Ethics | Bulletpoints
Bullet PR - Public Relations, Auckland, New Zealand

Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

Oct 2 2008

Search Engines, Transparency, and Online Reputation; Five year old plagiarism comes back to haunt the author

As Canada heads to a federal election this month, the opposition Liberal party has dropped a timely bombshell concerning incumbent Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. It turns out he delivered a speech to Parliament when he was Opposition Leader in 2003 which appears to largely plagiarise a speech delivered in another part of the world, two days earlier, by then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. The speech writer in question has resigned this week, acknowledging that he was “overzealous in copying segments of another world leader’s speech”. Canada’s Globe and Mail has the full story as well as the two videos side by side.

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Jul 15 2008

How NOT to use social media part 2

I blogged a few weeks ago on National Australia Bank’s dodgy use of comment spam to promote its services on Aussie Rules-related blogs. If you thought that was shoddy behaviour, have a look at this example from the US.

As with the NAB case, the consultancy’s social media practice here is astoundingly unethical. Have a read of the excruciating way 5WPR VP Juda Engelmayer attempts to wangle his way out of it. Amusing, and extremely embarrassing for a consultancy that supposedly prides itself on its online PR savvy.