Privacy | Musings of a PR Professional

Chapter Fifteen

It is imperative that all PR practitioners know/ are at least familiar with the laws and regulations that affect their jobs.
PR practitioners should be familiar with the regulations of: The Federal Trade Commission, The Securities and Exchange Commission, The Federal Communications Commission, and/or The Food and Drug Administration depending on the client(s) they are working with.
PR practitioners must be careful about what they say. Libel and privacy laws give a lot of freedom for expression of opinions but practitioners must be sure not to violate the legal limitations.
Copyright laws prevent people from using others’ work in an unauthorized way. But, under the fair use concept PR practitioners can use published quotations in their PR efforts as long as its attributed (p. 512).
PR as a legal strategy is extremely controversial: “On the one hand, people and companies should have every right to defend their reputations in the court of public opinion. However, many are otheres by attempts to use extrajudicial statements… to influence proceedings inside the court” (p. 516).