Political and Public Policy Communication

Politics has long been like a foreign language to me. I always felt that as I got older, it would all start to make more sense, but unfortunately that just isn't the case. The more I try to pay attention and educate myself about things like legislation and public policy in our country, the more confused I become.

From what I see online and read about in the news, politics seems simply like a weird, dirty game. People cheat, lie and steal their way into positions of power. Everyone claims that our individual votes matter, and that "government officials pay close attention to public opinion" as the chapter states, but I find this very hard to believe.

From a communications standpoint, I really don't think I'd be able to handle any sort of position where I was involved in a political organization. It's not that I don't believe politics are important, because they most certainly are, but I feel that at this stage in our society's development, we've veered so far from the path we should be on that it feels as if all hope is nearly lost.

I've recently started watching a new show on Hulu called Battleground. It sounds sort of hokey and cliche but as someone who watches far too much television, this show is extremely well-executed and engaging to watch.  It follows the campaign of a democratic dark horse candidate who is running for US Senate for Wisconsin. I think I've learned more about politics and public relations by watching this show than in school, as pathetic as that sounds. It explores all the facets involved in a political campaign, from the fundraising activities, to speechwriting, to writing press releases and attending press conferences, to making televised statements and hosting events, and so on.

Battleground

It's one thing to hear about these things through news media outlets, where the stories are carefully crafted by powerful people looking to spin a certain message, but to see it all happen from a behind-the-scenes mockumentary point of view is intriguing to me. It's actually helped me see the brighter side of politics, even if it is just a fictional show on the internet.

Ethics and Social Responsibility in Public Relations

In reading about ethics in PR, the most important concept I took away from the chapter is the fact that ethics are ACTIVE, not passive. To me, this is very important because it means ethics are about what you do, not what you say you are going to do.

Navigating the ethical waters of business and public relations can be tricky because ethics are derived from our values, and values clearly differ from culture to culture. Because of this, I think many corporations and organizations can find themselves in situations that might be ethically compromising. While an organization as a whole might have a defined set of ethics, their ethical beliefs may or may not equate to the ethical beliefs of their employees, or their clientele.

Because ethics can be such a grey area, I wanted to see what the PRSA had to say about this issue. I know that in prior classes we've discussed case studies about ethical problems and for the most part these situations weren't necessarily black or white, and the class discussions had a lot of varied opinions about how the incidents should have been handled.

These are some bullet points the PRSA points out for dealing with ethics:

The majority of these suggestions are straightforward and understandable, but there are a couple that I find vague and confusing. For example, "Work to strengthen the public's trust in the profession." How is this an ethical concern? The public should just inherently be able to trust that the profession is performing ethically, it should not have to try and persuade people and defend it's existence. If this is the case perhaps the PR profession should be re-defined. 

Additionally, "Act in the best interest of clients or employers" also raised a red flag for me. If you are acting in your employer's best interest, you may or may not be acting ethically. But if it's in their best interest it's justifiable? I think this list could be misinterpreted by many people working in PR. Public Relations, to me, is about how you can best serve the PUBLIC, not corporations or organizations, no matter what these groups agendas are. 

How to Remove Ads on Hulu

Frustrated with the increasing number of advertisments being aired on Hulu and other video hosting websites? The AdBlock Plus extension for Google Chrome blocks all commercials.

 I thought it was a fluke at first but sure enough, it's legit.

Instead of commercials, you'll just a see a black screen with white text that says something like, "Sorry, we're unable to display advertisements at this time."

In my opinion this is waaayyy better than being bombarded with obnoxious marketing messages mid-viewing.

I don't use Safari or Firefox but I read in this article that there is an AdBlock Video extension for Firefox that will do the same thing!