Potter Box Method

Heres the situation:

Your newspaper has published a report on a national study, which concluded that

bottled water has virtually no health advantages over the tap water in more cities, including yours.

The study included comments from local health storeowners and water distributors challenging the study.

The AquaPure Bottled Water Company, advertising account worth over $75,000 a year, has threatened to pull its account with your newspaper unless you run another story of equal prominence, focusing on the benefits of bottled water.

What do you do?

Here’s my response:

First priority would be not to lie to the public and then my second priority would be to find out about how my employer feels about the situation. I’m assuming for my company, $75,000 a year is a lot and we wouldn’t want to lose a big company in general for reputation sake.

But to evaluate the situation with the Potter Box Model it takes four steps and a lot of thinking precisely. First is to list the facts and definitions along with what the issue is. Obviously we don’t want to lose the bottled water company. Their situation is that our newspaper ran a story on a national study that bottled water is pretty much the same as the free stuff that comes out of the faucet in most cities (including the one I am pretending to be in.) AquaPure, the bottled water company I am dealing with, would like the newspaper to run a story listing and focusing on all the benefits to bottled water. Now, to analyze this, the first thing would be that they did not ask the company to lie, all they want is to bring more attention to the product and I’m sure there probably isn’t anything in the bottled water making it better necessarily but I’m sure there are some health benefits.

Moving on to the second step, which is values, we will provide all the separate values included in the situation and possible outcome. A very important value for newspapers is urgency so the decision must be made very quickly. The next would be aesthetic values because of the company’s image. Its reputation should remain intact because one client should not dictate whether or not the company looks reliable. Therefore, if you run a big story countering a story you may have just recently ran, and it drew a large audience, you may not want to openly take both sides. However, you could find a way out of this depending on the contents of the first story. You could run a follow up story about bottled water so that your company looks like they are taking matters into their own hands and proving to be a professionally unbiased newspaper.

The third step according to lectures is looking at the loyalties the company and the situation hold. Loyalties for the newspaper would include their clientele and trustworthiness that goes along with their reputation. As well as AquaPure because they are the loyalty bringing in a lot of profit for the newspaper but also the one the newspaper may lose. Some loyalties for AquaPure could be another newspaper, or all of the partnering brands that may follow suit with them and drop the newspapers advertising department.

The last step and forth box in the Potter Box Model includes principles, which states the philosophical ways situations are handled in the company and the modes of reasoning it may use to solve ethical issues. Here is where I would leave most of it up the employer although I believe strongly in doing what is best for the majority of people and who could get the greatest good out of the decision. I have a very utilitarian approach for most ethical issues in the media.

So with all that being said I would chose to run a follow up story in the best way possible to keep current clients satisfied and to offer more truthful information to the public. Maybe if we treat AquaPure well, they will be able to reccommend our company to others in their financial tier

#fruits