PROPAGANDA: A FORM OF PR?

Many journalists assume that public relations is largely propaganda. Many public relations practitioners tend to break-out-in-a-rash at this accusation. I personally don’t, I have long accepted that there will never be a clear distinction between the two; denying that PR practitioners use strategies and campaigns to persuade anyone about anything in my view is preposterous.

The connection between propaganda and public relations (quite frankly I don’t know why academics and scholars have crafted to separate definitions) can be further explored with some of the more definitions out there.

The European Public Relations definition of public relations is ‘the conscious organisation of communication’. It also defines public relations as ‘a management function’ using the Iraqi war and ‘the embedded journalists’ as an n example, isn’t this just a classic example of public relations? Why is this considered largely propaganda?

Propaganda has been described as ‘the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognition and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist’ (Jowett and O’Donnell 1992)

This emphasises the purposefulness of propaganda, its organisation and the way propaganda seeks to further the sender’s not the receiver’s interests. It also draws further on the point that the propagandist seeks to influence the thoughts and behaviour of the audience. The issue is that it could equally describe a great deal of public relations activity. Edward Bernays (the father of public relations) has famously described public relations as ‘the engineering of consent’.

If PR is about persuading people to consent to the purpose of an organisation – or person, why is it any different from the definitions given above on propaganda? This is all hypocritical in the public relations practitioners path, we all want to be “ethical” and “correct” by labelling the “dutier” aspects of our discipline of looking after reputation.

To go one step further, too many PR scholars focus in its wartime application. I’m still searching for truly convincing civil or corporate examples of propaganda.

I am not convinced that examining the nature of war, the attempt to achieve mutual understanding and to establish a beneficial relationship, between the government and the publics – we can ever achieve PR – it will always be seen as propaganda.

Scholar Taylor (1992) has said we should discard any notions of propaganda being “good” or “bad”, and use those terms merely to describe effective or ineffective propaganda.

He raises a key issue of intent in propaganda, not just who says what to whom, but why (Taylor 2001). I utterly agree with this approach as I believe propaganda should be re-examined rather than demonised in PR texts.

Utterly, the role of PR in political, military and corporate communications is seen as fuelling propaganda.