I think the key points to remember from this week's reading were:
- PR practitioners need to take an active role in developing strategies to minimise the legal risks
- therefore they need basis knowledge on several bodies of law
- the tort of defamation aims to protect a person's reputation
- to bring an action in defamation a person must show that:
> the material was published
> they were identified in the publication
> the publication was defamatory
- there are three tests for defamation:
> the publication exposed the plaintiff to hatred, contempt or ridicule
> it lowered the plaintiff in the eyes of right-thinking memebers of the community
> it caused the plaintiff to be shunned or avoided, without moral blame
- In deciding whether a publication is defamatory, the publisher's intention is irrelevant
- A publisher is anyone involved in the publication of material
- Ignorance of the law is no reason for breaking it
- a legal win can ot be equate to a PR win
- fair comment is designed to allow people to express opinions. The law recognises that a fair comment should not be prohibited, provided the comment is a comment and not an assertion of fact.
- Privilege protects a person from liability for the publication of defamatory material
- Before you start a legal action, you hae to analyze the effects
- Copyright is a set of exclusive rights and it PR has to be aware of it
- PR has to make sure that it won't lead to a violation of law
- Essential igredients of a contract: the offer, acceptance of that offer, considerations
- Ethics has to be the responsibility of all descision-makers and has to be part of mainstream management
- management systems need to institutionalise transparency and responsiveness
- ethical concepts are rapidly becoming more important
The readings made me think more about PR theory/practice in that:
- it has a lot to do with law. He has to respect other's copyrights and also secure his own
- Ethics has a huge role in PR strategies. In that fact it is also interesting what Turnbull says. He 'posits that the most successful organisations in the next decades will be those which build trust by aspiriing to authenticity and practisind transperency' (Johnston and Zawawi, 2004)
1 comment:
Hey Thomas, you summarised the two chapters well and made the seemingly heavy topics easily understandable to others. I also find it interesting to note the extensive impact ethics actually does have on organisations and also found that last quote thought provoking.
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