#PREthics Month Reflections: It’s a New Era

Mary Beth West:

For decades, the public relations industry consistently promoted the idea that, when it came to ethics problems in PR, sure… there were (and always will be) some “bad actors” out there. But they do not represent what “real” PR is, or, what the “legitimate” PR world stands for, as consistently and authoritatively represented by bona-fide PR industry bodies and their affiliated “household name” brands in the PR business.

From the time I launched my own PR career in the early 1990s, and for decades that followed, I absorbed those talking points as a U.S.-based practitioner. I took those messages to heart. And, I have to admit, I bought into that rhetoric – hook, line, and sinker.

I believed in the integrity of our top, PR “household name” industry brands and all their designated “We Are Ethical!” flag-wavers, who claimed the industry’s moral high ground.

I believed in them.

I joined forces with them.

I even went to bat for them, investing what has equated over the full timeline of my now some 35-year career to tens of thousands of hours of uncompensated time, endorsing various “household name” PR brands and industry groups as good, true, and righteous.

But it’s 2026 now, and it’s a new day. 

Correction: It’s a new ERA.

The stunning gaps between what PR’s “household names” are saying – versus what their own numbers and quantitative data and their government-required disclosures are revealing – cannot be ignored, denied, or swept under the rug any longer.

Chickens, meet roost.

On this final day of “Ethics Month 2026” in the global PR industry, it’s time for sober reflection and honest assessment by our industry leaders, who I place in two distinct groups.

Yes, we certainly have leaders in PR who are of the authentic / valid / good-faith variety. God love ‘em!

To them, my message is this: Time to step up your “A” Game. To be blunt: put up or shut up. It’s time for meaningful engagement and critical thought and actual entry into PR’s public arena (Roll Call is being taken!).

Because what you’re currently doing – or, all too often, passively NOT doing – isn’t good enough to turn this tide, of an industry set sail in a sea of corruption. Bad news never gets better with age, and standing on the sidelines as if it’s somebody else’s job to make our industry ethical makes you complicit, whether you like it or not. We’re all in this industry together, and you’re either taking action to effect positive and ethical change, or, you’re endorsing the rancid status quo. Think about it.

And then, we have the other group: those “leaders” who function as puppets and / or window dressing, in the name of being “chair” or “top executive” of this group or that, so that they can quid-pro-quo their way to score this award or that one later, but who still haven’t answered valid questions that demand responses about past, current, and ongoing errors of commission and omission.

My message to them: Stonewalling and retaliation and diversionary “SQUIRREL!!!” outbursts of distracting partisan rhetoric aren’t the answers anymore to your long-running ethics (and now, legal) problems. At least not without serious reputational risks and financial consequences and – lest we forget – the very real consideration of who may potentially lose their house from a civil-liability enforcement action or, at the darker end of the worst-case scenario, potentially go to federal prison at some point in the future for very real violations of very real laws. Think about it.

Too much is now being learned and will continue to be learned in the future.

Too many documents and bits and bytes of metadata are discoverable.

Too many “receipts” are flying around, in full open air, visible to all, like a tickertape parade.

There’s no escaping it.

My prediction: The next few years will reveal much more about The PR Gaslighting Era that came before us – and that created the reality where we in PR now find ourselves, arguably caught flat-footed and a day-late-and-dollar-short. 

To the PR industry’s stonewallers and gaslighters: Either you’re answering all the valid questions satisfactorily, or you’re not. “Pleading the 5th,” as we say in the U.S., is no defense in the court of public opinion, where silence never equals trust.

To the industry’s retaliators against truth-seekers: Your digital paper trails will always catch up with you, somehow. As the annals of corporate and political corruption should have taught you long ago, it wasn’t the originating crime that was nearly as bad as the cover-up that followed.

It’s The Era of Radical Truth. Prepare accordingly.

+++

As founder of the #PRethics Community on LinkedIn, Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, urges PR ethics industry reforms and funds global academic research to help move the industry into more legally and ethically compliant practices that validate authentic trust. She can be contacted at mb@marybethwest.com.