Are the Codes Created to Be Broken?

Ethics has been and will always be a subject of debate within the PR industry. There are many articles and books written on the fact public relations is ethical because through their work, public relations professionals promote mutual understanding and peaceful co existence among individuals and institutions (Seib and Fitzpatrick 1995) If this is the case then why are the PR professionals themselves divided in two groups? Then can it possibly be true that the term “public relations ethics” is truly an oxymoron?
The pragmatic PR people versus the idealist PR people
In their book PR a Persuasive Industry the authors Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy clearly stated that PR professionals can be divided into two categories. While the pragmatic PR people themselves admit to lying but generally keep their heads down and get on with their jobs there are the Idealists who publicly deny to lying. If practitioners themselves are divided in opinion is it any wonder that people outside the industry generally end-up accusing PR professionals to be liars?
Many suggest that the Public relations codes of ethics are actually codes that are setup to give the profession an actual professionalized and institutionalized status. More importantly they are setup to show that PR people do have ethics and although there is an ongoing debate within the professionals themselves PR is a profession like, any other which has rules and regulations, which are to be abided by, by its practitioners.
Sadly, the enforcement of these codes is only limited down to the pr practitioners who are members of the (code setting) organizations such as the PRSA and the CIPR. And it has been recorded that only a mere 10 percent of the active PR professionals in America are today a member of the PRSA. The worst bit of it all is that members who violate these codes are at max expelled from the organizations. After expulsion there is no licence that the organization can take away from the practitioner. (Therefore, the practitioner can easily join other companies or organizations or set-up his/her own practice) Although PR has followed its counter professions such as law and medicine when it comes to setting up codes, what it did not do is provide license that can be seized if rule are violated.
Therefore, can it not be said that without making a license for the profession, PR has actually given its professionals the license to practice unethically? Can it not be said that not enforcing the codes as a mandate for its professionals is PR’s way of providing a leeway for the practitioners to do as they see fit? Most importantly, can it not be said that PR professionals have actually made the codes keeping the notion in mind that “ rules are meant to be broken?”