Time to Set Record Straight on PR’s Ethical Backbone

via Guest Post: The Importance of Ethics to the PR Industry – PRNewser.

For PR professionals, 2011 has been an up-and-down year in terms of ethics.

A quick glimpse at recent headlines would give the casual reader the impression that all is wrong in the world of PR ethics: The News of the World phone-hacking scandal; American PR firms providing image counsel to dictators; and PR firms writing fake online product reviews on behalf of clients.

While it may seem that each week brings a new tale of an epic ethics flap in PR, reality is not as gloomy as perception. The fact remains, however, that public relations practitioners have long battled an image problem: that we, collectively, are unethical — no better than snake-oil salespeople.