The real interesting stuff came with my PR class. We discussed contemporary PR and ethics. Now, for those of you who know me -which I'm sure all of you do- I am never one to shy away from the opportunity for a heated debate surrounding a topic that I feel strongly about -though I have been known to debate something just for the hell of it. Anyways, as one can imagine, elite institutes of higher learning (unlike UCLA and Notre Dum) are prime forums for such debates.
We had quite the debate -some of which was a tad scary when you think about the fact that many of these people will be influencing the world. However, Fear not! James was there to raise a ruckus.
The debate centered around a story provided to us by Dr. Campbell (who shall be known henceforth as Shannon) which involved a certain tobacco company that spent a large amount of money in a philanthropic way, helping many people who had been recently affected by a natural disaster, providing them with food, shelter, water etc. Here's the catch, that same tobacco company turned around and spent three times... yes... 3x that amount of money to advertise what the had done to the American public. Is that ethical? Well, I won't cover the entire gamut of the debate, but I will say, there were a wide range of responses.
After the debate we moved into ways of determining exactly what ethical practice in PR really meant. The philosophies of three prominent philosophisers (yes i did just say philosophisers), Benedict Spinoza, Michel Foucault (pronounced "Foo-Ko), and Niccolo Machiavelli were featured in this segment.
I believe all three philosophies have their own inherent merit, here are my favorites:
"Men who are governed by reason... will desire for themselves nothing which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and consequently, are just, faithful, and honorable in their conduct." - Benedict Spinoza
"Power produces reality and rituals of truth" - Michel Foucault (father of post modernism)
"The harm that men would do to you lays the moral basis for the harm you must do unto them."
- The Ungolden Rule - Machiavelli.
Now, as you can well imagine, there are many facets to each philosophy, so to say that I fully agree with one or another would be lunacy, however, as I said before, they each contain some bit of truth.
I'd like to finish up this ever so brief little post by saying that I absolutely love what I've been studying in PR lately, and a conversation with Shannon today after class cemented my resolve even further. She told me that the most successful PR practitioners have these key traits:
1. Excellent verbal/written communication skills
2. creativity
3. The ability to be analytical
4. are very powerful persuaders
well... I think i fit the bill quite nicely, look out world!
:-)
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