Protecting Creative Property

According to the Gower Text, Intellectual Property is the legal name given to such intangible property such as copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Protection of Intellectual property is provided in the US constituiton. Businesses should be concerned with trademark and logos, in order to protect the goodwill of the company. If other companies are producing logos that look alike but are not as of much quality, they could be hurting their business.

Legal and Ethical restraints on PR

Being a PR professional has many restraints to think about when talking about a person. Damaging another's reputation is a very serious problem if it happens. Libel, or defamation recognizes the importance of reputation to an individual's integrity and protects individuals from false statements made about them. As a PR professional, we should be concerned and understand defamation so that we do not harm our publics. Slander and Libel are very important to us because it can ruin a PR professionals career. It all gets a little confusing to me when u add the first amendment in the mix. When a person or employee of your business you are working for is caught in this situation, it is very important to know the "red flags" and what is not excepted. Avoiding opinion, quotations, and identification can help avoid defamation.

Enron...

The story of Enron pisses me off every time I hear about it! I still to this day cannot believe that those guys were able to ruin such a large, successful company. The story hits especially close to me because my Dad worked for a company that a similiar thing happened to in 2002. My dad was let go from WorldCom after 23 years of service, and also my senior year in High School. When I watched the video in class and saw the thousands of people that lost their life savings, I totally understood their pain. My dad lost 23 years worth of 401K and savings. What Enron did was completly unethical. The sad thing about the whole situation is that they laughed the whole time they knew Enron was going down the tubes. I think it serves Jeff and everyone involved to be in Jail. One thing I will never understand is how so many well-known banks were involved in such an act of dishonest and utterly disgusting act of greed. I often wonder what the world would be like if money was not such a sign of status. I wonder why there were not whistle blowers earlier than there was, maybe if someone would have stepped in and looked at their financial reports, if this could have been stopped. I cannot imagine working for a company like this.

Glengarry Glen Ross

Ok, so this play just reminded me of America and how all people are concerned with is the next dollar they can make. This play showed how breaking the rules and "doing what ever it takes" really does happen in our business culture. I think as PR professionals we should have a "radar" for when this type of unethical behavior is taking place where we are working so that we can alert executives or choose to leave the company. It is very easy to get lost in this crazy world where everybody "wants to be a millionaire." I had never seen a play and I was very impressed with the play and the way it was presented. The fact that he stole the leads was completly unethical and not only caused himself problems but also everyone he had affected. Overall, I think this play corresponds to our class and shows us what we should not do.

PRSA Code of Ethics

Advocacy = truth- in order for the public to gain accurate knowledge, the PR practitioner must serve in the best interests for the public.

Honesty = truth- also where accuracy of information come into play.

Expertise = stewardship- the PR practitioner must research the brand in order to put their skills to work.

Independence = freedom/liberty- after the PR practitioner sends the information, the client has the right to walk away.

Loyalty = humanness- we as practitioner need to be fair to all or most, and by doing so, we need to remain loyal to our values.

Fairness = humanness, and justice- in order to do our job we need to treat everyone fairly and if not, we need to compensate for our shortcomings in order to complete our jobs successfully.

Doing the Right Thing

Before picking up this book, I knew what ethics was but I had no idea that there were so many different theories. Many of the theories I have heard of such as Aristotles theory known as the golden mean. I personally think that ethics is something that people should be taught growing up. When parents raise children they either choose to be good parents and instill good morals or they slack and some children are raised without morals. I think the end result can lead to unethical or ethical decisions in the business world. Especially in PR it is important to be well equipped to be able to make better ethical decisions. I also find it interesting how chapter 1 discussed the PRSA code of ethics and how they seem to be a little broad. I think being a PR practicioner is going to be even harder than a medical practicioner just because like the book said, we have no 'laws' or
'regulations' to follow. We are supposed to make informed, ethical decisions based on the organization, community, and our own ethics. I think all of this is easier said than done. I think to be a great PR practicioner it will take many years of guidance to and experience to decide which of the approaches would be the best one under certain circumstances. Ethics is simply the study of right and wrong behavior, in a crazy world, we have to remember that we must keep these above all other things like money and profit.

Dallas Cowboys

I think that what the Cowboys did was inhumane in 1998, in no way does violence justify playing football. I think if we had more details about the issue with Irvin more could be concluded. On the PR side I can not believe that one person did not leak, that is amazing trust in an organization.