Elsevier

Public Relations Review

Volume 42, Issue 1, March 2016, Pages 146-160
Public Relations Review

Ethical convergence, divergence or communitas? An examination of public relations and journalism codes of ethics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2015.08.001 Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This article explores the extent to which journalism and public relations professionals share foundational values. We compare the codes of ethics from 33 countries (66 public relations and journalist associations) looking for both convergence and divergence in ethical values.

  • Our findings suggest that the two professions share core values such as professionalism, expertise and moral standards. The codes agree on the individual qualities that encourage professionals to act ethically. The codes diverge, however, on each profession’s view of its role in society. Journalists continue to emphasize duty to the public in their codes of ethics whereas many public relations codes focus on duty to the client or organization.

  • There is an evolving set of ethical codes in public relations that brings public relations and journalists closer together acknowledging their communitas roles in a fully functioning society.

Abstract

In a fully functioning society, citizens need information about economic, social, and political issues. The news media perform this function. Citizens also need to engage in relationships with all sorts of economic, social, and political organizations. Public relations helps to create, maintain and change these relationships. Journalism and public relations are the foundation of a fully functioning society. This article explores the extent to which journalism and public relations professionals share foundational values. We compare the codes of ethics from 33 countries (66 public relations and journalist associations) looking for both convergence and divergence in ethical values. Our findings suggest that the two professions share core values such as professionalism, expertise and moral standards. The codes agree on the individual qualities that encourage professionals to act ethically. The codes diverge, however, on each profession's view of its role in society. Journalists continue to emphasize duty to the public in their codes of ethics whereas many public relations codes focus on duty to the client or organization. Yet, this study found an evolving set of ethical codes in public relations that brings public relations and journalists closer together acknowledging their communitas roles in a fully functioning society

Section snippets

Conflicting metaphors in society

A quick look at the dominant metaphors that guide our understanding of the relationship between journalism and public relations suggest a complex but one-sided view. Gandy (1982) called public relations’ generated materials “information subsidies” and warned journalists about relying too heavily on materials that were created by governments, businesses and consultants. For journalists to perform their role in society, they had to minimize their reliance on public relations provided content. In

Understanding professionalism through industry associations' codes of ethics

The field of public relations and journalism both strive for societal recognition as professions and professionalization has occurred through industry-driven associations. For instance, in public relations there are over 70 national and international public relations associations serving practitioners with education, training, and networking opportunities (Yang & Taylor, 2014). In journalism, there are nearly 250 associations across the world that advocate for members and also provide

Sample

The study examined a matched sample of codes of ethics from national public relations and journalism associations. Such a sample allows for both national level analysis of codes of ethics and the opportunity to identify global trends.

The researchers first identified a sample of national public relations associations, and then visited each organization's website to download the codes of ethics for further analysis. In terms of public relations associations, World Report from ICCO, PR Links from

Results

Overall, codes of ethics were collected from a total of 66 national journalism (n = 33) and public relations (n = 33) associations (See Table 1 for details). This sample included countries from six regions (i.e., Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America) and countries with various political and economic backgrounds. These countries share the commonality that they all have established national public relations and journalism associations and each association has identified a

Discussion

The answers to the three research questions point to two inter-related conclusions about the convergence/divergence between the two professions that facilitate the foundational information and relationships in a fully functioning society. The first finding suggests that there are both divergence and convergence in the two professions’ values and perceptions of ethical conducts. The divergence is most clear in how each field sees its contribution to an organizational-centric or societal good.

Conclusion

Metaphors matter. The common metaphor of public relations and journalism is the conflict/tango whereby public relations and journalism have divergent roles in society (Carlson, 2009, Gans, 1979). Countries with divergent public relations and journalism codes of ethics characterize this conflict metaphor. But not all countries are alike. Codes of ethics that focus on the broader, societal interests rather than the distinction between the two professions indicate communitas or a convergence of

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