Morris T., Goldsworthy S. PR - A Persuasive Industry? Spin, Public Relations, and the Shaping of the Modern Media

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PR – A PERSUASIVE

INDUSTRY?

Spin, Public Relations, and the Shaping

of the Modern Media

Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy

PR – A Persuasive Industry?

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Also by Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy

PR for Asia

PR for the New Europe

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PR – A PERSUASIVE

INDUSTRY?

Spin, Public Relations,

and the Shaping of the

Modern Media

Trevor Morris

and

Simon Goldsworthy

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First published 2008 by

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Contents

Preface viii

Acknowledgments xii

1 The allure of PR 1

2 Girls, gurus, gays, and diversity 15

Girls 15

Gurus 16

Why are there more women in PR? 18

Gays 21

Ethnic mix 22

3 PR and the media 23

Why are there more flacks than hacks? 23

Suppressing bad news: PR’s dark side of the moon 30

The information marketplace: trading news and views 31

News out of nothing 32

Motivating the media: sticks and carrots 35

The importance of timing 39

The Beckhams and the “sex-mad PR beauty”:

the ultimate PR tale for our times? 42

The future of an abusive relationship 45

4 The lying game 49

Lovable rogues 51

Double dealers 52

The truth debate continues 53

PR ethics 57

5 Portrait of an industry 61

The consultancy sector 62

The emergence of PR conglomerates 64

The persistence of “penny packet” PR 67

Are PR firms profitable? 68

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Contents

Specialist PR 74

In-house PR and the eunuchs of modern corporate life 79

The tail of the industry 86

6 The people in PR 89

PR dilettantes 89

Money matters (what do PR people earn?) 93

The public voice of PR 94

7 From PR to propaganda 97

How the industry defines itself 97

The industry’s reluctance to admit the obvious 100

What we say PR is 102

Is propaganda different? 106

PR: a symptom of freedom 110

8 Professional, but never a profession 113

What is a profession? 114

Is PR a profession? 115

More problems with definitions 116

The role of trade bodies 117

Not a profession, but trying hard 121

9 PR in the not-for-profit sector 123

PR for the industries of conscience 124

NGOs in conflict 126

Propaganda of the deed 126

10 Internal communications 129

Censorship 130

The employer brand 132

Hidden persuaders 134

11 PR and academia 137

PR and business schools 139

“Industry” approved degrees 140

Industry attitudes to PR degrees 141

Where are the text books? 143

12 Lobbying, public affairs, politics, and government PR 145

Lobbying’s links to PR 148

Lobbying issues 148

Lobbying regulation 151

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vii

Contents

Politics and spin 152

Why political PR is different 155

13 Does PR work and is it good for us? 161

PR and economics 161

Barriers to evaluation 166

Trusting to judgment 167

PR and society 171

The marketplace of ideas 172

PR and mediated society 173

PR: a social good? 174

14 The future of PR 175

The future for PR 178

Areas of growth 180

15 In defence of PR 183

Notes 187

Some suggested reading and sources of information 195

About the authors 199

Index 201

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viii

Preface

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 modern 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 modern 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

Bernays – 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 rela-

tions: 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

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Preface

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.

Journalists 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 journalists 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

journalism”. So it is not surprising that journalistic resentment at PR

bubbles to the surface: indeed one of the main problems for PR’s own

image makers is that the journalists 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 journalists 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 qui-

etly with its work. But PR is here to stay – and grow – and there is no

miracle cure for the travails of modern journalism. To fail to recog-

nize 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 solu-

tion 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

journalists 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 modern media.

Journalism aside, not all popular perceptions of PR are dark and

gloomy. Alongside sinister spin doctors and Machiavellian PR gurus

exists the world of Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, or of “AbFab”,

Absolutely Fabulous, the hit BBC comedy series. This is the milieu of

the “PR girl”, usually depicted as floating like so much froth on the

cappuccino of modern metropolitan life. PR girls do not only exist in

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