Original scientific paper
Ethics of the Profession of Public Relations – Does the Public Relations Affects on Journalism in Croatia?
Ivan Tanta
; Polytechnic »VERN«, Zagreb, Croatia
Gordana Lesinger
orcid.org/0000-0002-7892-0187
; Department of Cultural Research, University of J. J. Strossmayer in Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
The UK's leading professional body for public relations »Chartered Institute of Public Relations« (CIPR)1 said that
the public relations is about reputation – they are the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.
Furthermore CIPR says that public relations are discipline whose objectives are safeguarding reputation, establishing
understanding and pot pores, and the impact on the thinking and behavior of the public. Although the primary goal of
public relations is to preserve and build a reputation, to tell the truth to a customer who has hired experts in this area, it
seems that in its own way of development, public relations practitioners have stopped worrying about their reputation
and the perception of the discipline within the public they address. All relevant professional bodies for public relations,
including the Croatian Association for Public Relation (HUOJ), had set up codes of ethics2 and high standards according
which the members and practitioners should be evaluated. Among other things stays that practitioner of public relations
is required to check the reliability and accuracy of the data prior to their distribution and nurture honesty and accountability
to the public interest. It seems that right this instruction of code of ethics has been often violated. In a public
speech in Croatia, and therefore in the media, exist manipulation, propaganda, and all the techniques of spin, which
practitioners of public relations are skillfully using in the daily transfer of information to the users and target groups.
The aim of this paper is to determine what is the perception of the profession to the public. As in today's journalism increasingly
present plume of public relations, we wish to comment on the part where journalism ends and begins PR and
vice versa. In this paper, we analyze and compare codes of ethics ethics associations for public relations, as well as codes
of ethics journalists' associations, in order to answer the question of where the boundaries of public relations and journalism
are. Where one ends and the other begins, and the extent to which these two professions touch and affect each
other. Is manipulation and spin present in the media, that is the questions that we seek the answer in this paper.
Keywords
ethics; public relations; journalism; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
118186
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2013.
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