The Unguarded Profession: PR’s Open-Door Problem

Jared Meade:

Tomorrow morning, in more than 97% of countries, a person who has never read a book on public relations, who has never sat for an examination on the complexities of research and evaluation and who is bound by no code of ethics, can create a website, print business cards and call themselves a public relations professional. No board to oversee their work and ensure ethical compliance. No credentials that must be earned.

Now imagine that same scenario written about a surgeon, an attorney or a CPA. It would be unimaginable.  As a society, we decided decades ago that the stakes were too high to leave these roles open to anyone who claimed them. We require licenses for the people we trust with our body, our liberty and our money, but never give public relations much thought, even though it governs something just as consequential; we guard it with nothing.

The Gate That Was Never Built

The lack of barriers to the profession is not a new observation. Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, spent the last decades of his life arguing that the field he helped create needed a gate. He put it plainly: “Because the words ‘public relations’ are presently in the public domain, anyone, regardless of education, experience, character or conscience, can call him or herself a public relations practitioner.”

Bernays’ arguments reached the Massachusetts legislature in the early 1990s, when he backed a proposed bill to license practitioners and he continued to do so until his death in 1995 at the age of 103. He often compared public relations to medicine; he noted that in the early 1800s, anyone could perform surgery, but society later recognized the danger and established standards to protect the public. Medicine works on the body, and everyone understands the risk. Public relations works on the mind, and too few recognize the danger.

He lived through World War II and witnessed firsthand the evils that can be unleashed on the world when the profession’s strategies and tactics are used to twist a country’s mind.

Yet, the profession he helped create never listened. The gate he called for remains unbuilt and unguarded. Three decades later, the gateway remains open and the room behind it is far larger and far louder than anything Bernays imagined.

Why It Matters More Now, Not Less

The global public relations market now exceeds $100 billion a year. Tools available to practitioners are expanding at a pace that makes it hard to keep up and allows practitioners to reach further, faster than ever thought possible. A single practitioner with a laptop can begin shaping a narrative across continents before they’ve had lunch. Add the speed with which AI can generate convincing audio, video and written content, whether a shred of credibility or accountability sits behind it and it’s a perfect storm for the spread of disinformation.

It’s no secret that we are living through a post-trust era. The public no longer believes the voices that, for decades, enjoyed undeniable credibility, including the news media. Our profession sits at the center of that public trust crisis. We are the profession that leaders and organizations hire to strengthen reputations, manage public perception and build public trust. That is real power, a power that most people don’t understand or fully realize. And yet, we are the only field wielding this level of influence without any enforceable guardrails.

Let’s consider the few credentials that are available to the profession. The Accreditation in Public Relations designation is the most recognized in the United States. However, most people outside the profession would be hard-pressed to recognize it and fewer than 20% of members of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) hold it. Non-members rarely, if ever, hold anything at all. In the United Kingdom, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) earned a Royal Charter in 2005, and Chartered Practitioner status is a genuine mark of distinction, yet again, only a small fraction of those who practice hold the status. These credentials are voluntary, meaning the vast majority of practitioners don’t see their value and don’t pursue them, meaning those practitioners have never had their ethical or strategic baseline verified by anyone.

The Objections Are Real. So is the Cost of Doing Nothing.

I want to be honest about why the conversation about licensure for the profession keeps stalling, because the objections that keep coming up time and time again deserve respect.

In the United States, talk about licensing communication runs straight into one of the deepest-held beliefs of any citizen, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The right to free speech is at the core of what makes the United States the country that it is. You can’t require a permit to speak or police what people say and much of what we do is speech and advocacy.

Another issue is that international public relations trade associations can’t seem to reach any consensus on the definition of public relations, let alone individual practitioners. Not to mention that, over the years, the work of public relations has been split into various roles, such as strategic communications, public affairs, marketing, advertising, publicity, external affairs, and many more. So, defining public relations in law and determining who falls under that definition is genuinely hard because it spans various disciplines.

There are also worries that licensing will become a barrier that locks out new voices, independents and the diversity that our field has used as its rallying cry for years. Last and certainly not least, ethical norms differ across borders, making a single global standard sound like a fantasy.

These aren’t just excuses and they highlight the difficulty our profession faces in gaining the legitimacy that we have craved since Bernays and Ivy Lee led the way. But “this is hard to do well” shouldn’t mean “so we do nothing,” because doing nothing has a cost too. Every time a charlatan, either untrained or without a conscience, causes damage under the guise of public relations, the industry’s reputation and the reputation of each of us pay the price.

A Carrot, Not a Barrier

The way forward is not theoretical. Around the world, enforcement and licensure models already exist, and each offers lessons for what accountability could look like.

In the United Kingdom, the CIPR operates a Code of Professional Conduct. Complaints are investigated by the Professional Practices Committee and the Disciplinary Committee, which can impose fines, suspend members and publicly censure them. The PRSA and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) both have ethical codes, but they are either unenforceable or are rarely enforced. The issue here is the gap between ethical standards and enforcement: expulsion from these organizations is the maximum penalty, yet expelled members continue practicing. This particular gate only stops those practitioners who choose to walk through it voluntarily.

In Nigeria, the gate is statutory. The Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) operates under a federal act as the sole regulator of the profession. It is supervised by the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation. Professional certification is mandatory, and the NIPR has the “responsibility to register members, set parameters of knowledge to acquire to qualify to practice, regulate the practice and development of the PR Profession as well as monitor professional conduct through an established Code of Ethics.”

We also have examples in Puerto Rico and Brazil. Puerto Rico’s Law 204, The Puerto Rico Public Relations Regulatory Board Act, requires licensure, continuing education and adherence to ethical standards. The law has been in place since 2008, though its future is in question. The Puerto Rico Senate introduced Senate Bill 275 (the Occupational Licensing Reform Act), which aims to repeal Act No. 204 entirely. Brazil’s CONFERP, the Federal Board of Public Relations Professionals, is the federal regulatory and governing body for overseeing the profession and has been in place since 1969. The board consists of six regional councils that supervise the practice of public relations in their respective territories.

While none of these current measures may be perfect, they are examples that regulation can happen without the sky falling. In each of these countries, creativity still flourishes, and the only real change is that the public has a way to hold practitioners accountable.

One interesting proposal was put forward in a 2024 paper in the Public Relations Review. Scholars Tyler Page, Luke Capizzo and Timothy Penning suggested voluntary licensure. For those who choose it, who meet an educational standard, pass an examination and submit to an enforceable ethics code, earn the right to privileged communication, a legal protection similar to attorney-client privilege.

That privilege would mean a senior practitioner could offer clients honest, ethically sound, if sometimes uncomfortable advice, without fear that the conversation could surface in legal discovery. In this case, the license would stop being a barrier and become a credential clients would actively demand.

Start the Conversation

I don’t pretend to have a finished blueprint for what licensure would look like. I am arguing that the question has gone unanswered for too long. The current state of the profession, the constant playing in the ethically grey area of some practitioners, the rise of disinformation, the use of AI and the public’s erosion of trust make it more urgent than ever before.

So, I’ll leave you with a few questions. What would a credential worth holding require? What would make the client demand it? What enforcement would give a code of ethics the teeth to make a difference? If licensure isn’t the answer, then what is? Doing nothing is no longer defensible.

The gate was left wide open from the beginning. The question now is whether we, the professionals inside the room, have the will to decide who belongs in it. Not only do I believe we do, I believe it’s our obligation.

It’s time to start the conversation.

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Jared Meade, MPS, APR, MPRCA, is founder and principal of Rayne Strategy Group, where he advises leaders and organizations on reputation, trust and the architecture of lasting credibility. Drawing on more than two decades of experience, his practice emphasizes ethical counsel and the protection of standing over time. He is a Strategic Columnist.