You may have heard of the Center for Media & Democracy, a Washington, D.C. think tank that has made its mission "investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda" in an effort to allegedly increase interest in the democratic process.
The company hit YouTube last week with a video that equates all forms of public relations as propaganda and basically says that public relations involves nothing but spin and is the reason that more Americans don't really know what's going on in their country.
John Stauber, founder of the organization's PRWatch initiative, says PR is all about media manipulation, perception management and putting hidden messages into the mouths of people we trust. Implicit in this comment is that most of what constitutes PR messages is untrue. Stauber also makes the big mistake of comparing advertising messages with PR campaigns. While it's true that both of them are part of marketing campaigns, the two worlds operate quite differently. A good PR campaign is about telling an honest message involving a client and letting a journalist decide whether it's worth the merit of a media mention. In contrast, advertising messages are clearly an attempt by companies to get you to believe what they see as compelling features of what they're trying to sell. The vast majority of America is intelligent enough to know the difference.
In his video, Stauber mentions some of the most well-known PR firms in the country, who he claims nobody knows about, this despite the fact that many of them are part of large, publicly-held companies. As brought up in a post on this issue by Richard Laermer and Kevin Dugan, it's embarrassing to say that some of the allegations in the video are true. That said, anyone wanting to present an issue gets a lot more credibility when they present both sides of an issue. In the case of PR, it would be well worth anyone wanting to present an objective look to point out all the new products, services and issues that come to the public's attention through public relations. One of the most recent ones I was involved in concerned a push in New York State to dramatically change ethical guidelines concerning legal advertising. Until the rules were scaled back following public comment, the initial rules could have had a chilling impact on the public's ability to get information about legal providers and the services they offer.
So while there's always plenty of blame to go 'round when it comes to the negative side of most any issue, a balanced approach will always lend more credibility. In the case of public relations, we'd also be better served if we had an organization that would produce more of its own educational material confronting these kinds of issues. But I'm not holding my breath on that.
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