The aspect of communication is essential for the success of businesses. Communication is the tool that helps in sharing decision-making information. However, the nature of information should be checked to ensure the messages sent to the public do not affect the business's reputation. Therefore before a message is conveyed to the public, there is a need to evaluate its impact. A message has a great implication on the receivers, who are potential customers or clients for the firms. As much as we would like to pass information to the audience, it is essential to ensure all ethical issues are considered. All over the media, there is a lot of fake news and propaganda that affects the business's image to the public. The importance of ethical communication in business practice is to build transparency in the business. Also, the people behind the business are assured of a thriving environment that is socially conscious and with ethical behaviors.

In the modern community, there are concerns about the information being shared across social media. The communicators need to make sure that the information they share with the public is highly cultivating and focus on building trust and integrity with the message they propagate to the public. This is achieved through frankly sending information to the audiences, which is socially conscious and inclusive of both communicators and target audience in the communication. In addition, successful ethical communication should consider the application of verbal and non –verbal communication such as written and online communications.

Reflection on World News

In the contemporary world, the news is all over, which is either genuine or fake. The online platform is one of the high rising and currently leading sources of news of all kinds. For this paper, I have a selected some global news that was aired about Michelle Agabobo Willford and Stacey Abrahms's win over Georgia’s democratic primary for governor. This news was communicated by Daily World Update and The New York Times. The Daily World Update is a fake news site that claimed that “Black Woman Who Won Georgia Primary Arrested for Election Fraud (Lott, J. R. (2020).” This site presents Michelle Agabobo Willford, a running mate for Georgia governance, who is said to have paid tens of thousands of votes by promising free welfare. This story runs simultaneously with another one by The New York Times, the true story. The story of Stacy Abrahms, who won the governor seat without paying for votes.

The Daily World Update is a satirical site, and in most instances, airs fake news. The information posted on social media platforms is exposed to a large audience, with captivating headlines. When people read the headlines alone, they jump to conclusions concerning the happenings in Georgia. People will feed their minds with fake news and share the information, widely ruining the image of Georgia in the global context. This is a violation of communication ethics, as it also does not meet business communication objectives.

Guidelines to Effective Ethical Communication

Effective communication needs to meet ethical standards of communication. When passing information to the audience, it is essential to make sure that they all understand the message. It is essential to focus on clarity, objectivity, conscience, completeness, relevancy, and understanding the audience's knowledge in business communication. When the communicators put into consideration these principles, the communication is deemed ethical.  Taking an example with a message crafted very concisely but not clear, for instance, using jargon and some tricky language that manipulates the audience's knowledge, is deemed unethical (Norazamina et al., 2018). Just as presented by the Daily World Update, lack of objectivity is an implication that the communication is based on personal opinions or those of others. Also, failure to disclose information incompleteness is a way of being unethical.

The present media is filled up with unethical communication. We call fake news, aired daily via the social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. All these platforms should ensure that the message they convey to the public meets all these principles of business communication. According to the International Association of Business Communicators, some critical ethical codes of conduct govern all business stakeholders. Common measures that need to be highlighted by the individuals include honesty, communication of accuracy in information, and correct any possible errors. Additionally, the code of conduct demands that the businessmen obey laws and public policies and protect confidential information. Business news and how they are presented need to consider the beliefs and cultures of the audience; this ensures avoidance of conflicts and feelings of violations from the audience.

Maintaining Ethical Decision Making

While working on ethical decision-making, various principles concern the wellness of the audience. Therefore, making these decisions needs legal and regulatory requirements; this includes making decisions on the set of news that would influence the audience's behavior. Additionally, news released to the public needs to be guided by long-term or self-interest, ensuring continued existence in the business world. Also, keep the standards of righteousness; this would be achieved through observing personal virtues. It is essential to ensure that the company never lies. Moreover, the business should be encouraged to chase big dreams and benefits, attracting the greatest pool of people, and after getting the numbers, ensure that their rights are observed. Freedom is achieved by observing all the regulatory, societal, and legal requirements and setting minds to think without punishments. Overly, this will help in achieving fairness in distributing justice with the outcomes.

There is a lot of content in the online media, which is not worth believing. In decision-making, there are fears in believing what the internet posts. Before making a site your source of information that can be used in making critical decisions, we need to follow the ethical considerations deployed before the posting was done. While posting, it is always encouraged that the sites avoid posting un-factual information and posting information with errors. Additionally, it is also essential to avoid all forms of controversial information to avoid building issues of untrustworthy. Therefore, for decision making, one should seek information from credential sources such as newspapers and news magazines; some of these sites in the United States include The Economist and The New York Times (Usher, 2017). The reason for making these sources the top sources is because, before they publish any of their information, it is first subjected to checks and verification for validation.

Ethical Communication in Business

So far, we appreciate that businesses, regardless of size, rely on communication to convey information to their stakeholders. Various forms of communication are common today used by managers, employees, and customers; some of these incuse print, digital, and in-person methods. These strategies aim to pass information to the clients so that they understand what is exactly needed and how it should be done to meet the needs of the organization. Besides, today, there have been messaging and creativity issues, which results in misleading information and sometimes incorrect (Sotirova, 2018). The rise of this unreliable information is attributed to unregulated corporate communications. Thus, working towards regulating this information, there has been the need for ethical implications that guide communication in business.

These are emphasis that has been put in place in the real world to guide the transaction or the interrelations between the business and the market. The goal has always been to build voices of transparency, honesty, and respect while dealing with the public. It is essential to ensure that the dealing of the business and the information they disseminate to the public are truthful to avoid misleading. Therefore, in communication, the business should seek to maintain honesty at first. This is the core of all the other qualities needed in communication stems (Barber III et al., 2020). Primarily it involves conveying a message to the audience which is clear and true, avoiding all sorts of doubts in information. The aspect of honesty should be supplemented by transparency, which involved telling the truth as a whole and avoidance of partial communication.

Additionally, it is critical to ensure professionalism as part of ethical communication. Businesses need to highlight their definition of their professional standards specific to the business. This is an effort towards the protection of the brand's image and workplace relationships. Moreover, companies need to embrace a consistent culture by presenting logical and compatible information to avoid all sorts of contradicting messages to the audience. Consistency is achieved by allocating responsibilities from the senders of the massages and considering the kind of target audience. Ethical communication is keen to ensure that all the information sent to the public is never ambiguous and overcomes all the roadblocks (Barber III et al., 2020). In addition, ethical communicators make efforts to avoid evasion, manipulation, and other language-related gymnastics. It is critical to maintaining fairness, passing neutral information without bias nor judgment.

Legal Issues of Unethical Business Communication

Diverging from ethical communication measures has far legal concerns. Some of the concerns emphasized by the law include the nature of the information convey to the public. There is strictness concerning spreading rumors or discussing customer’s personal or financial information, violating the ethical code of conduct, and human confidentiality rights. Some policies protect people's information, urging people that deal with private details are not disposed to the public (Nuseir & Ghandour, 2019). Violating any laws on individual privacy, such as what the Daily World Update did to Georgia State, is a punishable criminal offense. For uniformity purposes, implementation, and maintenance, most of the organizations in the US have well-structured and written confidentiality issues that regulate communication.

Importance of Ethics in Communication

Ethics are so essential in business communication. Daily, people must share information in all forms in the business, as they help in blinding wealth and achieve success.  Therefore, clearly articulated codes of conduct guide people’s daily activities and talks in a professional setting. Starting from the workplace, people need to prove good characteristics guided by the company's moral principles and culture. All organizations have been welcome and encouraged to engage in ethical communication, which is essential in attracting public views and getting trust from the audience (Kolić Stanić, 2019). Therefore, being true helps in building a good reputation for the public and trust from the public. More so, the audience gets satisfied with the services and products offered by the company; this helps the business grow.

We have all through stated the importance of maintaining honesty in business as the root to ethical implications. In the same way, we must appreciate the importance of giving true information to the audience. Reliability and validity of information are very important in getting and maintaining the customers. At the workplace, good communication help in building a healthy relationship (Kolić Stanić, 2019). A good relationship is critical for ensuring teamwork which promotes high productivity. An organization with these qualities is assured of high performance in its activities.