Case Activity Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace

A number of situations can raise ethical questions in the public relations business. Resolving these situations often involves sifting through a number of factors, including:

Your philosophical orientation Your personal belief system Your understanding of professional standards

What ethical concerns are raised in the following three scenarios? Consider what you would do in each situation.

Consumer Review SitesYour company has a great product, and the management wants a higher profile on such consumer review sites such as Yelp and Amazon. Several freelance writers contact you with an offer. They will post multiple favorable reviews of your product under various anonymous names and only charge $25 for every posted review.

Ghost Writing in Public RelationsThe president of the company decides it would be “good PR” and visibility for her to have a personal Twitter account and write a weekly blog. She, of course, doesn’t have much time for this so she asks you, the public relations director, to “ghost write” the tweets and the blog in her name.

Your public relations firm has a

luxury resort hotel in Hawaii as

a client. It’s important to get

articles about the hotel in

various leading travel

magazines. One idea is to invite

influential travel writers and

their families for a one-week

stay at the hotel, all expenses

paid, with the understanding

that they would write a

favorable article about their

experience.