PRNewswire pickups count as 'earned' or 'paid'?

My boss and I are a little at odds about how to count PRNewswire pickups, i.e. when media outlets reprint the release verbatim but don't create original reporting based on it. I'm conservative about our earned media numbers and prefer not to include these pickups, because we paid for their distribution--even though each outlet (e.g. AP, Yahoo!, hundreds of local outlets owned by the same umbrella corp) got to decide whether they wanted to take it. My boss prefers to use the total # including press release pickups, because it's (obviously) more impressive. We issued two releases via PRNewswire this year; our total without these releases is 526, and our total with is 1345.

TL;DR PRNewswire pickups by outlets... earned or nah?

EDIT: Thanks to those who replied! My boss was persuaded.