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chapter 12 is all about the interactions between institutions and the various publics they deal with how they build relationships and manage them we're going to look at the history of PR and how the news is used so what is public relations we hear this term a lot but many of us may not know exactly what the term means it is a management function of an organization the PR department establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the different publics the publics that they manage relationships with can help the organization fail or succeed these relationships are very important to companies and so a lot of energy goes into them so here's the definition for public relations the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the public on whom it's success or failure depends public relations began as early as the 18th century during the American Revolution Thomas Payne's pamphlet Common Sense urged the colonies to break with England and helped rally people for that cause the first forms of public relations were known as press agentry and this involved sending out information in a type of one-way communication there was little feedback from the audience and the agent who sent the message message was devoted more to gaining public opinion in their favor than being honest or ethical the tactics of press agentry were used by PT Barnum who was famed for his traveling freak shows which eventually turned into Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus he used the press to create interest in his shows even writing letters to local newspapers under assumed names he would accuse himself of Fraud and then in turn get people talking and filling the seats to catch him in his tricks standard oil used press agentry in the early days to send out advertisements that looked like news articles and it was this type of one-way communication that began to transform uh with the rise of the penny press and muckraking and investigative journalism was really digging in there and and finding the truth and then there became less uh less of these oneway Communications because they were being exposed for what they were and um the fact that their practices weren't always for the good of everybody were were being exposed to the public in the case of the temperance movement which sought to get rid of alcohol and the anti-slavery movement um press agentry was the only means to gain public support and so this trend continued until the 1920s as railroad companies found a need to defend themselves in the public eye because of things that were happening so enter Ivy Lee he was an early PR practitioner and his work on crisis management for the railroad system was one of the first examples where the communication lines between the company and the publics it dealt with became a conversation uh to find a solution to deal with an emerging problem and so this mutually beneficial conversation helped repair um the railroad company's image at the time the railroads had long practiced suppression of stories about accidents they even paid journalists not to run stories about their accidents and Lee came in and he saw the importance of telling the public the truth not because it was moral but because it was an effective tactic when the truth was told through the company a better version could be released that was not so accusatory and helped sway public opinion in the favor of his clients so iy Lee would even go so far as to finance the journalist trip to come and cover the event or the story or the accident so he turned the journalists into partners and in turn the truth was told in a more favorable light his Declaration of principles was a statement released to the Press about his role in handling crisises for companies and it can be summarized as a promise to openly and honestly Supply accurate and timely news to the press and here's here's his his declaration so this statement was noted as the turning point from an era of press agentry to the era of public relations the public world would no longer be fed information they would participate in the creation of that information as engineered by a PR practitioner so they were teaching people to tell the story they wanted told to make people look better so Ivy Lee is cited as the founder of PR but Edward bernes um brought PR to another level he introduced the ideas of his uncle Sigman Freud into his work and he was the first PR practitioner to intentionally use psychoanalysis to affect a large number of people and he was very very interested in the crowd mentality he called his technique engineering cons sent which is defined as applying the principles of psychology and motivation to influence public opinion he wrote a series of books on the topic in the first and was the first to teach classes on public relations at New York University uh basically bernes revolutionized the public relations field he was very influential figure in the shaping of our modern consumer culture he worked with presidents corporations and fully developed Ved the two-way Communication in PR that is accompanied by actions on the side of the institution and he really just recognized the importance of the crowd and and how much control they had okay so let's go back in time a little bit and look at how PR began to grow and became necessary during World War I between 1914 and 1918 the government found that persuasive communication could mobilize public support on the issues so woodro Wilson created the Committee on Public Information or the CPI uh and they were created just to do that to mobilize public support on issues they hired former Rocky Mountain news editor George creel to head the committee and began a campaign to build American support for the war the techniques were primitive and slower compared to our modern capabilities because radio and TV were still being developed so to spread the word and favorable opinion of the war the committee enlisted 75,000 4minute men to deliver 4minute speeches at community events like meetings at churches and at Civic groups the targeted speech givers were respected professionals usually and worked uh in the position of opinion leader to to Garner support for the war so they disseminated the message and convinced the people around them to agree or influence their ideas in some ways and this campaign proved very effective and it was used for other government issues later on Bern described the three major functions of PR as informing is just getting the message out to the different publics that are involved so this can be done through press releases and announcements um and then you have persuading or attempting to induce a public opinion about the information that you're giving them and then integrating or attempting to bring the goals of the public and the goals of the institution together so that they're both working for the same thing so br's felt that things in the world were moving too fast for the average person to deal with so PR was now necessary for a good and properly functioning society and that the relationships had to be mutually beneficial in order to serve the institution's best interest the pr process can be defined through the ropes model it begins with research uh PR practitioners look at how the public sees the company or product or idea um what's being said about it and they also bring in focus groups to talk about their ideas so this is consumer research and then measurable outcomes or objectives are set what does the client want to accomplish and how can it be measured so they figure that out during the objective stage the next step is programming the pr group decides which activities will carry out the objectives um what type of advertising will work best what type of editorials meetings Etc which tactic will help them Reach their clients goals that they figured out from the research and the measurable objectives then the practices are evaluated so research from the beginning of the ropes process is compared to new tests and observations and outcomes and then the S is stewardship and this is the process of maintaining the relationship that has been built through the entire process so they have to work to keep that relationship good and mutually beneficial for both the audience and the institution you may have noticed me refer to Publix as a plural throughout the slide presentation so far and that is because there are more than one group or more more than one groups that ha have to be considered when designing a PR campaign the public is the group that needs to be communicated to in general but you can split this down even further to internal public and these are the people who work for the company itself they may know more about the internal workings and general attitude of the institution than the external public uh usually they receive communication through newsletters and memos and training videos or closed circuit TV or Internet um which is a network within the company and these communications are important because their opinions will be disseminated to the public through family and friends and are taken very seriously because they're part of the company that they're talking about external publics are people outside uh they're less familiar with the internal practices and formulate an image of a company through the messages that they receive and hear through various communication channels channels so they're outside um and they are communicated to through the Press through press releases and advertising in press conferences and newspapers the two-way interaction between the company and the sources or Outlets of information for the public are known as media relations and these relationships can form a positive or negative public opinion and are really important points of contact when communicating with the public as a PR person so crisis communication is another important function of public relations and this type of communication is when an unexpected event shines a negative light on a company so this situation can be very damaging and failing to recover after a crisis can put a company out of business so PR practitioners must foresee possible disasters like an airline has a plan in place already to manage a plane crash through the media in the most effective crisis management there is already a plan in place for any possible crisis and if a crisis does occur it is imperative that the communications with the public are honest if you're not honest you'll usually be discovered and the way you covered up the truth is likely to make you look much worse than the act or the situation itself so the public really does not like being lied to uh Richard Nixon Bill Clinton these are all examples of this dishonesty mistake in the face of Crisis and the repercussions of that were far worse than any of the situations themselves so not only did it damage their career it showed them to be dishonest people in the public eye the next PR rule of Crisis management is to apologize sincerely with words and actions so you have to rectify the situation and repair the damage as much as you can in view of the public you have to recall damage products clean up your oil spills enter rehab whatever your infraction you have to say your sorry and you have to show your sorry to the public during a crisis timing is really important it's important to take Swift action and hope that it disappears from the public radar so you can't let others interpret the situation for you by sitting on your hands you should be actively trying to do damage control within 45 minutes to 12 hours of an incident and that's the basic when window of opportunity to get your side of the story out to the media before they make up a story for you um during crisis management it's also really important to communicate directly to all of your Public's with internal external and media sources being addressed in appropriate ways the book cites some examples of effective and ineffective crisis management during the Tylenol scare 1982 seven people uh in Chicago were Poisoned With cyanide laced Tylenol and died um the products had been intentionally tampered with and the Johnson and Johnson company swiftly held a press conference and openly and honestly shared the news and concerns with the public and then they quickly pulled the Tylenol off the shelves in Chicago and then they pulled it in the rest of the nation as well they quit advertising the product made some appearances on television and in the newspapers about the situation uh they then reintroduced with a triple sealed packaging which made consumers feel safer um and then Tylenol cells began to pick up again and they quickly managed the crisis and regained The public's trust in their product uh the campaign was super effective when we think of the Tylenol scare and how bad that was that seven people died from cyanide poisoning they really took care of that and in a sense of public relations and on the other hand when most of us hear words like Exon Valdes we have an image of a oil soaked duck you know dying on the beach pop into our minds because they didn't they didn't effectively take care of the public relations end of that crisis so the Exxon vald oil spill in 1989 240,000 barrels of crude oil was spilled into the ocean and basically Exxon was seen as the perpetrators of the disaster and their crisis plan was just not in place to handle the situation basically what they did wrong was that they waited too long to respond and they were not prepared to respond when they did so the news media began pumping out information the information that they had which was pictures of oil soaked wildlife and beaches um Exxon failed to accept responsibility for the accident they tried to share the blame with the Coast Guard and they didn't have the proper equipment in the area to clean it up so to this day because there was no apology no action they waited too long to respond their corporate image is still suffering from this you can look at this crisis in contrast to the recent BP spill in the gulf and while they made some mistakes and we were all pretty sheltered from The Bleak images of the destruction and largely saturated with images of the cleanup and how and what they were doing to rectify the situation so how how a crisis is handled can make or break a company so we're still able to find images and counts of wildlife deaths from the BP spill if we seek them out even though they're not being widely covered and this is because we have the internet the internet is a huge Challenge and an asset in some cases to PR professionals it removes The Gatekeepers of Knowledge from the recipe of information dissemination so there are no checks and balances and you can find a wealth of information to support almost any Viewpoint and sources can be skewed and biased and even untruthful online information can spread like wildfire and it can't be contained to certain sources anyone who hyperlinks or repeats information shares in the spreading of that information leaks of documents phone calls videotapes anything can be transmitted on the web to a global audience within seconds and if there's no good information available rumors will flourish on the web so it's important to get the information the public relations department wants out there so that the rumors can be falsified and this is a perfect illustration of Truth 5 outlined by the book New Media are always scary PR groups have a harder time controlling the flow of information with the internet which is really important in the process of creating an image you have to be able to control the flow of information in response to the internet interet crisis PR groups will scan the web and find out what people are saying about a situation and respond to their ideas so it's like the research part of ropes in high speeded without asking so the pr companies must respond very quickly to get their side or the company they represents side of the story out into the Public's mouth before other information gets there that is more negative so in the age of the internet they must act very quickly and know what they are facing in order to be effective in managing the relationships between the audience and consumer and the institution a lot of the news we get started with a public relations professional we read and watch reports that began as press releases and conferences and speeches or events designed by PR agents to be covered by the media the Columbia journalism review reported that 40 to 90% of all our news stories began as public relations well this number sounds kind of frightening as far as real reporting and news stories go PR people are limited in their effects on how the news is reported once the information is released they can shape it and form it into the best possible light and still receive negative coverage through news sources and the public at large so PR people do not have this overbearing control of information they just have some control and it's their job to build and maintain good relationships with the world public relations has long held a place in politics and much of the show we watch play out in Washington is engineered by PR Specialists trying to help politicians sway the public opinion on issues uh President Obama came forward with his college age drug use um during the first election and the issue was largely forgotten unlike Bill Clinton's I didn't inhale bit which followed him throughout his career uh Obama openly and honestly admitted uh the illegal activity before it was framed by the press in a negative light and this is PR at its best is is nipping something in the bud before before it gets out of control and a negative spin on it more than 34,000 lobbyists are registered to work in Washington with the main purpose of their work to sway leaders to Champion their causes on behalf of outside organizations in the public sphere and of course the military one of the first government agencies to use PR practices during World War I when tactics are used to shape ideas about a situation before the Press gets a hold of it this is known as spin control the public relations function is to guide the interpretations of issues in a way that is not damaging to the client so some techniques that have proved effective for controlling the spin on a story include selective leaks early on in the hopes of focusing reporters attention on the immediate early information a kind of like look while all these other things are happening under the radar um get the information out early in your version the one who needs to be protected tells their side of the story first and interprets it for the Press uh two side of the story is a technique uh we're not lying and neither are they we just have different perspective of the story and this is our side so PR is basically just a really effective tool for maintaining solid relationships between institutions and their publics it's been used to create effective forces behind social movements as well and it does not always serve you know these big institutional entities and politicians and advertisers activists also employ these techniques and they've been used really effectively in social movements and including civil rights environmentalism and advocacy groups so that's all I have for you on chapter 12 thanks for listening have a good day