One of the founders of public relations could not explain what he did
Ivy Lee rebuilt the battered Rockefeller reputation and, with Edward Bernays, drafted an early definition of public relations. Yet asked at a hearing to describe his job, Lee admitted he had never found a satisfying phrase for it. A century later, the profession is still rewriting its own definition.
At heart, public relations means managing what an individual or organisation tells the public in order to shape how it is seen. It differs from publicity, which comes from outsiders and cannot be controlled, and from advertising, which is bought. The classic PR goal is earned media: persuading a journalist to write an article featuring a client instead of paying for an advertisement beside it. PR and journalism are intertwined through media relations, but their aims diverge, since reporters strive for impartiality while PR presents events in the light that suits its employer.
Lee and Bernays framed the field in the early twentieth century as a management function: measuring public attitudes, setting an organisation's policies and then running a programme to win acceptance. Bernays described the PR counsel as someone working through modern media and social groups to plant ideas in public consciousness. Even so, the historian Eric Goldman noted in 1948 that practitioners and critics alike would dispute the dictionary's definition.
Official definitions have multiplied. In August 1978 a world assembly of PR associations called it an art and social science of analysing trends, advising leaders and serving both organisation and public. The Public Relations Society of America stressed mutual adaptation between organisations and their publics in 1982, then in 2011 and 2012 crowdsourced a new definition by public vote, settling on strategic communication that builds mutually beneficial relationships. Britain's Chartered Institute of Public Relations puts reputation at the centre, treating it as the sum of an organisation's actions, its words and the verdicts of other people.
The day-to-day work is broad. Practitioners write press releases, speeches and social media content, arrange interviews, prepare executives for press conferences, handle crises and internal communications, and run brand campaigns and events. They work in agencies, companies, government information offices and charities, under titles running from account executive to director.
Source: Public relations
