Ethics

The advertising industry is launching its own PR campaign by way of setting up an Institute for Advertising Ethics. The sector has always had a negative image and the likes of the "Mad Men" series are certainly surfing that tide to... sell.

From gimlet-swilling adulterers on TV's "Mad Men" to seven-figure fines for deceptive ads touting cold remedies and credit scores, the ad industry sure could use an image makeover of its own.

Mike Fancher, former 20-year executive editor of the Seattle Times, is writing a Knight Commission white paper on local journalism and he tells Leonard Witt in this Future of Journalism video interview

Wally Snyder, executive director of the institute, pointed out that there are sound business reasons for putting advertising ethics front and center. In research conducted by students of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism School, consumers said they'd be more likely to buy products if the company marketing it were ethical. "Honest advertising" was the top-ranked attribute that would make a company ethical, consumers surveyed indicated.

Featured later in the article is Wally Snyder, executive director of the Reynolds Journalism Institute's Institute for Advertising Ethics:

"So there's an opportunity here to really enhance the ethics," he said. "And as companies do that, they're going to really get a better response."

When the group Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) in 2009 received a $60,000 grant from the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation, it decided to sponsor a project called "Online Journalism Credibility." It asked members to come forward with ideas for research.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a forum on the future of journalism values and ethics held at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, the world’s first journalism school. It was founded by Walter Williams, a journalist-turned-academic who wrote The Journalists Creed, the first and perhaps definitive code of journalism ethics in 1914.

In order to start a new dialogue about journalism ethics and values, 2008-2009 Reynolds Fellow Mike Fancher convened a select group of editors and journalism educators in the Fred W. Smith Forum at RJI. Approximately 60 people attended the live sessions while another 274 watched via livestream. The aim is to help build public trust through public engagement, and RJI is pleased to make the session videos available, below.

With dozens of Web sites allowing consumers to talk to each other about products and services, it makes little sense for a company to exaggerate claims in its advertising.

Strategic Campaign (J4970) Class Assignment
Assignment: Develop a strategic plan for planning and promoting the Global Forum to include:

A. Ascertain the three to five salient concerns ("Hot Buttons") regarding Advertising Ethics that will draw top advertising executives (CEOs, CMO's, COO's, CFOs, EVPs, SVPs, VPs) to our forum next fall. Each student team will do the following:

The Dolce and Gabbana advertisements that feature shirtless men and portray women as helpless are eye-catching, but are they ethical?

Students tackled this question and others during Wally Snyder's lecture, "The Ethics of Advertising," held Wednesday at the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics.

“The whole world is watching.” Demonstrators chanted those words in the streets of Chicago in 1968, and many people throughout the world did watch as the story was told through the voices of professional print and broadcast journalists.

In considering the modern relevance of Walter Williams’s “Journalist’s Creed,” it was well documented that people who aren’t journalists held increasingly negative attitudes toward news organizations. For example, The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported in 2004 that from 1996 to that year there was a sharp fall in the percentage of those who reported that they believed most of the news reporting in newspapers and on television. What follows are some specific findings.

During the past two semesters I have brought together International advertising leaders with professors and students at the Missouri School of Journalism to study and promote the role of Advertising Ethics. My working proposition is that the proactive consideration of ethics in our ad campaigns will enhance consumer trust and brand loyalty, especially in this time of unprecedented consumer control over the commercial information they choose to receive.

It has been both an honor and a pleasure to have both regulated and represented the advertising industry during my professional career as a government lawyer and then advertising trade association CEO. I have come to understand the importance of advertising to the economy and to consumer purchase decisions. And, I have come to believe that enhanced advertising ethics is essential to building consumer trust and brand loyalty in the new global and digital economy.