PR for the 21st century

When you look at the current definition of public relations that is mentioned in Stuart Ellitott´s New York Times article, you can feel that something is missing. Let see “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” What is wrong about this definition? The world has change in the last 20 year, and the ways of people communicate with corporations and between them as well. Internet and social media have shifted the relationship between the public and those that used communicating messages to them, now that process is not a monologue, it´s indeed a two ways information super highway. That change has generated that current PR concept could be perceived as misleading. For that, and others reason, the industry’s largest organization, the Public Relations Society of America, started a research and an effort to develop a better definition of “public relations,” one more appropriate for this century.

I have been trying to think about my own definition of public relations, and it´s kind of tricky, but even that I´m not an expert in PR I would say something like, PR is the communicate process that create strategies to maintain a good relation and understanding, between corporations and their public, in an ethical manner.

In my concept I incorporated the word ethical, to add the implication that you can work for organizations or people, creating strategies to maintain a good image of them for their public, but you have to follow the path of the ethics.

The Public Relations Society of America started an effort to develop a new definition of PR last year. These are the final candidates definitions of Public Relations:

 Definition No. 1:

Public relations is the management function of researching, engaging, communicating, and collaborating with stakeholders in an ethical manner to build mutually beneficial relationships and achieve results.

(Read the annotated version here.)

Definition No. 2:

Public relations is a strategic communication process that develops and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their key publics.

(Read the annotated version here.)

Definition No. 3:

Public relations is the engagement between organizations and individuals to achieve mutual understanding and realize strategic goals.

(Read the annotated version here.)

Along with Elliott’s article, Gerard Corbett’s article also mentions recent PR ethical breaches. I read about the case that Facebook’s attempted smear campaign against Google. That action put in a terrible position, not just one PR firm, but also an entirely PR world, because one agency didn´t realize that even when you are loyal to your client, you also have to be loyal to the public of that client. The case called Whisper Gate, In few words, Facebook hired  a one PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, to pitch stories about how Google’s foray into social networking was supposedly creating privacy concerns.

In those stories about the topic, there was no mention that Facebook was behind it. The pitch was discovered for one newspaper, the USA Today, that called the pitch foul. That kind of strategies let a open door for bad interpretations about how is seems the industry of the public relation, and attempt against the values and principles of transparency, justice and autonomy that are mentioned in the PRSA’ s Code of Ethics

Click here for more details about Whisper Gate 

  Finally, I am glad to know that PRSA and the FTC are monitoring various public relations practices; I think that those actions will improve the field in terms of ethics. For instead, the first example that Corbett mentioned is that now PR representing dictators will be monitoring by the industry. I think that is a great steps for improve some ethical issues about this topic, I know that the case about politic freedom is not widely know in countries like The United States, where every person has the right to speak and say whatever they want.  But in other places, where people cannot enjoy that kind of freedom, would be horrible that kind of leadership will be help for PR firms to establish. Another interesting initiative could be to implement a international PR organization, that only goal will be to monitoring the PR world, research and discuss about ethical cases, and establish clear politics about ethical guidelines of the PR field.