Can PR ever be ethical?

I find that I am not as ethics-conscious as my fellow classmates. Three in particular want to work for charities because they want to do something "right" and would never consider working for a giant corporation. I don't think I will work in the PR industry, only because I'm more entrepeneurial, but if I was to go into it, I would apply for positions in companies I know deal with big clients and that could earn me a good salary (so I can retire on a beach somewhere in 30 years time). I have no problem creating a campaign to get obese people to eat more hamburgers or to make them think they just cant be happy until they buy the new mp3 player available. However, I do have some empathy; I changed my BA course from Journalism to PR because I was uncomfortable chasing up unhappy people who had just gone through a tragedy to get juicy gossip. I did witness fellow classmates lie on phones about which media they were calling from in order to get access into people's traumatic stories and it just made me uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because I was speaking directly to them.. maybe if I met an obese person I would not be able to sell them a hamburger..

PRWeek held a debate at our University on whether or not PR practitioners have a duty to tell the truth. For the motion were former CIPR President Simon Lewis and George Pitcher. Against the motion was Max Clifford and our university's own Simon Goldsworthy (during my BA he preached the values of truth in PR, I find this quite amusing. It makes me smile!)

138 voted that PR practitioners should NOT tell the truth.
124 voted they should.

And these are PR practioners and students talking!

I find it hard to define ethics. Is bending the truth to be more appealing to journalists or neglecting to mention certain bad qualities unethical? If I am promoting a new software, is not mentioning that 1 time out of 10 it crashes and needs rebooting unethical? or is it just being savvy?

John Cass, a blogger who works in marketing says:

"If a company wants to be truly successful, they must understand their audience’s needs and expectations and meet them. Nordstrom is a famous example of a company that held the mantra that the customer is always right and they refunded and took back any clothing articles a customer wanted to return.."
(http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2005/04/ethics_in_pr.html)

As long as your are not making empty promises or flat out lying (ENRON!), then as a PR practioner you should be alright. While being completely unethical is not recommended, neither is being so righteous that you maintain an open door policy letting everyone who asks know your problems and issues. Maintin some mystery!
You need to be a strong player in the PR field, if your competitors aren't ashamed to market a certain product, you should ask yourself why? Is it hurting anyone? or is it just feeding a capitalist market?