Ethical Issues in Public Administration Press Releases : the WHO Healthy Cities Programme

Ethical issues in Public Administration press releases: the WHO Healthy Cities Programme In 1986, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Healthy Cities Programme at global and local (‘glocal’) level to foster health-promoting initiatives based on inter-sector cooperation, extensive community participation, and the design and implementation of action-based plans. Over 1,000 cities and towns from more than 30 countries only in the WHO European region have been awarded the status of ‘healthy city’. The study analyses the communicative approach adopted by three British municipalities to inform the public about their ‘healthy cities policies’, through the use of press releases. As will be shown, press releases, in spite of being informative, factual and neutral do qualify as persuasive, promotional, and emotive communication pieces. I take the view that language – as it clearly emerges in media studies – is a highly constructive mediator as it conveys ‘ideas’, not simply ‘facts’ (Fowler 1991). Ethical issues are thus socially constructed to be consonant with the ideas of a controlling group, specifically an institution. In this context, ‘power’ and ‘solidarity’ act as the main ideological constructs which give meaning to and shape the concept of ethics. Hence, some ideas and behaviours are to be condemned and, conversely, some values and beliefs are generally agreed upon. The analysis will examine a number of press releases – and their key features taking into consideration the different social and institutional settings given. Particular emphasis will be placed on the way the features of the texts convey a message whose main objective is to increase visibility, generate interest and, more interestingly, search for support to policies and consequently, to power-holders(Jacobs, 1999). Ethics is embodied and patterned by the structure of the text so that representation of facts, information and concepts are strongly characterized by different choices of words and grammatical phrasing. Investigation will concentrate on the discourse strategies – and ‘strategic discourse’(Fairclough 1989) – displayed, with specific focus on vocabulary, grammar and cohesion. References Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. London-New York: Longman Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the News. New York: Routledge. Jacobs, G. (1999). Preformulating the News. Analysis of Metapragmatics of Press Release. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamin.