Public Relations in Governance

Governance and Government:

According to UNESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), Governance is "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented or not implemented". Simply put, governance is what the government does. On the other hand, Good Governance means the processes implemented by organization or institution to produce favorable results to meet the needs of its stakeholders, while making the best use of resources – human, technological, financial, natural and environmental – at its disposal.

The basic purpose of governance are – maintaining order in the society, ensuring prosperity for the people, avoiding conflicts among or with the people and managing crisis or disaster. While accountability is key tenet of Good Governance; the major elements of good governance are transparency, consensus, people’s participation and responsiveness. Consensus is also important for avoiding conflicts and waste of resources.

Thus, two preconditions for Good Governance are that people must participate in government’s activities and accept its decisions. However, people’s opinions often and generally remain divided on any major government decisions without the much-needed consensus. Therefore, favorable opinion formation plays crucial role in governance. Romans even said that the voice of people is the voice of God (vox populi, vox dei). In our modern participatory democracy too, people or citizens, in fact, play the central role. 

Public Relations for public:

The later part of Industrial Revolution in the West had seen increasing need for market exploitation. Mobilization of people’s opinion for political or religious causes, influencing people’s minds for selling product and such other needs saw growth of a creed called the Publicists.

There had been innumerous attempts to define Public Relations since Ivy Ledbetter Lee, an American publicity expert, first coined the term in 1897. Lee, who started his career as a Publicity Manager in 1903, later worked for the Rockefeller family and the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1905, he established a public relations firm – Parker & Lee - mainly catering to publicity needs. The public relations that Lee practiced was honest communication based on the Publicity Model. Lee believed - good public relations was not possible without good performance. For him, Public Relations is a communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationship between organization and their publics (the target audience).

According to Lee, a PR practitioner essentially was a liaison man between the organization and its publics. While the PR man will try to build goodwill for the organization, the organization in turn would continuously reinvent itself and adopt better ethical and humane practices. The theoretical essence of all government PR even today is the same – that the government will act for the benefit of the citizen and the PR man will ensure generation of enough goodwill so that the citizen would support the government. 

Public Relations for propaganda:

However, Edward Luis James Barneys added a new twist to the concept of PR in the 1920s when he said that PR is the attempt by information, persuasion and adjustment to engineer public support for an activity, cause, movement or institution. Ethics and honesty in communication took a backseat for Barneys, who was an Austrian – American and is widely regarded as “the father of Public Relations”. The definition of Public Relations given by Barney in his book “Crystallizing Public Opinion” was published in 1923.

Unlike Lee, Barneys was a crafty propagandist well versed in media handling who believed that people’s opinion can and need be influenced for generating goodwill. Legends goes that Barneys convinced Thomas Masaryk, the founder of modern Czechoslovakia, to delay announcement of the country’s independence by a day for better press coverage. He would go to any length to influence people’s opinion favorably for the organization. When the American Tobacco Company asked him to promote smoking among women to increase sale of its Lucky Strike brand, he readily agreed and staged a series of events to make American women believe that smoking in public was symbolic to freedom for women. In one such event called “Light Up, America”, he arranged for many famous women to publicly light up a Lucky Strike all across America at the same time. In another event, he made some women light up cigarettes in New York’s Easter Sunday parade making the cigarettes their “Torches of Freedom”.

We find parallels of Barneys PR in modern day governments and politics, when events are staged to catch public attention. Easy-to-remember slogans like “Parivartan” (Change), “Make America Great Again” etc. are coined to create stereotype and thus crystalize public opinion.      

Why do government need Public Relations?

We can find many examples of Governments communicating with people throughout the history of mankind.  The people holding power by virtue of being in the government needs people’s participation and support for continuation in power. Even governments enjoying absolute majority last for only five years in our country and would need people’s goodwill to return to power. On the other hand, the importance of people’s participation was aptly exemplified by the less than partial success of the First Five-year plan when the large number of government schemes for boosting agricultural production found no takers. The polio-eradication plan of the government would have been a failure without people’s participation.

Government also needs to build up consensus on vexed issues for smooth implementation of necessary but unpopular decisions. The introduction of Goods and Service Tax (GST) in place of a plethora of State and Central Taxes would not have been possible without a consensus. Government also needs to avoid conflicts. Doing away with government subsidy for domestic LPG or recent de-monetization would not have been possible without communication efforts for avoiding conflicts. Building Big Dams for hydroelectricity is currently testing government’s communication efforts in avoiding conflicts. The communication skills of PR professional can immensely help government to achieve these objectives.   

How Public Relations is practiced in government?

Starting with Lee and Barneys, PR practices had remained more or less same through the two World Wars till 1990s.  Since then, however, PR has developed immensely to become a major profession and academic discipline.  The government has limited need for specialized communication skills, as the purpose of PR in government is limited to getting publicity, running propaganda and occasional consensus building. Politicians who head governments are already adept in such communications inherent in political campaigns. These politicians, when they head governments, become the government spokespersons and set the basic goal for government public relations to keep the public sphere favourable. The government PR thus, serves the need of the political masters.

To achieve this most PR people in government do publicity – both earned and paid for (i.e. advertising). The mainstay of earned publicity campaign for government still is the press releases and press conferences. Occasionally, media professional are coerced or motivated to carry government publicity materials. Events, exhibition, rally etc. serve the purpose of government propaganda. The tools employed by government for consensus building are workshops, conferences, round-table discussions, negotiations etc.

While using these tools of public relations in government, tradition plays the most important role. Majority of government PR people who head the public relations department are on the job learners. For them public relations is what they practice. Precedents and common sense are two most prevalent guides for these PR practitioners. Media personnel are heavily dependent on government PR people for information. A fact amplified by relative lack of news on Saturdays and Sundays when government departments remain close. These media people provide the much-needed earned publicity and hence are great friends of government PR professionals. Moreover, government is the single big revenue provider for the media industry in our country.

Thus, it is smooth sailing for government PR so far. While public relations as a profession and as an academic discipline is developing tremendously throughout the world, government PR in India is still confined to the above mentioned few functions. However, given the potential of PR, it could play a very significant role in good governance, which unfortunately is being denied to it.

Cry baby

"They write whatever they feel or think, they never bother to confirm from me. They write all kinds of imaginary things. They are ruining the image of my organization and putting my job at stake".
This was not a cry baby, but a grown up government public relations personnel. He was lamenting on media people writing all kinds of stories which had little facts and a lot of imagination. "What can I do?", was all he could manage to say.
What he (and lot of other PR professional in similar places) fail to realize is that newspapers has at least 60,000 square centimeter of space to fill everyday. They need news that can be written about; that can fill up space. Simple "yes" or "no" does not take much of a space. If you say nothing, they will "find" something to write and print. That may be imagination, hearsay, trash or pure misrepresentation of facts.
If you do not say enough for mediamen to write and fill up ample spaces, you really do not have much to complain about. Give them a lot to write, they will write what you say. They will not resort to inventing news if they do not have to. For a better PR, please speak.

Opinion Engineering

One of my teachers talked about opinion formulation and role of media in opinion engineering in the class the other day. He was elaborate on the practice of newspapers trying to train its readers to read certain kinds of news written in specific language and style - and how this training goes to form a loyal and dedicated readership.
One may question why am I taking up this forum to talk about what the teacher said in a class of twenty students instead of saying whatever I have to say in the class itself. I have two reasons for it – first, I did not want to disturb the class and the second and most important, what he said is not so simple and innocent a statement and needs to be debated in public sphere.
People absorb attitude from the culture that surrounds them as they grow up. This absorption of attitude lead to formation of public opinion . When attitude are based on deeply-held personal values, persuasion can hardly influence attitude. Public opinion, once formed and set-in stick for years afterwards. It is during our college years that social and political ideas crystallize in our minds on the basis of our observation of the world around us at that time.
For Public Relations the biggest problem today is not getting noticed – the problem is getting believed and trusted. No Public Relations policy, however well planned it may be, can build trust if reality is working towards destroying it. It is foolish to assume that people’s mind are like empty can that you can pour whatever liquid you like to.
We are living in era where people’s trust in public institutions, policy makers, elected representatives and the whole gamut of governance is fast eroding. People in the government think because they have been vested with the right to do, people will believe what they do are right. A large majority of our own people are trying to remain blind to the growing cynicism and changed values of the new generation and like to believe that all their communication messages would have the same credibility they enjoyed three decades ago.
Edward L. Bernay’s defined Public Relations as - “Public Relations is that discipline that helps reconcile institutional or individual behaviour in a manner that accords with the public interest and when effectively communicated, creates opinion or attitude that motivate target audience to specific course of action. There are two distinguished part in the definition – behaviour and communication. No communication, however excellent it may be, can be effective if the behaviour of the individual or the institution is not good. The government today is not trusted not because of lack of effective communication but because of bad behaviour and performance.

Spin as a Career

I will not blame you if you decide to skip this piece and prefer to continue with more meaningful writings in this compilation. It appears that Cricket as a medium of mass hysteria has finally lived its time and people are replacing specialist cricket players with heroes from other spheres of life as their idol; especially so after the recent World Cup debacle of the Indian cricket team. Pepsi has replaced cricket legends with small kids in their television advertisement and other companies have either stopped airing their commercials with cricketers or have developed new commercials. There are other forms of rebuttal aimed at Indian cricketers reported in the media. Thus, I understand, it is not the correct time to talk cricket.
However, in case you care to read on, let me quickly clarify my intention so that I can escape the agony of outright condemnation and rejection. I am trying to talk about an altogether different career prospects here. In the field of Public Relations, spin is a usually an uncomplimentary term used to mean a biased, one-sided presentation of an event or situation through deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics to mobilize opinion in one's own favour. Traditional public relations practitioners generally rely on honest and creative presentation of facts for mobilizing people’s opinion. But, public relations people relying on ‘spin’ often do not care for ethics or rules and prefer to get public favour by all means. The term is dramatized and somewhat legitimized by media which more than often prefer to refer to all kind of public relations practice as ‘spin’. We, the public relations practitioners, are still not sure whether ‘spin’ can be called public relations or not. The debate is, in fact, raging hot now.
So, what makes ‘spin’ different from public relations? The term ‘spin’ is borrowed from cricket, where a spin bowler delivers the ball in such a way that it curves through the air, bounces and changes direction fooling the batsman and putting the bowler in an advantageous position to get the batsman bowled out. A public relations practitioner who uses cherry picking (selectively presenting facts and quotes that supports his/her position), equivocation, euphemism or phrases his words in such a way that assumes unproven truths to fool his public in believing him is said to be using ‘spin’.
According to Wikipedia, the term Cherry Picking originated from the fact that while harvesting cherries, or any other fruit, the picker would be expected to only select the ripest and healthiest fruits. An observer who only sees the selected fruit may thus wrongly conclude that most, or even all, of the fruit are very good. Thus, cherry picking metaphorically indicate the act of presenting facts that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related facts that may contradict that position. For example, proponents of some hair oil often cite rare cases in which hair growth was noticed after application of certain oil, whereas common scientific knowledge suggest that hair growth cannot be achieved by external application of any kind of oil available in the market. Cherry picking might be appropriate when a person is assigned to advocate a particular position like a lawyer in a criminal case, where it is assumed to be the responsibility of the opposing counsel to present any contrary data. Moreover, in common law guilt has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt and thus introducing 'cherry picked' evidence may be appropriate because, while such data may not prove something in general, it may be successful in introducing the needed minimum level of doubt to win the case. Cherry picking can also be justified in marketing campaigns where prime motive is to seduce customers to buy a product or service. However, when a person with a supposedly neutral position like journalists, public relations professionals, scientists, and judges cherry picks, it becomes not only inappropriate but also derogatory to the entire profession. A public relations professional need to be truthful not only to his/her employer but also to the public with whom he or she is communicating because the foundation of good public relations is mutual understanding and goodwill. Cherry picking in public relations seldom helps as ‘you cannot fool all the people all the time’. Besides being unethical, cherry picking might help the PR man to get some publicity for his employer in the short run, but once his bluffs are revealed he will never be trusted again; neither by the media nor by the people.
On the other hand, equivocation is often used to give misleading impression. Politicians regularly use equivocation when they say allegations against them are ‘ridiculous’ ‘misleading’ or ‘absurd’ without saying that they are false. Examples of use of euphemism are like not exactly thin for "fat", not completely truthful for "lied", not unlike cheating for "cheating" etc. Journalists are apt at deciphering equivocation and euphemism and so are common people now-a-days. Media manipulation for building favourable public opinion is not an easy task. Using equivocation and euphemism in ‘spin’ is a challenging task and needs superb command over the language and presence of mind. One also needs to be smart and unashamed to some extent to be a ‘spin’ specialist.
It may seem to be glamorous to be titled a ‘spin doctor’, but the glamour has its own peril. Over the last two or three decades, public relations has transformed from an occupation to a profession and has developed into a discipline in academics. This growth has seen the subject being developed as a management tool for such decision making which is beneficial for long-term objectives of both an organization and its public. This growth has also seen public relations being distinguished from blunt marketing, self-centered publicity or propaganda. ‘Spin’ essentially is a propaganda and publicity tool and thus should not be confused with public relations. A ‘spin’ specialist will be feared, ridiculed, suspected and may of course be financially rewarded. However, he or she will not be loved, revered, regarded and trusted. It is now your call to decide on your career.
Published in the Journal of Mass Comm Deptt, Gauhati University 2006

Fire Alarm

I work for a railroad company which operates in the Govt Sector. The other day (12th July), there occurred a small accident on a prestigious superfast train at a station (New Bongaigaon), about 150 km away from our headquarters where I am posted. The generator car of the train which houses the equipments for generating power for the train caught fire. It was just an accident, nothing to be read between the lines and the fire was controlled quickly.
The incident was reported to me very casually by a senior officer. I was told that the fire was a minor one and was controlled with the on-board fire-fighting equipments. To emphasize the frivolous nature of the accident, I was told that not even the fire brigade was informed, which otherwise is a standard procedure. Soon the fire was extinguished and the train continued it's journey carrying about 800 people, I was told. At that time I was not aware that information provided to me could not even be termed half truth. But, as friends from media called up, I gave them this piece of information sounding very authentic and dismissive.
Next day morning I had to hung my head on shame to find a photograph in a news paper showing a fire brigade engine standing next to the train at the station. Later inquiries revealed that the on-board fire fighting equipments did not work and we had to call the fire brigade to control the fire. It took them about half an hour to control the fire! All the newspaper were graphic in detailing how ill prepared were we to tackle such a situation and how we tried to misinform. The news items were clearly laced with obvious bias of the reporters at being misinformed (by me).
This was an immensely avoidable Public Relations disaster. The unintended misinformation will probably be not taken personally by most of the journalist friends, but it sure will linger on in the back of their mind for quite some time. And this sure will affect my credibility built over the last ten years!
Coming to genesis of what went wrong, I believe that as an organization we had nothing to be ashamed of or afraid of from the incident because anyone sane will readily agree that accidents can happen despite the best of measures. But we failed to had proper safety measures in place and the equipment meant for fighting the fire failed. Obviously it was someone's failure. The authorities probably was trying to evasive and shy away from public eye. And thus, they lied.
I also believe that if we had honestly said what happened and showed enough concern over our failure, the journalists would have understood and appreciated. Their trust on whatever information we provide would have increased. They probably would have thought, well these people are telling the truth and it was definitely not in their hands to prevent the accident.
They would not have allowed their reporting of the incident to be biased against us and at the end of the day the benefit would have been ours. It is probably time we sound the fire alarm that a lie is a lie is a lie always and it is not going to help us in any way.

In the league of liars

Two recent unrelated developments in the American media world vis-à-vis public relations professionals were perhaps pointers to the need of a closer look and introspection into the relationship between public relations professionals and journalists in our part of the world too.
Harold Burson, the founder of the renowned public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, had recently reacted very sharply to a comment by a lawyer at the CBS television’s “Sunday Morning” show on June 8. In an ‘unflattering diatribe’ on the behaviour and characteristics of Public Relations professionals, the lawyer had reportedly said that public relations is nothing but communicating lies.
Harold has been practicing public relations for more than sixty years now. He is the founder of renowned public relations firm Burson and Marsteller which has branches in various parts of Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. It had recently taken over Genesis Public Relations at Chennai. Harold’s internet blog is a must-read, almost like the daily newspaper, for many hard-core public relations professionals across the world.
CBS News Sunday Morning is, on the other hand, an immensely popular morning news magazine program in America. The programme hosted by Charles Osgood is broadcast on Sunday mornings on the CBS network. Sunday Morning premiered in 1979 and was originally hosted by Charles Kuralt until 1994.When a person in legal profession ends up saying public relations is all about communicating lies on such an acclaimed show, one tends to sit up and take notice unless, of course, one is not dead.
There has long been a “love-hate relationship” between journalists and public relations professionals. Journalists often call public relations professionals “liars” and public relations professionals call journalists “necessary evil” though rarely in earshot of one another. But the gloves came off last week after Chris Anderson, the executive editor of Wired magazine, chided public relations professionals who deluge him with e-mails with news releases “because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching.” Anderson, then, released the names of 304 unsolicited e-mail senders who had sent him press releases, with hopes of getting a few column centimetre of printed space, and stated that he had permanently blocked these senders. To their embarrassment, the names included several renowned and established public relations firms.
These developments put up two very disturbing but pertinent questions. First, do people in general and journalists in particular, really understand what public relations is all about? And second, is it not time that public relations professionals also give a deeper thought to the age old notion of judging efficiency of public relations by volume of printed space or air time that they mange to get for their respective organizations or clients?
What we, the people in public relations, actually do to earn our living? Ideally our job is to be the bridge between the public and the organization we serve. For this we practice something called media relations apparently trying to get journalist write – about our clients, our organizations, our products, thereby give publicity. What is the end purpose in media relations? It is to convey messages to targeted audiences to advance concerned organization’s goals, raise its profile, and uphold its reputation. In this process, journalists become a means to an end. They are only conduits or tools for information disseminations. In other words, the focus of media relations should be creating an ongoing dialogue between public relations people and journalists to have your organization or product discussed in a positive light, in public, through a publication or broadcast.
This can be achieved by creating a relationships based on trust with media people, and that is what we do. But before approaching towards their job, public relations people need to understand the customs, conventions and standard operating procedures relating to the media. Public relations people need to know how journalists operate and approach their job, which in turn will shape their attitude towards journalists and editors. If you distrust and dislike journalists, it will eventually show and affect your dealings with the media. If as public relations professional you lie to a journalist, he or she will eventually find out and your credibility will go down. That is not going to help in your pursuit in developing a relationship and going to make your job increasingly difficult.
I think that the media in general sees themselves as a ‘watchdog’ against big business and institutions. In an environment where the public is bombarded with information from so many sources journalists believe that they are maintaining a balance by consciously and aggressively searching for the bad news. They see themselves as devil’s advocates, standing guard for right and truth.
Harold wrote in his blog that facts are no more scarce, and news is no more reporting facts only, it is more of interpreting facts. We public relations people also present facts to the journalists, of course laced with our interpretations or present them the way we look at those facts. Journalists often may find what we present them with not conforming to their idea of facts. But, that is per say not lying. Harold is of the view that if people are misunderstanding the profession of public relations, it is because the public relations people had failed to explain to them what they do.
Another factor that is making our life increasing difficult is the tendency of CEOs and top management of judging our efficiency by numbers of news coverage we manage to corner. It is this tendency that is pushing more and more people in public relations to go all out with mindless bombardment of journalists with press releases blindly. We have so little time and resources and so hard pressed to show results that we are left with no other option to spam the mailbox of journalists with the hope that some will at least publish our press releases. The situation will drastically change if we can make people understand that good public relations is not judged by volume of media coverage but by quality of media coverage. If only we could make them understand public relations is not possible without performance and telling lie or suppressing facts is not at all going to help. I will not mind being put in the league of liars by a few as long as others understand what we do.