What is Public Relations?

And what would disqualify something from being considered true PR?

Public relations is a communication function of management that adapts to a given environment of a situation while identifying mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and the public.

Public relations writing is all about calming a situation down, while producing happy and settling news. Along with that comes the roles and responsibilities of public relations writing which is not like any ordinary type of writing –– it is a crisis response. To follow the guidelines of a public relations crisis response, the writer needs to: lead and not hide, acknowledge the problem, act in the public interest, move quickly, rely on values, apologize, fix the problem, communicate quickly, use all channels of communication, and know when to take it offline. A form of writing within public relations includes a press release which “informs the media about an important topic that deserves public attention...creates awareness...and inspires action” (Filak 204). The roles and responsibilities also vary from ordinary forms of writing since you need to reach out to the public, preform damage control, connect to the audience, reach out to the community, keep the clients up to date, and be honest. Even though the topics are controversial, all this needs to happen at the same time to prevent and control disasters while reporting the information.

There is no such thing as bad publicity.

Bad press is better than no press, “the trick is to generate enough publicity –– bad or good” (Writing Cooperative). When people “are trying to raise a big stink about how some work is immoral, incorrect, offensive, or corrupting the youth of the world, they're just giving it attention” which creates a sense of “curiosity as to why this thing’s so offensive” (TVTropes). On the other hand, “public relations is 88% more effective than advertising” due to public relations being earned media and advertising being paid media. It also builds trust, adds third-party validation, there is no guarantee but it must persuade media, media controls the final version, uses languages that people can comprehend, and is less expensive (Forbes). While considering what is public relations and what is not, public relations needs to be truthful and include conflict, but advertising does not have to be truthful and should include conflict.

After participating in a class role play exercise about public relations, I was reinforced with crisis communication methods. While talking about the Tesla’s autopilot crash, Elon Musk “bragged about his cars’ self-driving capabilities and promised they’ll be fully autonomous starting next year,” but needs to state that the drivers need to do more than just paying attention –– they also need to keep their hands on the wheel (Wired). This crisis was handled correctly by Matt who did our role play exercise due to his professional language and correct management with the given situation. He developed the message, and provided feedback by identifying the possible problems for prevention through the crisis communication plan. Public relations is all about presenting information in the most favorable light for an organization. There is still controversy if public relations raises ethical issues when there is a lack of disclosure though due to spinning or framing.