Should Public Relations be Regulated?

Solomon Ibeh (00:00): Sometimes the greatest dangers in communication arise when no one is accountable for the messages shaping public life. But giving too much authority over whom we speak can be just as damaging. This story reminds us that trust depends on finding the balance between freedom and protection.

Doug Downs (00:34): In the spring of 1692, in a small Massachusetts village already tight with tension, a handful of whispers sparked a blaze. A few young girls claimed unseen forces were tormenting them. No evidence, no cross-examination, no standards for what counted as credible speech, and in a community without any guardrails for how information should be handled. Rumors traveled faster than reason. Before long, neighbors were accusing neighbors. Hearsay stood on equal footing with truth. A society without any structure for responsible communication quickly discovered the cost: 20 innocent people killed and a community torn apart because stories could spread without challenge, context, or accountability. Some historians say Salem is a lesson in what happens when you have no regulation, no system to test claims, no expectations for evidence, no professional standards guiding how information should be interpreted. If ever there was a case for responsible governance of communication, Salem certainly left a mark.

Doug Downs (01:40): But it's also a story about the opposite extreme. Once the accusations began, authority didn't just gain control over the narrative, it owned it entirely. Those in charge decided who could speak, whose testimony mattered, and whose voice would be silenced. Salem became a warning that when power decides which messages are legitimate, truth can become whatever authority wants it to be. It's time to explore whether public relations should have the rigor and structure for communication that Salem lacked, or whether regulation risks creating the kind of power imbalance that Salem feared. Today, on stories and strategies, when it comes to communication, the wrong approach can still leave us all a little spellbound. My name is Doug Downs.

Farzana Baduel (02:42): And my name is Farzana Baduel

Doug Downs (02:44): All right, and in this episode, Farzana and I are going to debate: should public relations be regulated?

Farzana Baduel (02:52): Now, public relations, it influences markets and politics and public opinion, institutions, and people's trust in information. It's a pillar for democracy. Yet, unlike law, medicine, accounting, or engineering, PR is largely unregulated in most of the world.

Doug Downs (03:12): I mean, anyone can call themselves a PR practitioner, anyone, same as a journalist, really. Anyone can open an agency. Anyone can provide counsel on issues that directly shape public life, and they often do.

Farzana Baduel (03:26): Listen, I'm very much inspired by what is happening in parts of Africa. Things are changing in terms of regulation in the PR world. Kenya, Zambia, and Nigeria have introduced legal frameworks requiring PR practitioners to be certified and licensed, with penalties for noncompliance.

Doug Downs (03:47): Supporters like Farzana say this protects standards, ethics, and livelihoods. Critics like me say it limits freedom, slows innovation, and risks politicizing communication.

Farzana Baduel (04:01): We are going to look at three major angles to our debate. Number one, we're going to look at what problem we are actually trying to solve. Number two, we're going to look at whether regulation will protect the public or protect the practitioner. And then number three, we're going to take a hard look at the practical reality. Would regulation help or hurt PR in democracies?

Doug Downs (04:28): Okay, so number one, what problem are we trying to solve? Public relations has plenty of issues, Farzana, but licensing is not going to fix any of them. Our real weaknesses sit much deeper. Unclear role definition, fragmented practice, inconsistent measurement, big time, and a leadership pipeline that still skews far too heavily toward white dudes. That lack of diversity affects strategy, perspective, and the kinds of voices elevated in the industry. A structural flaw that no licensing system is going to magically solve. And the real threat facing public relations isn't unqualified practitioners. It's the polluted information ecosystems that we're all trying to operate in. AI-driven manipulation, foreign influence networks, coordinated trolls, anonymous online actors, they can all spread false narratives at a scale and a speed that no certification program can control. Here, regulating ethical practitioners doesn't regulate the people actively trying to deceive the public. It just regulates the ones already trying to work responsibly, and regulation misunderstands the nature of communication.

Doug Downs (05:45): This isn't engineering with precise blueprints and predictable outcomes. It's contextual, it's interpretive, creative human judgment. Once you turn subjective communication into enforceable law, you risk empowering gatekeepers to decide who's legitimate and who isn't. Look, for example, at the Disinformation Governance Board in the United States a few years ago. It lasted only a few weeks before being shut down because people feared a government body would end up deciding which viewpoints were acceptable. That's the danger. Not that regulation starts with bad intentions, never, but that it drifts into deciding who gets to influence public conversations. And given the diversity and legitimacy challenges that PR is already facing, the last thing that we need is another gate that a small group gets to guard. If you regulate the storytellers but not the story environment, you haven't solved the problem, you've shrunk the cast.

Farzana Baduel (06:48): Well, you argue a very compelling position. However, Doug, things have changed. We are no longer in the 1990s. We are in this world where back in the day we couldn't, as PRs, put information into the ecosystem. We had to work through gatekeepers like journalists, and social media didn't exist. And so with journalists, what we had to do is we had to give them information. They were the judge and the jury, and they were trained in journalist ethics. They actually worked for media outlets that could be sued, and therefore they had the culture within the organizations and they also had the penalties that they faced if they ended up creating disinformation. So therefore, the information system, although it always had an agenda and a bias because of the owners of these media houses, fundamentally there were guardrails in place. Now, with social media, PRs are able to produce information and put it straight in the public sphere.

Farzana Baduel (07:59): And as PR practitioners, we are more skilled than the average Joe Bloggs on the road, who is tweeting away anonymously spreading disinformation and misinformation. And so the problem that we're trying to solve is that there are no guardrails. We are heading into an extremely low-trust society where AI is creating all sorts of content that people cannot decipher between what's real and what isn't real. This is going to undermine democracy, undermine social cohesion, and undermine national stability. I think it's a major, major problem. And I think the first thing that we need to do, the problem that we're trying to solve, is if you look at Davos every year, they come up with their list of the biggest problems that the world faces. In the top 10, and increasingly in the top five, it's always disinformation, which is spreading false information with intent, and misinformation, spreading false information unknowingly. And we as PRs need to understand that we can't pass on the ethics to the journalist and the proprietors of the media outlets. We actually have power. And with power comes responsibility. And as an industry, we need to wake up, understand that, and ask for us as an industry to be regulated before we are hauled over the coals by governments bringing in clunky legislation that will hurt our industry. We should proactively engage the government and bring in the guardrails. And it can start off with something very, very light. But we'll come on to that.

Doug Downs (09:42): Okay, good arguments. Democracy is ugly, but it's the best ugly we got.

Farzana Baduel (09:47): Now, number two, would regulation protect the public or protect the practitioner? I would argue both. Yes, everyone understands it will protect the public because of the misinformation, the disinformation, and so forth. And we live in such a dirty information ecosystem that people just don't know where to go. And at least they will realize that actually organizations, brands that hire PRs, that there's going to be a trust difference, a trust differential. And then that would also protect the practitioners because then people would want to have PR people producing information for them because it brings a level of trust that the public will therefore understand. Just let the public understand. By and large, if you work with a qualified lawyer, if you work with a qualified accountant to get accounts that are audited, like the Charity Commission in the UK, for instance, they basically require audited accounts by qualified practitioners.

Farzana Baduel (10:55): It brings trust into the whole charity system and the public trust with charities. So that trust will be brought back in with the PR industry, which at the moment is quite a low-trust profession. People don't even regard us as a profession. People think we're all a bit dodgy, and they wouldn't trust us as far as they can throw us. And so of course it will protect the practitioner. It will actually protect us, and it will give us what we are looking for, or give us a sense of purpose, and we will be a net positive to society.

Doug Downs (11:30): See, for me, on paper regulation claims to protect the public. But in practice, I think it often ends up protecting the incumbents. Licensing tends to create barriers that keep established players comfortable and make it harder for new, diverse, or independent practitioners to get into the field. And when the issue we're trying to solve is disinformation and misinformation, regulation completely misses the real target, the people spreading the most toxic and coordinated disinformation. State actors, troll farms, bot networks, anonymous influencers are never going to apply for a PR license. Regulation affects the ethical professionals, not the bad actors. And once governments or regulatory bodies gain the power to define what counts as harmful or misleading, the line between public protection and political protection gets blurry and gray real fast. We saw the tension in the UK, Farzana, a few years ago with the early drafts of the Online Safety Bill.

Doug Downs (12:38): Its legal but harmful category was so vague that civil liberties groups warned it could suppress journalism, activism, satire, and even legitimate political criticism. Not because the intention was malicious, but because the definitions were broad enough to be stretched by anyone in power. It's a perfect example of how a regulation designed to protect the public can drift into protecting institutions instead, simply by narrowing who gets to speak and under what conditions. So the real risk is that regulation becomes a shield for incumbents and a filter for acceptable voices rather than a tool for safeguarding citizens. The more you raise the regulatory walls, the more you push out the challengers, the independence, the new thinkers, the uncomfortable truth tellers, the people who often serve the public best and the most. And the more you rely on licensing to police information, the easier it becomes for well-intentioned frameworks to be weaponized. When the political winds change, you can't beat disinformation by shrinking the profession. The people spreading lies aren't lining up for certification.

Farzana Baduel (13:55): Now, Doug, you raise a number of valid points. For instance, will it end up raising barriers to entry and therefore kill the individual practitioners as well as the small businesses, which are the lifeblood of the PR industry? Now, you seem to think that it's very binary, that it's very black and white. You're going to have huge regulation or zero regulation. It's not like that.

Doug Downs (14:21): You like something in between.

Farzana Baduel (14:23): Well, yeah, it's going to be the Goldilocks approach, right? Not too hot, not too cold, the bed not too soft, not too hard. And it's really about bringing an initial level of regulation, which, for instance, could be something as simple as signing up to a code of conduct.

Doug Downs (14:43): I want to feel free to choose the bowl of porridge that I want to choose. I don't want somebody telling me that's too cold or that's too hot, but that's me. Number three, would regulation help or hurt PR in democracies? The core question with regulating communication is simple. Who ends up controlling expression? That's it. In democratic societies, communication is an extension of free expression. And free expression is something democracies protect fiercely. The moment governments or central bodies begin regulating speech-adjacent professions, that protection weakens. Regulation may be framed as neutral oversight, just here or just there, and that the bowl is the perfect temperature, but it carries an inherent risk of becoming a political tool, especially when it governs who is allowed to communicate professionally and under what conditions. That doesn't fly. That risk becomes acute when regulation is justified through the concept of disinformation.

Doug Downs (15:46): Disinformation is not a fixed or stable term. Its meaning shifts depending on who holds power, depending upon the receiver. In some cases, it's not black and white, which makes it particularly dangerous when tied to licensing or professional approval. A clear example of this is the Global Engagement Center in the United States, established in 2016 under President Obama to counter foreign propaganda from actors like Russia, China, and Iran. Its original mission focused on external threats, great intentions. Over time, however, critics, including journalists, civil libertarians, and lawmakers, argued that it drifted toward influencing or pressuring decisions about domestic speech. The democratic response to bad speech has never been sanctioned speech. It always has been more speech and better speech. That's the cure here. Information integrity improves through education, media literacy, and transparency, not through professional policing. And once regulation is introduced, it rarely becomes less restrictive over time. Definitions expand, oversight hardens, and the space for dissent gradually contracts. That is the fundamental tension. Frameworks designed to protect the public can, over time, constrain the very openness that democracies depend on. Democracy breaks the moment you need permission to participate in it.

Farzana Baduel (17:21): Now, Doug, it is 2025. You are trying to tell me that our educational system is fit for purpose and our children are growing up with the level of media literacy that they need in order to navigate this new world order of AI-powered disinformation and misinformation? We are being gamified. There are hostile state actors undermining democracies using a lot of these disinformation strategies. Societies are beginning to crumble. It's going to get worse. Recently, we had an AI-produced fake video of one of our journalists, one of our presenters, Yalda Hakim, on Sky News. And actually, what ended up happening is news outlets thought it was real and started reporting on it. This is the dystopian world that we are sleepwalking into. And what we need at the very basic level is people like ours, whose role it is to strategically manage the information that flows between an organization and its publics, to sign up to a code of conduct.

Farzana Baduel (18:37): And perhaps if there is further appetite, because I don't believe in going from zero to hero. I believe in bringing things in gradually. But you need to horizon-scan and know that we are no longer in Kansas. We are in a new world. And therefore, a code of conduct. So first of all, ensuring that all PR practitioners actually have a license to operate. In order to get a license to operate, they need to have a minimum level of skills and competencies in order to protect the public from PRs who set up shop and don't know what they're doing. And also, the other aspect that they need to do is sign up to continuing professional development, CPD. That should have a mandatory ethics component. There is a huge ethical framework around information production, especially with AI and bias and so forth. And if we are the profession that is pumping our information and we have no idea, only a fraction of our industry is signed up to the industry bodies or the professional bodies.

Farzana Baduel (19:43): And therefore, the majority of PRs do not sign up to a code of conduct. They are not taking ethics components. They don't even have CPD. It's not even good for them because if they don't have CPD, they're the ones who are going to be in danger of not having a job in five years because they're not actually signed up to understand what the changes in the industry are and what the new skills are that they need to adapt to. And this superfluous, constant tsunami of channels that are hitting us. So it's not even good for the practitioner. It's a win for the practitioner. It's a win for society that we are professionals. The journalists are no longer there to hold the line for democracy. We now have this sense of purpose, and we need to step up and not be hauled over the coals by the governments in due course when they realize that they need to clean up this dirty ecosystem. And the fingers will be pointed at us. There are a number of tiny bad actors in the PR industry that put the rest of us to shame. The majority of us want to do a good job, and we want to do what's good for our client, good for our organization, and good for society. And I would argue that actually regulation that is a component of a code of conduct and CPD will protect democracy and will protect the PR industry. It is a win-win.

Doug Downs (21:00): You know, when you mentioned The Wizard of Oz, I realized you were right. The moment the wizard gave the Scarecrow a certificate proving he had a brain, that made it so the certificate fixed everything.

Farzana Baduel (21:11): Well, it's a certificate along with compulsory CPD. It's what other professions do. I used to be an accountant. Lawyers, accountants. Why are we still acting as if we are adolescents? PR has been around for a long time. Now is our moment. Now is our chance. And now is our chance to also do the right thing by society.

Doug Downs (21:36): Now, here are the top three things that I learned today from Farzana. Number one, power has shifted from journalists to public relations. PR now publishes directly into public discourse, so inherited journalistic guardrails no longer exist. Number two, trust is collapsing faster than literacy can keep pace with or catch up to. AI-driven misinformation is outpacing public education, creating a real democratic vulnerability. And number three, voluntary ethics aren't reaching most practitioners. Without baseline standards like codes of conduct and continuing professional development, or CPD, the industry risks harsher, top-down intervention later.

Farzana Baduel (22:19): So here are the top three things that I learned from your debate, Doug. Number one, regulation can shrink voices, not fix systems. Licensing risks excluding independent, diverse, and dissenting practitioners without addressing deeper structural problems. Doug, that was a good one. Number two, bad actors don't line up for licenses. State actors, bots, trolls, and manipulators operate outside the profession. So regulation mostly constrains ethical practitioners. And number three, disinformation is a slippery definition. Once governments define harmful communication, these definitions can drift with power and politics.

Doug Downs (23:08): Oh, and number four, Farzana wants everyone to eat from the same bowl of porridge. You get what you get and you don't get upset.

Farzana Baduel (23:16): Not at all. I just want to save the world.

Doug Downs (23:19): Amen. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon Public Relations and Stories and Strategies Podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave a rating, possibly a review. Thank you to producers Emily Page and David Olajide. And whatever you're doing this holiday season, a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Happy Diwali, a Happy Kwanzaa, a solemn Ramadan. We don't care how you celebrate or observe, as long as it's happy, as long as it's peaceful, and as long as it's you. Thanks for listening.