The Role of Ethics

A quick summary of L & M, Chapter 5

This chapter discusses how ethics play a role in risk communication. “Questions like how much information to release, to whom should it be released and who makes those decisions are connected with the dissemination of any type of information” (p. 73). The authors discuss the various types of ethical issues that can arise and relevant questions that need to be considered. The types of ethical issues are social, organizational and personal.

Social ethics – This category describes ethical considerations dictated by society such as the sociopolitical environment; who determines what is a risk and to whom it will be communicated; ethnic and social fairness of the risk; consequences of misunderstood messages; and addressing stigma of risk situations.

Organizational ethics – This category of ethical issues relates to how organizations establish their moral codes. Specific instances are: legitimacy of representation; designating the primary audience; releasing information; and compiling with established regulations and guidelines.

Personal ethics – This category encompasses the individual risk communicator’s set of morals and beliefs for instance: using persuasion, the role of the communicator, and deciding between personal and organizational ethics.

This brief overview illustrates the vital role ethics play in risk communication. Without a strong moral compass, organizations and individuals can actually diminish any communication efforts already established or planned. As in previous chapters, the authors stress the importance of audience involvement with forming or evaluating risk communication (others bloggers have also mentioned the role of the audience). The concept of audience analysis seems extremely important in order to understand what they already know, what they need to know, and how best to inform them.

Several of the social ethical issues arise from a lack of appreciation for who the audience is. “The dilemma for those who are communicating risk is how to meet the needs of all audiences” (p. 86). Is the appropriate audience to reach the one at the most risk, the one with the least amount of information, or the one who will make decisions on how to manage the risk? This question must be answered by risk communicators.

The “fairness of risk” issue addresses how certain ethnic groups can be overlooked or ignored in planning risk communication efforts. With the changing demographics in our county, especially the increasing Hispanic population, it is vital organizations begin to pay attention to the growing minority groups. Information for these audience segments needs to be in different languages and consider the cultural factors that will influence messages. The FEMA web site does a good job by prominently displaying the Español link that takes the reader to a page in Spanish.

It seems to me that personal ethics greatly influence the other two categories of risk communication. If individuals choose to behave ethically, this will translate to their organization and beyond to society. What then can be done to provide communicators with the appropriate skills to make ethical decisions? How often should employees be required to review their own, and the organization’s, code of ethics? Obviously, the book cannot go into the amount of detail required to answer these, and many other relevant questions, about the role of ethics in risk communication.