View Fit to Print? Planting Stories in Iraq Andrea Mitchell reports that much of the news that people are reading in Baghdad is actually Pentagon propaganda. The Pentagon is paying Iraqi newspapers to run stories secretly written by U.S. troops, supposedly without the knowledge of Iraqi editors. The Pentagon does this by hiring a Bush campaign supporter with a $100 million contract to translate U.S. stories into Arabic, and pay Iraqi media to run them. As one commentator says, this is not teaching Iraqis about freedom of the press, but subverting it. Is this sort of public relations work, masquerading as journalism in any way ethical? Does this practice lower the stature of both journalism and public relations? Write a few paragraphs on what you believe are the boundaries of ethical public relations, and under what circumstances it is correct to use public relations in a war situation.
View track 6.3, Issues: Serve the Client or Public? This track explains how PR agencies straddle the line between public service and private profit. PR is a client-driven business—does that affect their concern for public service? Explain how PR firms such as Ogilvie attempt to avoid ethical dilemmas.
Fit to Print? Planting Stories in Iraq Andrea (18897.0K)