Ethos Public Relations Manchester

“If the Devil himself walked this earth, he'd surely be working in PR”

by Sean

If you missed this quote from the BBC’s Torchwood, then I really recommend you visit iPlayer for the current episode before the next one tomorrow.

Now, the programme may not be for the fainthearted but I find it to be good fun and the production values in this series seem to be great - and luckily the idiosyncratic, typically British one-liners remind you not to take all the horror too seriously.

I’ve digressed a little from the PR angle that you would expect from one of my blogs but the quote uttered by Danes, a central character in this series, possibly reflects a widely held view about certain aspects of the public relations industry. Of course, I’d not agree - and the whole ethos behind Ethos public relations is to deal with clients and the media in a way that certainly wouldn’t see us siding with the devil. We call this ethical public relations.

To me the term ethical public relations isn’t an oxymoron and doesn’t mean that we only deal with ‘ethical’ businesses, but rather underlines the way we want to maintain ethical behaviours between us, our clients and suppliers. We’ve been doing it now for over 13 years, so it must be working.

We subscribe to, and agree with, the National Union of Journalist’s code of conducts for both journalists and PR professionals, designed to maintain the highest ethical standards in journalism. Newspapers are facing a challenging time at present with more of us reading our news on the internet. The rise of amateur journalism on blogs and other social media is another challenge for those of us who believe in fair and accurate reporting of news, as the author may not subscribe to the same levels of journalistic integrity. Until recently, the public would have trusted what they read in their national newspaper much more than a blog (whoops, like this one!).

Adopting the highest ethical standards isn’t just good for businesses like ours, but I am convinced it can also be a way to engender trust amongst readers. Keeping readers (and subscribers) is going to become even more challenging for newspapers and news websites in the future and a clear ethical approach to news gathering, and its reporting, is an important way that news providers can demonstrate the value of their content and so retain reader loyalty.

Posted at 8:55am on 27^th July 2011