USA Today reviewed the book "PR: A Persuasive Industry? Spin, Public Relations and the Shaping of Modern Media"
I have not read the book yet, but the review included some interesting tidbits worth commenting on.
The authors are apparently from the field of PR (can you really call PR an "industry"). Judging from the title, anyway, it would seem to be a sensationalistic and negative take on the profession, although, according to the reviewer, the authors take a balanced view.
Reviewer Seth Brown starts out by noting: Public relations, oddly enough does not have great PR.
A little later he says: Industry professionals come down on both sides of the issue. Some say that PR is generally truthful while other say that white lies are part of the job. A poll of insiders revealed that most don't feel that telling the truth is part of the job.
Here it is not clear whether he is getting this from the book or from other sources; a reference would have been nice. I am not sure what "insiders" were polled, but it seems like an outrageous statement that everyone I know in PR would dispute.
At worst it seems downright inflammatory and inaccurate, at best it presents a naive and incomplete view. As anyone skilled in the art of rhetoric knows – politicians, lawyers, pundits, educators, yes journalists, too – there are many shades of truth and presenting a side of reality that is consistent with your worldview while not going out of your way to simultaneously argue an opposing view is not quite the same thing as being a liar.
Another interesting conclusion has to do with PR's role as being a major influencer of the news of the day. Obviously, an important goal of PR is to get our clients portrayed prominently and favorably in the media. Despite the (at best) ambivalent view of journalists towards PR, according to the review:
Yet without the PR industry, Morris and Goldsworthy argue, there would be little news. A 2008 study of news stories in U.K. newspapers found that more than half contained mostly PR material. A study in the Columbia Journalism Review found that more than half the stories in an edition of the Wall Street Journal "were based solely on press releases."
Here I feel very mixed. On the one hand I am impressed that we apparently have this much of a role in shaping the news. On the other hand, again, this does not seem to jibe with reality and I am sure the good hard working journalists at the respective publications would take issue with the conclusions.
The review does say that it is not easy to evaluate the role pf PR, and correctly notes that PR is low cost when compared with advertising. According to the Seth Brown, the authors do defend PR and say that it is by itself amoral, hard to define and important to a free press.
Brown concludes: If you are looking for a book to conclusively answer your PR questions, keep looking.
What questions? Does everything need to have precise boundaries and be easily reduced?
