We mark the end of the first three steps and as we enter the fourth month of 2007, we will begin to explore our darker side with Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Fault cannot be on the communications industry alone. Remember that we, as individuals, comprise this society and no matter how you slice it, one bad apple can ruin the bunch.
Marvin Olasky, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Corporate Public Relations: A New Historical Perspective, has an interesting take on the morality of public relations with a focus on government relations -- very apropos for election ramp-up.
He seeks to inject a moral dimension into what passes for public relations, a profession that critics have derided as so much "ballyhoo," "huckstering," and "press agentry," as so many "high-priced errand boys and buffers for management." Look, says Olasky, how sycophantic if not Machiavellian public relations frequently has become. The public relations counselor all too often is a weather vane advocate who meets plots with counter plots, whose unspoken motto is: My cause, company, industry, or client right or wrong. Accordingly..
Moral: of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes; founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom: moral obligations.
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over word – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of the customer as we understood Him.
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