Public Relations Democracy: Public Relations, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain

Citation

Moloney, K. (2003), "Public Relations Democracy: Public Relations, Politics and the Mass Media in Britain", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 278-278. https://doi.org/10.1108/13563280310506449

Aeron Davis has put three words together for the title of his book that are rarely combined: Public Relations Democracy. US textbooks on PR make the connection but the academic literature largely does not, and neither do most professionals. It is not clear what he means by this unusual three word combination. We can imagine two meanings – that PR (and its alter ego, corporate communications) is done by more businesses, groups and people and this increasing popularity is itself democratic; or that PR of its very nature aids democracy by giving interests a voice in public debate. Perhaps in the preface Davis veers towards the first interpretation but whatever he meant, there are still good reasons for reading on.

PR/corporate communications have grown and become more influential in the last twenty years, with an eleven‐fold increase in consultancy turnover (introduction). Financial PR has prospered since the Thatcherite pro‐market reforms, and trade unions and politicians have also taken to PR in a significant way. PR/corporate communicators show great professional skills in building up their “media capital” – knowing how to supply stories at the right time to copy‐needy, harassed journalists who seek expert and authoritative sources. Indeed, we are supplying so much good copy to fewer journalists that we are blurring the line between our output and their news. This is just the finding that the more enthusiastic PR advocates want to hear.

Davis also notes that unions, protest and resource‐poor groups can use PR effectively because it is skills‐based activity which can be done by one person with passion and ingenuity as well as by a dozen press officers in corporate headquarters. There is at this point a tension in Davis’s findings, for although his book charts the increasing influence of public relations professionals (PPR), it draws attention to the fact that their skills are available to the passionate amateur as well. But for the most part, PPRs and corporate communicators can feel secure. He concludes (p. 177), that:

Many interest groups and individuals do not have the minimum resources available to mount even basic PR operations . . .

This suggests that doing PR well still favours the rich and powerful, and so makes a public relations democracy unlikely.