CHAPTER ESSENTIALS

• Public relations refers to the total communication strategy conducted by a person, a government, or an organization attempting to reach and persuade its audience to adopt a point of view. The first PR practitioners in the 1800s were press agents, such as P. T. Barnum and John Burke, who conveyed favorable messages to the public about their clients, often by staging stunts that reporters described in newspapers. These agents focused on publicity, using various media messages to spread information and interest about a person, a corporation, an issue, or a policy (pp. 403–406).

• As the United States became more industrialized and moved toward a consumer society, larger companies, such as railroads and utility organizations like AT&T, began hiring press agents to generate profits and spread the word on whatever they were promoting. However, in these early days of press agents, some of the tactics used were deceptive. Agents bribed journalists to write favorable stories and engaged in deadheading, or giving reporters free rail passes. Larger railroads and utility companies used lobbyists, professionals who seek to influence lawmakers’ votes—to gain federal subsidies and establish policies that made it harder for smaller lines to compete (pp. 406–407).

• By the early 1900s, journalists began investigating some of the questionable PR practices being used, precipitating the professionalization of public relations. This effort was spearheaded by two pioneers of PR, Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Edward Bernays. Lee, who counseled his clients that honesty and directness were better PR devices than deceit, later worked with John D. Rockefeller. Bernays was the first to apply the findings of psychology and sociology to the PR profession (pp. 407–409).

• As the PR profession grew, two major types of public relations organizations took shape: PR agencies and in-house PR services (p. 409).

• Many large PR agencies are owned by or affiliated with multinational holding companies, such as WPP, Omnicom, and Interpublic. Other firms are independent and have local or regional operations, such as Edelman (pp. 409–410).

• Both PR agencies and in-house services have many functions. They sometimes craft propaganda, or communication that is presented as advertising or publicity intended to gain or undermine public support for a certain issue, program, or policy (p. 410).

• In addition, PR professionals research or formulate the message for a given product, policy, program, or issue. They are responsible for conveying the message, often via press releases (news releases), video news releases (VNRs), or public service announcements (PSAs), which are press releases for nonprofits (pp. 411, 414).

• Some PR practitioners manage media relations. This includes responding to negative images or crisis situations (pp. 415, 418–419).

• PR agents may also coordinate special and pseudo-events (staged activities aimed at drawing public attention and media coverage) in an effort to raise the profile of corporate, organizational, or business clients (p. 419).

• PR practitioners foster positive community and consumer relations and cultivate government relations, which is sometimes accomplished via lobbying (the process of trying to influence lawmakers to support legislation that would serve an organization’s or industry’s best interests). Astroturf lobbying is a kind of lobbying that consists of phony grassroots public affairs campaigns engineered by unscrupulous PR firms (pp. 420–422).

• The tense relationship between PR and the press consists of a complex interdependence of the two professions as well as journalists’ skepticism about PR practices (pp. 422–423).

• PR practitioners maintain that they make journalists’ jobs easier by supplying information, whereas journalists argue that PR agents selectively choose which facts to bring forward (p. 423).

• Some of the complaints from the press about PR have led some public relations practitioners to take steps to improve the profession’s image. The industry formed its own professional organization (the Public Relations Society of America) in 1948, which functions as a watchdog group. PR practitioners have also begun using different language to describe what they do (pp. 423–425).

• PR’s impact on the political process is significant, as many organizations hire public relations specialists to shape or reshape a candidate’s image (p. 426).

• The fact that most affluent people and corporations can afford the most media exposure through PR raises questions about whether this restricts the expression of ideas from other, less affluent sources (p. 427).

1. Question 12.1

   Who were the individuals who conducted the earliest type of public relations in the nineteenth century? How did they contribute to the development of modern public relations in the twentieth century?

2. Question 12.2

   What are the two organizational structures for a PR firm? What are some of the ways these structures conduct business for their clients?

3. Question 12.3

   Explain the antagonism between journalism and public relations. Can and should the often hostile relationship between the two be mended? Why or why not?

4. Question 12.4

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

• DESCRIBE the most recent ten or twelve press releases from a local/regional business or organization large enough to have its own PR department (your own college or university might be a worthy subject). Then pick a local news organization and see how many stories seem to have come about as a result of those press releases.

• ANALYZE the resulting patterns: What kinds of press releases got picked up by your local news organization? Were the releases published in the newspaper verbatim, or were the stories just loosely based on the press releases?

• INTERPRET what these patterns mean. For example, do press releases from this organization make an impact in the local news? Do you think the size of the newspaper and its staff makes a difference in how press releases are handled?

• EVALUATE the relationship between public relations and journalism in your community. Based on this case study, is the level of the newspaper’s reliance on public relations a good thing or a bad thing for the people in your community? Are the press releases promoting a healthy dialogue in the community or trying to publicize something not worthy of the news?

• ENGAGE with the community by writing to the newspaper’s editor and letting her or him know about your case study and conclusions.