Издательство Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, -210 pp.
This book seeks to use a combination of inside knowledge, experience and scholarship to explore the public relations industry. Our starting point will disappoint some people. We believe that PR is not only an inevitable part of the mode world, but also plays a proper and indispensable role within any democracy, free market or open society. PR is not for us inherently – or even usually – evil. On the other hand, we are not in the business of offering comfort to discomfited PR people. PR looks after too many sacred cows and we have set out to slaughter some. We are not seeking to claim that PR is necessarily good, even in one of its mode guises, that of the corporate social responsibility consultant. Successful PR people are not plaster saints, nor do they necessarily exhibit every virtue: they are far more interesting than that.
PR people have represented all kinds of causes and interests, and have done so using all kinds of tactics. Public relations pioneers such as Ivy Lee and Carl Byoir did not suddenly cease to be PR people when they worked for the Nazis, and the works of Edward Beays – who revelled in the title Father of PR – were studied by Dr Goebbels. But, equally, your favourite charity, celebrity, hospital and politician, as well as the innocuous companies you rely on to meet your day-to-day needs, use PR. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were all brilliant at public relations: Mandela still is. So, in their own ways, were Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein.
However morally good or bad its practitioners are, as a discipline or industry PR is amoral: we see no problem with facing up to that.
What is certain is that in our generation public relations has truly come of age. Newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and on-line media all abound with references to PR people, PR events, PR stunts, PR disasters and, more and more frequently, to spin. Indeed in politics the word has almost completely taken over from PR. Future historians wanting to describe the politics of our age will need to understand the concept of spin, and come to terms with the role of the omnipresent spin doctors. But PR’s sinister profile doesn’t stop there. For those exercised about globalization and troubled by the power of big corporations, PR people are seen as the special forces of capitalism. Many in the corporate world would counter that NGOs, charities and other campaigning organizations are themselves adept users of PR techniques: their publicity stunts are certainly a regular feature of the media landscape.
Joualists can seldom resist writing disparagingly about public relations, a faster growing, better paid and better resourced industry than their own. Today PR provides the material for an ever larger part of the content that increasingly pressurized joualists need to produce to satisfy their publics, advertisers and shareholders. As the media has developed new digital forms, PR has quickly responded, exhibiting its power in the blogosphere and in other forms of citizen joualism. So it is not surprising that joualistic resentment at PR bubbles to the surface: indeed one of the main problems for PR’s own image makers is that the joualists usually have the last word.
One motive for writing this book was to offer a PR voice in the one-sided debate in which many joualists lament the difficulties that beset their craft and, after pinning much of the blame on PR, clutch at straws in their search for a solution. They do not want to hear from the adversary they revile, and PR for its part gets on quietly with its work. But PR is here to stay – and grow – and there is no miracle cure for the travails of mode joualism. To fail to recognize this is to remain trapped in an intellectual cul de sac. We think it behoves a mature PR industry to suggest it may be part of the solution and not just a problem. A large and diverse PR industry may be the most realistic and effective way of putting across the different views and representing the different interests in society. Meanwhile joualists will increasingly play the important but limited role of reporting PR and refereeing PR struggles. This is likely to define the shape of much of the mode media.
The allure of PR
Girls, gurus, gays, and diversity
PR and the media
The lying game
Portrait of an industry
The people in PR
From PR to propaganda
Professional, but never a profession
PR in the not-for-profit sector
Inteal communications
PR and academia
Lobbying, public affairs, politics, and govement PR
Does PR work and is it good for us?
The future of PR
In defence of PR
This book seeks to use a combination of inside knowledge, experience and scholarship to explore the public relations industry. Our starting point will disappoint some people. We believe that PR is not only an inevitable part of the mode world, but also plays a proper and indispensable role within any democracy, free market or open society. PR is not for us inherently – or even usually – evil. On the other hand, we are not in the business of offering comfort to discomfited PR people. PR looks after too many sacred cows and we have set out to slaughter some. We are not seeking to claim that PR is necessarily good, even in one of its mode guises, that of the corporate social responsibility consultant. Successful PR people are not plaster saints, nor do they necessarily exhibit every virtue: they are far more interesting than that.
PR people have represented all kinds of causes and interests, and have done so using all kinds of tactics. Public relations pioneers such as Ivy Lee and Carl Byoir did not suddenly cease to be PR people when they worked for the Nazis, and the works of Edward Beays – who revelled in the title Father of PR – were studied by Dr Goebbels. But, equally, your favourite charity, celebrity, hospital and politician, as well as the innocuous companies you rely on to meet your day-to-day needs, use PR. Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were all brilliant at public relations: Mandela still is. So, in their own ways, were Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein.
However morally good or bad its practitioners are, as a discipline or industry PR is amoral: we see no problem with facing up to that.
What is certain is that in our generation public relations has truly come of age. Newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and on-line media all abound with references to PR people, PR events, PR stunts, PR disasters and, more and more frequently, to spin. Indeed in politics the word has almost completely taken over from PR. Future historians wanting to describe the politics of our age will need to understand the concept of spin, and come to terms with the role of the omnipresent spin doctors. But PR’s sinister profile doesn’t stop there. For those exercised about globalization and troubled by the power of big corporations, PR people are seen as the special forces of capitalism. Many in the corporate world would counter that NGOs, charities and other campaigning organizations are themselves adept users of PR techniques: their publicity stunts are certainly a regular feature of the media landscape.
Joualists can seldom resist writing disparagingly about public relations, a faster growing, better paid and better resourced industry than their own. Today PR provides the material for an ever larger part of the content that increasingly pressurized joualists need to produce to satisfy their publics, advertisers and shareholders. As the media has developed new digital forms, PR has quickly responded, exhibiting its power in the blogosphere and in other forms of citizen joualism. So it is not surprising that joualistic resentment at PR bubbles to the surface: indeed one of the main problems for PR’s own image makers is that the joualists usually have the last word.
One motive for writing this book was to offer a PR voice in the one-sided debate in which many joualists lament the difficulties that beset their craft and, after pinning much of the blame on PR, clutch at straws in their search for a solution. They do not want to hear from the adversary they revile, and PR for its part gets on quietly with its work. But PR is here to stay – and grow – and there is no miracle cure for the travails of mode joualism. To fail to recognize this is to remain trapped in an intellectual cul de sac. We think it behoves a mature PR industry to suggest it may be part of the solution and not just a problem. A large and diverse PR industry may be the most realistic and effective way of putting across the different views and representing the different interests in society. Meanwhile joualists will increasingly play the important but limited role of reporting PR and refereeing PR struggles. This is likely to define the shape of much of the mode media.
The allure of PR
Girls, gurus, gays, and diversity
PR and the media
The lying game
Portrait of an industry
The people in PR
From PR to propaganda
Professional, but never a profession
PR in the not-for-profit sector
Inteal communications
PR and academia
Lobbying, public affairs, politics, and govement PR
Does PR work and is it good for us?
The future of PR
In defence of PR