal when using quantitative research is to find out what “concepts and

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variables mean” (39). The research will be specifically in books and other written

material where other researchers have already found answers to certain aspects of the

question, do young adults in the public relations field get ethically effected in the public

relations field and how much.

Some argue, however that it’s difficult to just do quantitative data or quantitative

data alone. In the article, “Barriers to Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Data”, the

author argues that people who are mixed method researchers, researchers that use both

quantitative and qualitative data, simply choose to place their findings in either just

qualitative or only quantitative even if they may have used both methods to obtain

information (Bryman, 9). One could argue that the research done here observes not only

numbers but also interviews done by other interviewers, which is in a sense observing

qualitative data.

However, the research done is still only through literature alone, therefore quality,

if any, lacks very much in this research. The article, “Revisiting the Quantitative-

Qualitative Debate: Implications for Mixed Methods Research”, elaborates on two

specific subjects that very much separate qualitative and quantitative research. The

authors of the article argue that in quantitative research can’t influence the subjects of the

research because everything is observed “within a value free framework” (Sale, Lohfeld,

Brazil, 45). Since most of the research in this paper is done through literature only, there

are no subjects that are influenced because all the information is permanently printed

onto a page with no emotions or reactive functions.

Qualitative-Quantitative Research Method Exploring the Interactive Continuum

by Isadore Newman and Carolyn Benz describes the fact that quantitative research and

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qualitative research are relative ideas. The authors believe that qualitative and

quantitative research is an issue of how information is measured in research (2).

Furthermore, they recognize that in schools today, professors are either teaching their

students to be focused on statistics or anthropology and this type of mindset, according to

the authors, is “an ‘either-or” world, a dichotomous world, that no longer exists” (7).

Their main argument is that researchers are supposed to, if not already forced to, perform

quantitative and qualitative data on all of their research.

Quantitative research, though it seems to be debated as coinciding with qualitative

research, seems to be in and of itself and separate idea. Quantitative seems to be easily

separated from qualitative research because one can identify what’s plainly statistical

evaluation and what’s emotional evaluation. One can understand that going into the field

and gaining information from human beings is different than gaining information from

academic journals and textbooks. Quantitative research maybe the easiest way to

evaluating comparing information that already exists and coming to a new innovated

conclusion.

Research Questions

1. Do public relations practitioners born in the millennial generation align their

ethics with well-known Public Relations or Communications ethical standards?

2. What do public relations practitioners of the millennial generation lack ethically?

3. What do public relations practitioners of the millennial generations ethically

thrive in?

4. Why is it important to consider the ethics of millennial practitioners and how can

they be improved?

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Methodology

Quantitative research was conducted in order to gather information from many

different text and journal sources in order to come up with a substantial conclusion to

what the ethics of young public relations practitioners were. What was first observed

was the definition of public relations in its many different interpretations from many

different sources, which helped establish an overall idea of field that required so

much scrutiny in its ethics. The materials observed were books, academic journals,

newspaper articles, and news magazines.

Secondly, different forms of ethical standards by the Public Relations Society of

America, the International Association of Business Communicators, and textual

evidence to find out how they compare and contrast. Then, different academic

journals and studies of the young generation of young public relations practitioners

were observed to find out how young practitioners behaved ethically in their working

field today.

Thirdly, the study was separated into studying documents on the millennial

generation, ethical issues that had to do with ethnicity and gender, and the observation

of what other people, specifically older generations like the baby boomer generation,

had to say about the millennial generation and their ethics in public relations.

Lastly, different ethical issues were also observed pertaining to the millennial

generation in order to gather examples of ethics in the public relations work place.

The information found about the public relations practitioners and the ethical

standards of PRSA, IABC, and text documents were integrated and certain

conclusions were raised about millennial public relations practitioners.

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Conclusion

It was observed that in this day in age, young public relations practitioners that

were born from the late 1980s to the year 2000 follow most of what PRSA, IABC,

and text documents believe to be ethical standards. The standards that millennial

practitioners lack in “Independence” and “Expertise” in the PRSA’s ethical categories

and “to keep our knowledge, skills and expertise current” from the text Ethics in

Public Relations: A Guide to the Best Practice. This was observed because different

sources indicate that employers and superiors believed that young practitioners seem

to lean on them for advice and clarity instead of acting on their own behalf due to the

practitioners living in the digital age where the answer is just at the touch of a button.

The research also showed that young practitioners seemed to be judged by their

superiors because of both their gender, especially for females, and their ethnical

background. This could lead one to believe that though practitioners lack

independence unlike their predecessors, their not necessarily useless and the opinion

of their superiors may have been over dramatized. However, if young practitioners

are heading towards total reliability on other things rather than creating a substantial

knowledge base to create independent thoughts and ideas, then the public relations

industry is heading towards a bitter end where originality becomes a rarity. One could

reflect on this research and observe the different standards taught in schools and

universities today and maybe infer that adjustments in certain ethical practices need to

be adjusted in order for the future of public relations to remain a solid foundation for

advocacy, relationship building, and communication.

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