McCollough, Reif-Stice Publish Case Studies as part of New Text Book

December 10, 2018

CSU Professors Chris McCollough and Carrie-Reif Stice have contributed case studies to a newly published textbook on public relations ethics that will be available to public relations educators in 2019. The textbook, Translating Values into Conduct: Cases in Public Relations Ethics, is an edited volume compiled by Drs. Brigitta Brunner of Auburn University and Corey Hickerson of James Madison University. The ethics textbook is unique in that it is intended to provide an introductory overview of many sub-fields in public relations, with a central focus on promoting ethical conduct of the work relevant to each sub-field.

Dr. McCollough's work, Connecting Government Relations to Ethics: Louisiana's Centralized Media Relations, is a case study looking at the choice of Louisiana's former governor, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, who chose to engage in centralized "closed gate" media relations with the state press corps. In McCollough's analysis, he found that the strategy was out of line with the Public Relations Society's Code of Ethics, and McCollough provided a timeline of how the decision to engage in such media relations negatively impacted Jindal's administration and, ultimately, his failed campaign for president in 2015.

Reif-Stice's co-authored piece, Healthcare Organizations and Patient Safety: Questions of Ethical Public Relations Practices, examines the efforts of health organization's public relations arms to account for patient safety in communication practices. The study offers an interesting examination of the impact of economics and politics following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act on several health care facilities and how it impacted public communication for better and worse.

The textbook is open for adoption through Oxford University Press, and it exemplifies the interrelationship of multiple industries to core ethical practices in public relations.