Public relations

byname Pr, aspect of communications involving the relations between an entity subject to or seeking public attention and the various publics that are or may be interested in it. The entity seeking attention may be a business corporation, an individual politician, a performer or author, a government or government agency, a charitable organization, a religious body, or almost any other person or organization. The publics may include segments as narrow as female voters of a particular political party who are between 35 and 50 years of age or the shareholders in a particular corporation; or the publics may be as broad as any national population or the world at large. The concerns of public relations operate both ways between the subject entity, which may be thought of as the client, and the publics involved. The important elements of public relations are to acquaint the client with the public conceptions of the client and to affect these perceptions by focusing, curtailing, amplifying, or augmenting information about the client as it is conveyed to the publics.

The empire builders of the 19th century often disdained a curious public and an inquisitive press, but this attitude soon came under fire from muckraking journalists. In 1906 Ivy Lee, a former newspaperman, became publicity adviser to a group of American anthracite coal-mine operators who had aroused the anger of the press by their haughty attitudes toward miners and the press in labour disputes. Lee persuaded the mine owners to abandon their refusal to answer questions, and he shortly sent out an announcement that the operators would supply the press with all possible information. Later that year he was retained by the Pennsylvania Railroad and brought into effect a new practice: giving the press full information about railroad accidents. In this he was forging a major ingredient of what had not yet come to be called public relations.

Government agencies began hiring publicists in Great Britain and the United States; U.S. legislation (1913) required congressional authorization to spend government funds on “publicity experts,” whereupon the experts masqueraded under such euphemisms as “director of information.” The natural affinity of government for public relations, little explored since Machiavelli, was flowering. From 1924 to 1933 in England, the Empire Marketing Board used large-scale publicity to promote trade; it has been called “the archetype of government public relations departments.” In Great Britain, as in the United States, the appointment of public relations directors by various government departments during World War II was a prelude to greatly increased postwar emphasis on public relations. Within a decade hardly an agency of any government was without its public relations staff. Perhaps more importantly, public relations had come to be recognized as indispensable to any organization subject to attention in the press and the rapidly developing broadcast media.

There was, however, no uniformly accepted simple definition of the craft, trade, dodge, or art of public relations, and there is none today. This is true in large part because of the great variety of its elements. These include generating favourable publicity and knowing what kind of story is likely to be printed or broadcast. This rudimentary aspect of public relations is complicated by the variety of media; besides newspapers, magazines, and radio and television, there are publications of professional associations, recreational groups, and trade associations; producers of stage, motion-picture, and television entertainment; direct mail lists; and others.

Public relations embraces a serious element of the ethical counseling and sociological education of the client. One of the great American practitioners, Earl Newsom, would force his carefully selected clients' attention to the 19th-century classic The Crowd (1896; La Psychologie des foules, 1895), by the French sociologist Gustave LeBon, to persuade them that kings (and business potentates) were no longer the rulers but that the crowd—the public—was now sovereign and must be pleased. Public-relations counselors to airplane manufacturers and airlines persuaded their clients, as Ivy Lee had done the railroads, to be candid and forthright with the facts and to supply the background necessary for context and understanding when airplane crashes occurred. This element of public relations is complicated and sometimes obscured by the flamboyance of self-promoters in the field and by the excesses of occasional charlatans. It is also complicated by divergent views, for a minority of practitioners believes that silence and secrecy—“stonewalling,” if need be—are the proper response to a deluge of adverse publicity.

The role of public relations was once defined by Edward L. Bernays, one of its pioneers, as “the engineering of consent.” The characterization is accurate, but out of context it oversimplifies and has been used to attack public relations as cynical and manipulative. The real tasks of public relations in the business world may focus on corporate interests or those of marketing products or services; on image creation or defense against attack; on broad public relations or straight publicity. In general, the strategic goal of public relations is to project a favourable public image, one of corporate good citizenship; but this cannot be accomplished with lights and mirrors in an age of investigative journalism, and the first responsibility of public relations is to persuade management that the reality must correspond with the desired image. Public relations is concerned with creating a favourable climate for marketing the client's products or services, including maintaining good relations with merchants and distributors as well as placing product publicity and disseminating information to trade and industrial groups. This calls for the preparation of technical articles addressed to technicians and engineers and of others translating technical information for lay readers. It further includes publicizing praiseworthy activities by company personnel. Financial public relations involves relations with a company's own stockholders (stockholder relations) as well as with the investment community.

To a large extent, the job of public relations is to optimize good news and to forestall bad news, but when disaster strikes, the public relations practitioner's task, in consultation with legal counsel, is to assess the situation and the damage, to assemble the facts, together with necessary background information, and to offer these to the news media, along with answers to their questions of fact. When a client is under attack, it is a public relations responsibility to organize the client's response—usually involving several complicated issues—to be both lucid and persuasive.

Government relations is often included in public relations under the general designation of public affairs and encompasses lobbying. Industrial relations (i.e., labour-management relations), employee relations, and customer relations sometimes are accounted part of public relations. Community relations is important wherever a client has an office or plant.

Modern corporate executives often do not excel at public speaking or writing in nonbusiness language, and a duty of public relations is to translate executives' knowledge into speeches or articles intelligible to nonspecialists. In fact, the prime responsibility of public relations can be seen as interpreting the client to the public and vice versa.

From the 1940s responsible public relations practitioners have endeavoured to codify and uphold ethical standards. Many have attempted to bring the status of a profession to their calling, through associations such as the Public Relations Society of America, the Public Relations Consultants Association (London), the Fédération Européene des Relations Publiques (Brussels), and the International Public Relations Association (London). Many colleges and universities offer not only courses but also academic majors in public relations. Boston University was the first to establish a School of Public Relations (later, Communications) in 1947.

Vocabulary Notes:

The technology of modern mass communication

To result from the confluence of many types of inventions and discoveries

To precede the industrial Revolution

To develop newer means of mass communication

To broadcast

Printing press, radio, television, motion pictures, sound recording

Systems of mass production and distribution

To be the prerequisites for the development of mass communication

To employ extant communications technology

To satisfy widespread desires or needs

Affluence

The maintenance of the radio, television, cinema and recording industries

Professional communicators

To produce best-sellers

Control of the instruments of mass communication

To be employed for government propaganda

To be accepted by the general public

To fall into the hands of smb

Literate citizens

To reach ever increasing number of people

To serve readers, the masses

To be predominant

To be free to follow one’s own whims

Libel

Slander

A book publisher

Censorship

To have restrictions

Government regulations

To limit the nature and quantity of the material produced and circulated

Consumer satisfaction

To be restricted by laws

Invasion of privacy

To entail obligations

To maintain access to the public eyes and ears

To use broadcasting frequencies

To be circumscribed loosely or rigidly by government regulations

To be the subject to local legal restraints

To operate under strict government control

To depend upon particular markets

Decorum and self-censorship

To exercise absolute control of all broadcasting

Public opinion on political issues

Inducements to violence

To construe the overall effects of mass communication as generally harmless

To influence attitudes and behavior

To provide potent sources of informal education and persuasion

To form one’s personal views of the social realities

To be an instrument of commercial advertising

To produce varying effects upon different segments of the audience

The enormous output on television, radio and in print

The role of newspapers, periodical, etc. in influencing political opinions

Voting behavior

Undecided voters

To determine the outcome of the elections

Middle-of- the- road voters

Advertising agencies

To be brought into the political arena

To develop images of the politicians

Television campaign

Television techniques

Propaganda enterprise

An extremely dangerous lack of means of restraining or counteracting propaganda

The flames of international, interracial and interreligious wars

To consist of a highly chaotic mixture of democratic, semidemocratic, authoritarian subsystems

To be ill educated, ultranationalistic and religiously, racially or doctrinally fanatical

To conduct a propaganda

To be contradictory to the requirements of the world system

To be sensationalized and amplified by international broadcasts

To lie in the slow spread of education for universal humanism

Facilities fir news gathering, publishing, broadcasting

To be bombarded daily by far more media (about one’s mind)

Information bits

Rival politicians

Insistently advertised commercial products

Ecological horrors

Military nightmares

Communication overload

To result in the alienation of millions of people from much of modern life

To cope with severe communication overload

Selective attention – selective perception – selective recall

Media preferences

To seek psychological reassurance about the existing beliefs (convictions) and prejudices

To have an a priory advantage

To induce major changes

Tasks:

1. Pronounce the following words and word-combinations correctly:

1) a confluence of inventions and discoveries

2) technological ingenuity

3) near-global diffusion

4) a prerequisite

5) literate citizens

6) an affluence

7) extant communications

8) persuasion

9) consumer satisfaction

10) libel and slander

11) privacy

12) privileges to use broadcasting frequencies are circumscribed either loosely or rigidly by government regulations

13) decorum and self-censorship

14) apply variably to publishers

15) lively controversy

16) inducements to violence

17) to construe the overall effects

18) status quo

19) oriented to psychological and psychiatric disciplines

20) maturation

21) political arena

22) advertising agencies

23) inexpensive addendum

24) a near-ubiquitous condition of modernity

25) a campaign strategy

26) an assent

27) a subversion

28) contemporary propaganda

29) a propagandist

30) Nazis

31) swastika

32) racial superiority

33) Muslim crescent

34) Hindu cow

35) Buddhist lotus

36) comprehensive inventory

37) a placard

38) audiovisual media

39) an epoch

40) euphemism

41) a masquerade

42) an affinity

43) an archetype

44) a rudimentary aspect

45) a publicity adviser

46) cynical and manipulative

2. Translate the following word-combinations into Russian:

1) to employ extant communications technology to satisfy widespread desires or needs for popular reading materials

2) to be employed largely for government propaganda

3) government regulations

4) to entail obligations

5) censorship and restrictions

6) a public opinion on political issues

7) to construe the overall effects to mass communication

8) to provide potent sources of informal education and persuasion

9) voting behaviour of undecided voters

10) to devise a campaign strategy with the television audience in mind

11) to be brought into the political arena

12) to plan campaigns and to develop the clients’ images

13) to lack alternatives

14) to conduct opinion surveys and psychological interviews

15) a pressure group

16) to acquaint a client with the public conceptions of the client and to affect the perceptions by focusing, curtailing, amplifying and augmenting information about the client

17) an invasion of privacy

18) to form one’s personal view of the social realities

19) to project a favourable public image

20) to create a favourable climate for marketing the client’s products or services

3. Find the English equivalents to the following sentences in the text:

1. Технологический прорыв 19 и 20 вв. дал толчок к возникновению новых средств массовой связи, в частности, транслирования (передачи сигналов), без которого повсеместное распространение печатного текста, картинок и звука было бы невозможным.

2. Большинство социологов являются приверженцами теории о том, что массовые связи оказывают воздействие на формирование определенных взглядов и отношений в той мере, насколько это возможно, другими словами, они влияют на то, что уже некоторым образом сформировано и принято в обществе.

3. Роль газет, периодических изданий и телевидения в формировании политических взглядов общественности отчетливо прослеживается на примере поведения избирателей, неуверенных в своей позиции (не знающих за кого отдать свой голос).

4. Внимания со стороны общественности может требовать бизнес-корпорация, отдельный политик, актер и писатель, правительство или государственное представительство, благотворительная организация, религиозное общество или даже просто отдельный человек или организация.

4. Explain and expand on the following:

1. As is the case of any market, consumer satisfaction (or the lack of it) limits the nature and quantity of the material produced and circulated.
2. The success of public communication as an instrument of commercial advertising has also been constant and noticeable.
3. Politicians have become sensitive to their television images and have devised much of their campaign strategy with the television audience in mind.
4. Public relations is concerned with creating a favourable climate for marketing the client’s products or services.
5. Modern corporate executives often do not excel at public speaking or writing in non-business language, and a duty of public relations is to translate executive’s knowledge into speeches or articles intelligible to nonspecialists.

5. Answer the questions:

1. Name the main prerequisites for the development of mass communication.
2. In what way can the control of mass communication be exercised?
3. What are the effects of mass communication?
4. What does the notion “propaganda” imply?
5. Explain the term “public relations” as you understand it and can judge from your own experience. Compare it with the explanation you found in the text.
6. Why do people seek public attention? What kind of people or groups may need it?

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