Lesson 5 - Part 1- The Legal Environment.

I didn’t know a public relation practitioner need to learn the legal environment until I read the relevant chapter of the book. It was quite surprising that the practitioners are required to have the basic understanding of legal environment.

I think the key points to remember for this part of the reading is all the decisions made by public relations practitioners entails with the consideration in the context of ‘legal environment’. Therefore, the practitioners are responsible to negotiate with lawyers on strategies employed to minimize the harm and risks.

A public relation practitioner has the part to

- protect it’s organizations reputation ,
- to protect the creative ideas that originated from the organization,
- handle the legal risk management
- be the role of contracts in global legal environment

The reading made me think that defamation can be test in three kinds of circumstances:

-the publication exposed the plaintiff to hatred, contempt or ridicule
- it lowered the plaintiff in the eyes of right-thinking members of community
-it cause plaintiff to be shunned or avoided, without moral blame.

Apparently, there are also defenses against defamation balance the right of the individual to protect their reputation and show the need for freedom of speech and the public’s right to receive the information.The three defenses are usually :

-Truth defence , which the publisher must prove the truth by providing admissible evidence but not only hearsay from anyone.

-Fair comment, to allow people to express opinions.

-Priviledge, to protect a person from liability for the publication of defamatory material.