PUBLIC RELATIONS AND FRAMING THE

MESSAGEChapter 12

What is Public Relations?

■ Advertising is controlled publicity that a company or an individual buys

■ Public relations attempts to secure favorable media publicity—which is more difficult to control—to promote a company or client

■ Public Relations: The total communication strategy conducted by a person, a government, or an organization attempting to reach and persuade an audience to adopt a point of view

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS IN PUBLIC RELATIONS

Early Developments in Public Relations■ Press agents: Those who sought to advance a client’s image through

media exposure, primarily via stunts staged for newspapers■ Individuals such as Daniel Boone (who engineered various land-grabs

and real estate ventures) and Davy Crockett (who was involved in the massacre of Native Americans) employed press agents to repair their images

P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill

■ The most notorious press agent of the 19th century was P.T. Barnum, who used gross exaggeration, fraudulent stories, and staged events to secure newspaper coverage for his clients, his American Museum, and later his circus

■ “Buffalo” Bill Cody promoted himself and his travelling show■ Press agents shaped many of the legends about rugged American

individualism and frontier expansion that were later adopted by books, movies, etc. about the American West

■ Publicity: A type of PR communication that uses various media messages to spread information about a person, a corporation, an issue, or a policy

Big Business and Press Agents

■ Utilizing the press brought with it enormous power to sway the public and to generate business

■ The railroads began to use press agents to help them obtain federal funds

■ Their first strategy was simply to buy favorable news stories about rail travel from newspapers through direct bribes

■ They also gave reporters free train tickets so that they would write positive stories about rail travel

■ Utility companies such as Chicago Edison and AT&T used PR strategies to derail competition and attain monopoly status

The Birth of Modern Public Relations■ By the beginning of the 20th century, reporters and muckrakers were

investigating the promotional practices behind many companies■ As informed citizenry paid more attention it became more difficult for

larger firms to fool the press and mislead the public

Ivy Ledbetter Lee

■ By the early 1900s, executives had realized that their companies could sell more products if they were associated with positive public images and values

■ Ivy Ledbetter Lee is considered one of the founders of modern public relations. He understood the public’s attitude toward big corporations had changed

■ He counseled his clients that honesty and directness were better PR devices than the deceptive practices of the 1800s

■ After a railroad accident, Lee advised them to admit the mistake, vow to do better, and let newspapers in on the story

Edward Bernays

■ Bernays was the first person to apply the findings of psychology and sociology to public relations (he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud)

■ During WWI, Bernays developed propaganda that supported America’s entry in that conflict and promoting the image of President Woodrow Wilson as a peacemaker

■ His wife—Doris Fleishman—was one of the first women in the industry, and paved the way for others, so that now women outnumber men in PR by 3 to 1

THE PRACTICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

Approaches to Organized Public Relations■ PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) gives this definition of PR:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other”

■ The PR industry uses two approaches:1. There are independent PR agencies whose sole job is to provide

clients with PR services2. Most companies, which may or may not also hire independent PR

firms, maintain their own in-house PR staffs to handle routine tasks, such as writing press releases, managing media requests, staging special events, and dealing with internal and external publics

Performing Public Relations

■ Public relations, like advertising, pays careful attention to the needs of its clients and to the perspectives of its targeted audiences

■ PR involves providing a multitude of services, including publicity, communication, public affairs, issues management, government relations, financial PR, community relations, industry relations, advertising, social networking, and propaganda

■ In addition, PR personnel produce employee newsletters, manage client trade shows and conferences, conduct historical tours, appear on news programs, and organize damage control

Research: Formulating the Message■ One of the most essential practices in the PR profession is doing

research■ Just like advertising, PR research is driven by demographic and

psychographic research■ PR practitioners rely on mail, Google Analytics, and Twitter Analytics

to get a fix on an audience’s perception of an issue, policy, program, or client’s image

Conveying the Message

■ Press releases: Also known as news releases, are announcements written in the style of news reports that give new information about an individual, company, or organization and pitch a story idea to the news media

■ Through press releases, PR firms manage the flow of information■ Video news releases mimic the style of broadcast news, but are rarely

used by actual news outlets■ Public Service Announcement (PSA): Fifteen to sixty-second audio or

video reports that promote nonprofit government programs, educational projects, volunteer agencies, or social reform

Media Relations

■ Media relations promote a client by securing publicity or favorable coverage in the news media

■ They also perform damage control or crisis management when negative publicity occurs

■ Media relations professionals also recommend advertising to their clients when it seems appropriate

Special Events and Pseudo-events■ Special events raise the profile of corporate, organizational, or

government clients—such as Milwaukee’s Summerfest■ A corporate sponsor can also align itself with a cause or an

organization that has positive status among the general public—such as John Hancock sponsoring the Boston Marathon

■ Pseudo-events are created for the sole purpose of gaining coverage in the media

■ These include press-conferences, talk-show appearances, or any other staged activity

Community and Consumer Relations■ Another responsibility of PR is to sustain goodwill between an

agency’s clients and the public■ PR firms encourage companies to participate in community activities,

such as hosting tours and open houses, making charitable donations, and participating in town events like parades and festivals

Government Relations and Lobbying■ Maintaining connections with government agencies that have some

say in how companies operate in a community, state, or nation, is a priority

■ Lobbying: The process of attempting to influence lawmakers to support and vote for an organization or industry’s best interests

■ Lobbying can often lead to ethical problems■ Astroturf lobbying is a phony grassroots public affairs campaigns

engineered by public relations firms■ Anyone who criticizes tobacco, alcohol, processed food, fatty food,

soda pop, pharmaceuticals, animal testing, overfishing, or pesticides is “likely to come under attack from” the Center for Consumer Freedom

Public Relations Adapts to the Internet Age■ A company or organization’s website has become the home base of

public relations efforts■ PR professionals also connect with the public through social media■ Some PR firms have edited Wikipedia pages in order to paint their

clients in a better light■ A growing number of companies also compensate bloggers to subtly

promote their products (especially “mom bloggers” who talk about household products)

Public Relations During a Crisis

■ One important duty of PR has been helping a corporation handle a public crisis or tragedy, especially if the public assumes the company is at fault

TENSIONS BETWEEN PUBLIC RELATIONS

AND THE PRESS

PR vs. Journalism

■ In 1932, Stanley Walker, a news editor, identified PR agents as “mass-minded molders, fronts, mouthpieces, chiselers, moochers, and special assistants to the president”

■ Much of the antagonism is directed at PR professionals from journalists■ Journalists perceive of PR people as a pseudo-profession created to distort

the facts that reporters work hard to gather

■ One of my oldest, crankiest journalism professors once asked: What is the difference between a PR person and a journalist?

Elements of Professional Friction

■ PR firms often raid the ranks of reporters for new talent■ PR needs journalists for publicity, and journalism needs PR for story

ideas and access■ PR firms have enabled journalists to become lazy

Undermining Facts and Blocking Access■ Journalism’s most prevalent criticism of public relations is that it works

to counter the truths reporters seek to bring to the public■ Modern PR redefined and complicated the notion of what “facts” are■ Journalists have also objected that PR professionals block press access

to key business leaders, political figures, and other newsworthy people

■ PR agents are now able to manipulate reporters by giving exclusives to journalists who are likely to cast a story in a favorable light, or cutting out a journalist entirely if they have been critical in the past

Promoting Publicity and Business as News■ PR agents help companies “promote as news what otherwise would

have been purchased in advertising”■ If PR can secure news publicity for clients, the added credibility of a

journalistic context gives clients a status that the purchase of advertising cannot offer

Shaping the Image of Public Relations■ Dealing with both a tainted past and journalism’s hostility has often

preoccupied the public relations profession, leading to the development of several image-enhancing strategies…

■ PRSA has a code of ethics and monitors PR practices

Alternative Voices

■ The practices of PR often remain invisible to the public, and are rarely the subject of media reports or investigations

■ The Center for Media and Democracy is concerned about the invisibility of PR practices and has sought to expose the hidden activities of large PR firms since 1993

Public Relations and Democracy

■ From the days of PR’s origins in the early 20th century, many people have been skeptical of communications originating from public relations professionals

■ However, PR’s most significant impact may be on the political process, especially when organizations hire spin doctors to favorably shape or reshape a candidate’s image

■ Though public relations often provides political information and story ideas, the PR profession bears only part of the responsibility for “spun” news