Chapter Review

COMMON THREADS

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One of the Common Threads in Chapter 1 is about the role that media play in democracy. One key ethical contradiction that can emerge in PR is that (according to the PRSA Code of Ethics) PR should be honest and accurate in disclosing information while at the same time being loyal and faithful to clients and their requests for confidentiality and privacy. In this case, how does the general public know when public communications are the work of paid advocacy, particularly when public relations play such a strong role in U.S. politics?

Public relations practitioners who are members of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) are obligated to follow the PRSA’s Code of Ethics, which asks its members to sign the pledge: “To conduct myself professionally, with truth, accuracy, fairness, and responsibility to the public.”

Yet the Code is not enforceable, and many public relations professionals simply ignore the PRSA. For example, only 14 of PR giant Burson-Marsteller’s 2,200 worldwide employees are PRSA members.32 Most lobbyists in Washington have to register with the House and Senate, so there is some public record of their activities to influence politics. Conversely, public relations professionals working to influence the political process don’t have to register, so unless they act with the highest ethical standards and disclose what they are doing and who their clients are, they operate in relative secrecy.

According to National Public Radio (NPR), public relations professionals in Washington, D.C., work to engineer public opinion in advance of lobbying efforts to influence legislation. As NPR reported, “For PR folks, conditioning the legislative landscape means trying to shape public perception. So their primary target is journalists like Lyndsey Layton, who writes for The Washington Post. She says she gets about a dozen emails or phone calls in a day.”33

Less ethical work includes assembling phony “astroturf” front groups to engage in communication campaigns to influence legislators, spreading unfounded rumors about an opposing side, and entertaining government officials in violation of government reporting requirements—all things the PRSA Code prohibits. Yet these are all-too-frequent practices in the realm of political public relations.

PRSA CEO Rosanna Fiske decries this kind of unethical behavior in her profession. “It’s not that ethical public relations equals good public relations,” Fiske says. “It is, however, that those who do not practice ethical public relations affect all of us, regardless of the environment in which we work, and the causes we represent.”34

KEY TERMS

The definitions for the terms listed below can be found in the glossary at the end of the book. The page numbers listed with the terms indicate where the term is highlighted in the chapter.

public relations, 421

press agents, 422

publicity, 424

propaganda, 429

press releases, 430

video news releases (VNRs), 430

public service announcements (PSAs), 430

pseudo-event, 433

lobbying, 436

astroturf lobbying, 436

flack, 440

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For review quizzes, chapter summaries, links to media-related Web sites, and more, go to bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

Early Developments in Public Relations

  1. What did people like P. T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill Cody contribute to the development of modern public relations in the twentieth century?
  2. How did railroads and utility companies give the early forms of corporate public relations a bad name?
  3. What contributions did Ivy Lee make toward the development of modern PR?
  4. How did Edward Bernays affect public relations?

The Practice of Public Relations

  1. What are two approaches to organizing a PR firm?
  2. What are press releases, and why are they important to reporters?
  3. What is the difference between a VNR and a PSA?
  4. What is a pseudo-event? How does it relate to the manufacturing of news?
  5. What special events might a PR firm sponsor to build stronger ties to its community?
  6. Why have research and lobbying become increasingly important to the practice of PR?
  7. How does the Internet change the way in which public relations communicates with an organization’s many publics?
  8. What are some socially responsible strategies that a PR specialist can use during a crisis to help a client manage unfavorable publicity?

Tensions between Public Relations and the Press

  1. Explain the historical background of the antagonism between journalism and public relations.
  2. How did PR change old relationships between journalists and their sources?
  3. In what ways is conventional news like public relations?
  4. How does journalism as a profession contribute to its own manipulation at the hands of competent PR practitioners?

Public Relations and Democracy

  1. In what ways does the profession of public relations serve the process of election campaigns? In what ways can it impede election campaigns?

QUESTIONING THE MEDIA

  1. What do you think of when you hear the term public relations? What images come to mind? Where did these impressions come from?
  2. What might a college or university do to improve public relations with homeowners on the edge of a campus who have to deal with noisy student parties and a shortage of parking spaces?
  3. What steps can reporters and editors take to monitor PR agents who manipulate the news media?
  4. Overall, are social media platforms a good thing for practicing public relations, or do they present more problems than they are worth?
  5. Considering the Exxon Valdez, BP, and Tylenol cases cited in this chapter, what are some key things an organization can do to respond effectively once a crisis hits?

ADDITIONAL VIDEOS

Visit the image Mass Communication section at bedfordstmartins.com/mediaculture for additional exclusive videos related to Chapter 12, including: