What is PR?

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What is PR

Public relations (PR) is the development and management of ethical strategies using communication to build relationships with stakeholders or publics. It is the management of communication between an organisation and its publics. PR is all about reputation and its main goal department is to enhance a company’s reputation.  It is the result of what you say and what others say about you. It is used to gain trust and understanding an organisation and its various publics, such as employees, investors, local community. Therefore, communication, social and reputation are the best three words to describe PR.

PR is not synonymous with publicity and media relations, because publicity or media relations is just one aspect of the diverse field of PR. PR evolved from a ‘press agentry’ function. But even though media remains very important, and PR today is about more than just mass media. According to British academic Kevin Moloney, PR is propaganda, but this view assumes all PR is misleading and involves deception and distortion. And it also ignores the role PR plays in building relationships with publics or stakeholders.

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Literally, ‘relations with publics’ which today is more commonly referred to as ‘stakeholders’, such as media, pressure groups (aka activists), customers, shareholders or investors, and employees,communities,governments,suppliers, competitors and trade/industry/professional bodies. Everyone has PR, Having ‘public relations’ is not a choice, the choice is whether to identify and manage significant relationships or not. In the long term, managing relationships successfully requires ethical conduct. So effective PR cannot be about deception and manipulation, i.e., propaganda. Real PR builds Trust, and Credibility and real PR requires honesty, a genuine concern for the needs and expectations of the publics and dialogue, i.e., listening as ...

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