A PR Ethics “Purity Test” or a Cheeky Member-Recruitment Strategy?

Mary Beth West:

In public relations – which, as we all know, is the business of brokering earned trust from stakeholders – it’s always good advocacy for PR member associations to encourage ethical practice and discourage dishonest practice.

Likewise, in journalism – which, as we all know, is news media’s business of seeking truth and reporting it (see the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics) – reporters, editors, and content teams are obligated to vet sources and substantiate source credibility prior to including “expert” sources in published reportage.

That’s their job. And it’s one that journalists / news media must take seriously anew, in today’s fast-evolving A.I. Era. 

At the same time, I can always understand and appreciate a PR trade association’s leadership team seeking to bolster their own membership by advancing the association’s ethics-advocacy program. In fact, I speak from experience.

I’m a past national board member (2002-03; 2008), a past national advocacy chair (2007), and a past ex-officio member (2013) of the Board of Ethics and Professional Standards of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) in the U.S. I’m also a past co-chair (2020-2023) of the former Global Ethics Council of the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) in the U.K. 

As such, I’ve worked extensively in past roles to help carry that banner of ethics-advocacy for the two largest PR member associations on both sides of the Atlantic, whenever I felt those organizations were seeking to advance best practice in good faith.

That’s why the statement issued by the PRCA and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) caught my attention this week.

The joint statement (issued 27 January 2026) endorsed that PR practitioners should consistently embrace “accuracy, transparency, and ethical engagement, including with the media,” which is a universally valid and important message. No problems there! 

However, the joint statement went much further, into problematic territory. 

The PRCA and CIPR also suggested that journalists should engage something of a purity test of PR practitioners themselves, by “us(ing) (PRCA’s / CIPR’s) publicly available membership registers to verify the credentials of PR professionals and expert sources where concerns arise,” thus wholly and clearly suggesting that if a PR practitioner is not listed on the membership register of either or both associations, then that practitioner (or PR firm) may be of dubious background or potential nefarious intent.

If such an implied statement was not the intention by the PRCA / CIPR, then both associations may wish to clarify.

The reason this implied message of a PR association membership “purity test” is inherently problematic is multi-pronged.

As I’ve come to learn the hard way over the past decade, there can be all kinds of valid and justified reasons that a PR practitioner – who maintains a career operating in good faith and in ethically compliant practice – may wish to disassociate from a PR trade association.

Instructing journalists to use PR trade association membership as a litmus test “when assessing the legitimacy of a PR professional” implies that the “formal complaints process” of said PR trade associations are also bullet-proof, relative to how memberships are held accountable for allegations of PR ethics breaches.

I’ve written extensively on my experience as a member of industry associations working for stronger ethics codes, including for one of the organizations in question.  So I find this approach a bit cheeky, to say the least.

It’s also important to remember that firms which are members – or whose practitioners are members of these associations – can have substantial issues with ethics and authenticity as well. Take certain  for-profit PR mega-conglomerate(s) with long track records using PR trade associations to insulate their own reputations while having simultaneously contracted mega-million U.S. dollar / U.K. British pound PR contracts with certain foreign bad actors such as the Russian government, I’m disappointed that these “code of conduct” loopholes persist, unaddressed.

In sum, it’s fine for any PR member association to advocate for universally sound ethics and best practice, if they think they have the horses for it, credibility-wise. No problem there! 

However, given all we’ve seen of certain PR trade associations and the PR mega-conglomerates in recent years that sponsor the trade associations via membership dues and otherwise – an apparent strong-arm strategy of invoking “purity” tests of individual practitioners relative to membership or non-membership choices in any PR trade association is concerning, rife with appearances of potential interest conflicts. 

In my view they should not promote membership affiliation by implying that exercising one’s free choice not to join the trade association is indicative of some inherent ethical failing or character flaw of a PR practitioner or PR firm. Doing so by positioning their membership directories as authoritative verifications of ethical practice seems cheeky at best – and disingenuous at worst.

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A co-founder of The #PRethics Community discussion forum on LinkedIn, Mary Beth West is a 30-year PR industry veteran based in the United States.