Codes of Public Relations Practice

Codes of public relations practice are formalized statements of professional obligations, standards, norms, and conduct adopted by the professional associations of public relations. One of the first initiatives of the Public Relations Society of American (PRSA), founded in 1948, was to establish an ethical code of practice for its members. The desired outcome of this code was to establish clear standards for practitioners, clarify these standards to management, and to distinguish public relations professionals from those who engage in deceptive and unethical promotion. The importance of such codes has not diminished over the past five decades. A survey conducted by PRSA in 2000 found that half the members surveyed have at some point felt “an extraordinary amount of pressure” to jeopardize their ethical standards (Fitzpatrick, 2002b, p. 119).

Establishing a code of professional conduct and social responsibility is essential because “business exists at the pleasure of society, and its behavior must fall within the guidelines set by society” (Daugherty, 2001, p. 389). Robert L. Heath (1997) explained that public relations specialists are active players in the process of determining social responsibility. He argued that “through their comments—as well as actions that reveal their commitment to mutual interests—companies help shape the standards by which they are judged” (p. 132). Formalizing these standards into codes of practice can establish a climate of social responsibility in an organization that influences decision making at all levels.

Codes of practice offer practitioners a set of consistent standards that allow them to move beyond relying on “merely subjective judgments” (Day, Dong, & Robins, 2001, p. 406). Patricia A. Curtin and Lois A. Boynton (2001) also found that “codes also may reinforce ethical expectations to public relations novices and deter government intervention, thereby enhancing professionalism” (p. 415). The perceived benefits of such codes is manifested in the fact that businesses have “increasingly developed their own codes of ethics and have hired ethics officers to establish standards for what is right and wrong, or good and bad, within the organization” (Leeper, 2001, p. 435).

The three best known codes for public relations are PRSA's Member Code of Ethics, the International Public Relations Association's (IPRA) International Code of Ethics, informally known as the Code of Athens, and the International Association of Business Communicator's (IABC) Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators.

PRSA offers the most detailed and complex code of the three organizations. The PRSA Member Code of Ethics 2000 is composed of six core values, and six code provisions. The values include [Page 141]advocacy for clients and an open marketplace of ideas, honesty, expertise, independence in the form of objective council and personal accountability, loyalty to both clients and the public interest, and fairness. The six code provisions are comprised of free flow of information, competition among professionals in a manner that serves the public interest, disclosure of information in a manner that builds trust with the public, safeguarding confidences to protect privacy rights, avoiding conflicts of interest, and enhancing the profession through building trust in all levels of interaction. The code ends with its only mention of enforcement. Members sign a pledge to uphold the article of the code with the understanding that “those who have been or are sanctioned by a government agency or convicted in a court of law of an action that is in violation of this Code may be barred from membership or expelled from the Society” (Fitzpatrick, 2002b, p. 135).

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