On-line Readings in Public Relations by Michael Turney
	Public relations ethics became more confusing as the profession evolved.
	© 2012; 2020 Michael Turney	Table of contents	Practicing Public Relations main page	About the author

 
Every profession has scoundrels as well as saints. The scoundrels are no reason to condemn the entire profession, nor are the saints a reason to glorify it.

Although they aren't universally observed, the codes of ethical standards endorsed by the PRSA and the IABC gradually became the key benchmarks for professional public relations behavior totally displacing the Canons of Journalism and Professional Standards of the Society of Professional Journalists that had once guided many early public relations practitioners.

 
Practitioners who follow the code of their profession and act ethically are honored and respected. Those who don't may be sanctioned, criticized, or scorned. In extreme cases, those who seriously violate the ethics of their profession may be forced out of the profession.

In another article about ethics I asserted that the same should be true of public relations professionals since it is a well-established field of endeavor with respected professional organizations such as The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the somewhat broader and more encompassing International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). And, both of them have long-standing codes of ethics.

However, there are some complications that cloud this perspective.

1. Some scholars refuse to accept public relations as a "true profession" because it doesn't meet all the criteria that are normally associated with a profession. In particular, they point out that public relations practitioners, unlike doctors, nurses, pilots, CPAs, realtors, and several other members of true professions, aren't required to have a professional license or mandatory certification.
2. Beyond that, public relations doesn't have a single, universally recognized and authoritative ruling body that can issue sanctions for misbehavior. There are, admittedly, several professional organizations for public relations people, including the IABC, the PRSA, and the International Public Relations (IPRA), but membership in them is purely voluntary and doesn't have any academic or professional work requirements. And, any declarations, findings, or rulings that such an organization may issue would apply only to members of that organization; everyone else can totally ignore any and everything these organizations say.
3. Public relations has changed dramatically in the nearly two-hundred years that it has been possible to earn a living doing public relations work. And, as the field and its focus have changed, so have its standards of acceptable behavior.
    

In the early days of public relations, at least some of journalism's ethical standards seemed to apply.

Public relations scholars usually divide public relations history into three or four phases in which its primary emphasis and methods of operating have differed, but they don't agree on the names, timing, or number of phases there have been. My version of this evolution is outlined in a series of online readings that begins with Three phases of public relations development. It discusses the evolution of public relations from its publicity phase, through its explanatory phase, to its current mutual satisfaction phase.

During its earliest days, -- The Publicity Phase -- public relations wasn't yet an organized profession. It probably wasn't even a uniformly recognized type of work. It's only been in hindsight that we could recognize the seeds that eventually sprouted into a new and different profession. Before that, it was essentially an adjunct or sub-set of journalism that sought publicity for its clients. In fact, many of the early corporate departments that eventually came to be called public relations departments were then called press bureaus.

At this time, there were no professional organizations for public relations practitioners, and there were certainly no public relations codes of ethics. The earliest hint of anything remotely like a code of ethics was Ivy Lee's Declaration of Principles. It was a statement he distributed to the news media when he began doing public relations work for the coal industry in 1906. It was incredibly progressive thinking for the time, but it only applied to Ivy Lee and his partner.

Looking back on those days when public relations was closely allied with journalism and most practitioners were former journalists and still saw themselves as providing information to the general public, it can be argued that the ethical standards of journalism, certainly those relating to truth, verifiability, and citation of sources, did apply to public relations. Some of them still do, but public relations is no longer a part of journalism.
 

As the field of public relations evolved, so did its view of truth and ethics.

After World War I, public relations moved into its explanatory phase, a period some writers call its "persuasive period." That's when changing practices within the field produced widely divergent opinions about the role of truth in public relations.

• Former journalists: Practitioners who came from strong journalism backgrounds and were deeply committed to the truth felt that public relations practitioners should be as open and honest as possible in all of their dealings and should present nothing but the truth to their organizations' publics. Some might occasionally condone withholding negative information from the public, but they were adamantly opposed to lying or denying verifiable facts.
• Celebrity publicists: Practitioners who fixated on publicity and getting media coverage for their clients, especially those in Hollywood or otherwise associated with entertainment industry, thought nothing of giving totally fictitious information to the media and the public. They said there's no such thing as bad publicity, and didn't care if their stories were true or not, as long as they were interesting and gained media attention for their clients. Ethics didn't matter.
• Gift wrappers: Other practitioners who compared their work to "gift-wrapping" or "flower arranging" claimed they could make anything attractive if they explained it well enough or, in some instances, if they explained it away in convincing enough terms. For many of them, it made little or no difference whether the actions, organization, and individuals they were "gift-wrapping" were positive or negative, admirable or deplorable, or good or evil. Nor did it matter whether the "gift wrappings" were the truth or blatant lies. They too had little regard for ethics but would never say so publicly.

Given these differences in thinking and in practices it's not surprising that questions and uncertainties about the ethics and professional standards of public relations arose. It pretty much remained that way until the end of the 20th century. That's when a wave of concern about ethical standards swept through the communication professions and most of the major organizations of professional communicators reviewed and revised their codes of ethical practices, Both IABC and PRSA made major changes. They also instituted policies that require members to periodically "renew" their commitment to their organization's code of ethics by signing a statement that they have carefully read the code and promise to abide by it.

At about the same time, the Society of Professional Journalists also reviewed and updated its Code of Ethics. Not surprisingly, there were many similarities in both the content and the style of changes that were made in all of the various codes. In many ways, they became more alike than they had previously been, and they all became broader in their scope to accommodate changes in life-styles and communication technologies. But, they also retained their unique perspectives and purposes. There are still -- and there should be -- different codes of ethics for different types of communication practitioner.
 

But, differences in ethical standards don't imply a lack of ethics.

Neither the widely divergent opinions about what constitutes ethical public relations behavior nor the fact that some public relations practitioners choose to ignore ethical considerations justifies an assertion that public relations has no ethics. Nor does it justify condemning the entire profession.

Just as Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death" who conducted hideous and immoral experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz, has never been a valid reason for condemning the medical profession, the fact that there are sleasy, lying con men who call themselves public relations people is no reason to condemn this profession or to deny the existence of public relations ethics.

There are multiple codes of ethics for public relations. Both the PRSA and the IABC have ethical standards, and those who want to call themselves public relations professionals ought to follow them. If you are - or if you aspire to be - a public relations practitioner, you should become familiar with these standards so you can ...

• be fully aware of the ethical standards of your chosen field and behave accordingly; and
• explain and, if necessary, defend your professional actions on ethical grounds.
   

"Protecting integrity and the public trust are fundamental to the profession’s role and reputation ... Successful public relations hinges on the ethics of its practitioners."

-- PRSA Professional Standards            

8 Sept 2020