Public Relations and Journalism: the Question of Ethics

Abstract

In this paper the authors use the comparative method to analyze differences and similarities between basic ethical principles of the Serbian Journalists’ Code of Ethics and the Code of Professional Ethics of the Serbian Public Relations Association. The authors examine whether the interests of PR and journalist professions have to conflict as is usually thought, or they can be both used as a means of informing the citizens, as Philip Patterson believes. In this paper, the theoretical perspectives of Denis Everett and John Merrill are also taken into account. They state that the media is guided by profit, while the public interest, true information and ethics are secondary.