Institute calls on media, PR agencies to adopt responsible communication

KUALA LUMPUR: Media agencies and public relations establishments have been asked to work hand-in-hand to douse fake news and disseminate news with accuracy and adopt responsible communication.

Institute of Public Relations Malaysia (IPRM) president Jaffri Amin Osman said society needs to understand what is ethical or otherwise and avoid complete dependency on social media.

“Responsible communication is critical for everyone, not just here in this session today. Not in Malaysia, but globally.

“We must be ethical and of course have to be authentic yet being realistic and sharing the real news or authentic news which is not fake, which is not a disinformation or misinformation, is critical,” he told BK on the sidelines of the 33rd PR Chalk, hosted by BK here Thursday (Nov 9).

Chalk (or CHAtting, Listening and Knowledge in Public Relations) was established by IPRM as a corporate branding road show and knowledge-sharing platform for the institute to share communication strategies, tactics and case studies with chief executive officers, chief financial officers, company directors, senior management and communications personnel at universities, companies and media agencies in the country.

Jaffri Amin encouraged those in the public relations industry to engage government-linked companies, multinational companies, small and medium enterprises, start-ups, government agencies, universities as their corporate communications and strategic communication departments are critical to communicate the organisation’s goals and messages.

“We all know we have got to tell the truth, and the truth matters,” he said.

Additionally IPRM has sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) to add “responsible communication” as part of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to avoid any misleading information.

Jaffri Amin said the existing 17 SDGs are going to have a lot of hurdles if the truth is not told correctly, of which responsible communication is a pivotal criteria to be added on.

Meanwhile, he said Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG), which was made mandatory by Bursa Malaysia in 2016 to provide evidence for transparency and accountability in business decisions and operations to investors, are also crucial to the industry as it is telling the truth.

“Those days maybe we can get away by giving some donations and doing corporate social responsibility (CSR) and we try to adopt that as part of ESG, (but now) no more because there is a bigger picture for ESG.

“I am just happy also that the government is thinking of ways in order to support people who use social media and people who send news to the media organisations here to tell the truth.

“I hope the government will do more to ensure responsible communication takes place not just in this country, in organisations, but globally too,” he said.

On over reliance of communications practitioners in using artificial intelligence (AI) apparatus such as ChatGPT, Jaffri Amin said it is permissible but ChatGPT is unable to convey true key messages and how to relay these messages to the emotions of the audience.

“You can rely on ChatGPT but please understand that it is still not there yet and I know many organisations are using ChatGPT to solve a lot of communications (comms) dilemmas or problems or to try to do things fast, for example doing up their press releases or speeches, but they won’t understand the true key messages and how to relay these messages to touch the emotions of the audience,” he said.

However, he said it is important to understand the younger generation because they’re growing up with AI tools and ways must be found to just engage with the younger generation.

“We must adapt to their thinking and their skills and they (younger generation) too (need to acknowledge) what we think about the strategy or messages or how to add emotions to what you’re writing,” he said.

Meanwhile, commenting on PR Chalk 33, Malaysian National News Agency (BK) chairman Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai said the sharing session can enhance and sharpen participants’ skills.

Wong also invited public relations practitioners to pitch their presentation to BK in order to push their content to a broader and wider audience digitally in various languages.

“If you’re able to do a proper and convincing presentation, you should choose BK because BK will boost your copies to all the media, instead of going from one organisation to another.

“We’ve got Chinese, Bahasa (Malaysia), English, we even have Arabic and Spanish (languages) so we have more platforms, so it’s worth spending your money here,” he said.

Wong urged fellow BK colleagues to start to monetise and generate revenue on the back of the allocations given by the government.

He thanked the speakers and participants of PR Chalk 33, saying the talk convened the best people in public relations and enabled the media fraternity to identify various needs and wants. – BK