Articles on PR for People

It’s hard to look away from natural disasters. We wonder why, after so many years of studying them, their impact has not lessened, and their restoration time has not shortened. The few minutes of attention we give them from the morning newspapers or the evening news is but one type of traumatic information we absorb on a regular basis. It is painful and stress-provoking to take it all in -- school shootings, assaults, property damage, homelessness, and a general uneasiness that we are not safe in public places. Some of our anxiety is surely left over from the worst of pandemic times.

I have been teaching a graduate course that I renamed to its original title, “Ethics, Policy, and Law in Information Management,” for ten years now. This spring we read aloud the Bill of Rights, and before I could make my usual statement that the founding documents of the United States are imperfect and still evolving, an Afghan student asked, “Why is there no mention of women in these documents?” 

Unfolding horrific events in Ukraine coupled with brutal repression of dissent in Russia have caused me to insert another declaration that is equally relevant to any study of ethics, policy, and law, given the death and destruction we are witnessing because of the ambitions and grievances of Vladimir Putin.  

We enjoy stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  We especially like clear resolutions to mark the end of a story.  So, it’s no wonder that we’re itchy nearly two years later when the omicron variant has lengthened the COVID-19 story, and threatens re-entry to libraries, museums, theatres, restaurants, churches, schools, and sporting events. The omicron variant is at this time a law unto itself.