Public Relations Ethics Disasters

The Public Relations Society of America advocates a code of ethics for all public relations practitioners (viewable here: http://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/Ethics/).  Public relations practitioners are expected to abide by the code of ethics, however, sometimes people and organizations fail.  I will discuss a recent high profile case, and how the organization failed.

In 2006 two individuals traveled across the country in an RV Wal-Mart allows free RV parking at all of it's locations.  Wal-Marting across America was born.  Jim Thresher and Laura St. Claire traveled across the United States in their RV writing and posting pictures about how they believed Wal-Mart is wonderful.  This seems perfectly innocent, however, soon the blog attracted the attention of the media.  Jim and Laura were not who they said they were... Jim was a photographer for the Washington Post, and Laura was a professional writer.  This was not entirely damning, however, until it was revealed that Wal-Mart was funding the entire expedition!  The entire blog was a sham created by Wal-Mart to deceive the public into thinking that this couple was independently chronicling the wonders of Wal-Mart and the great treatment/attitude of Wal-Mart employees.  The bogus blog was wrong on multiple ethical grounds.
The blog was a front group.  The blog was discrediting the profession.  The blog was perpetuating the idea of spin and it could have been considered propaganda.  As opposed to listening to stakeholders in the Wal-Mart organization, the company decided to deceptively use a one-way communications model to mislead the public.

Ethics should not be taken lightly, and the exposure of the story created an even greater problem for Wal-Mart.  The story is proof that honesty is always the best policy.

The Wal-Mart blog catastrophe can be read about here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15319926/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/