they’ve communicated—with gestures, sounds, nuanced words, or whatever it takes to bring other people around. Whether it’s as brazen as a pyramid or as subtle as a white lie, this art form—often called spin—has become as much a part of our culture as the media we depend upon to connect and inform us.
The “spin doctors” who shape much of what we see and read today are often shadowy figures in the multi-billion-dollar industry we call “public relations.” The most successful of them hobnob with royalty and presidents, CEOs and movie stars. They are experts in every medium, and they use their considerable resources to build and maintain strong, positive images for their clients. They cultivate contacts and relationships among journalists and other media gatekeepers. They walk a fine line between contributing to the so-called marketplace of ideas and warping public understanding to their clients’ ends. Oftentimes, this line is so creatively blurred as to disappear.
What exactly is PR? What are the boundaries, the restrictions, the rules? The first question is easier to answer. Cutlip & Center’s Effective Public Relations , the encyclopedia, if not the bible, of the industry, defines PR as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.” 1 That definition emphasizes the two-way nature of PR, as opposed to the one-way communication that characterizes propaganda or advertising.
The Public Relations Society of America describes what PR does rather than what it is: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” 2 Again, an emphasis on two-way exchange, although PRSA’s highest organizational award is the Silver Anvil, “symbolizing the forging of public opinion.” Either way, PR is the middleman, whose loyalty to the client often supersedes everything else.
To be sure, PR has been—and is being—used to good ends. Even the noblest of causes can benefit from the services of a communications expert to clarify facts, disseminate information, and counter unfair arguments. And there are plenty of ethical PR people out there to do this.
But with PR so intricately woven into every major industry and movement in today’s mass media reality, the stakes of spin have become incredibly high. And ethics do slip. PR often crosses the line into misleading, withholding, or simply lying. And when it does, society suffers—sometimes tragically so.
THE BEGINNING OF SPINNING
In what may be the first recorded discourse on public relations, Aristotle spoke of “rhetoric” in ancient Athens and urged that everyone be taught how to use it in order to tell truth from lies. His insight remained relevant over the millennia as the methods for distorting information evolved everywhere in the world. For example, in eighteenth-century Russia, Grigory Potemkin went to extremes on behalf of his empress (and supposed lover), Catherine the Great. A field marshal and adviser to Catherine, Potemkin made sure foreign leaders were impressed when they visited Russia by having artificial villages built throughout the countryside to create the impression of growth and prosperity. In so doing, he unwittingly ensured that his name would live throughout the ages—the term “Potemkin village” is still used to describe things that falsely imply substance.
Gossip, innuendo, and deception were common in publications and politics in the earliest years of the United States. Businesses manipulated the new nation’s mass media as early as the 1830s, when the New York Sun , one of the early penny presses, offered to publish free “puff” stories (promotional material presented as regular news) for its advertisers. In the same period, American showman P. T. Barnum regularly pushed the limits of spin to a point that seems shocking even today. Barnum had no qualms about inventing
The “spin doctors” who shape much of what we see and read today are often shadowy figures in the multi-billion-dollar industry we call “public relations.” The most successful of them hobnob with royalty and presidents, CEOs and movie stars. They are experts in every medium, and they use their considerable resources to build and maintain strong, positive images for their clients. They cultivate contacts and relationships among journalists and other media gatekeepers. They walk a fine line between contributing to the so-called marketplace of ideas and warping public understanding to their clients’ ends. Oftentimes, this line is so creatively blurred as to disappear.
What exactly is PR? What are the boundaries, the restrictions, the rules? The first question is easier to answer. Cutlip & Center’s Effective Public Relations , the encyclopedia, if not the bible, of the industry, defines PR as “the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends.” 1 That definition emphasizes the two-way nature of PR, as opposed to the one-way communication that characterizes propaganda or advertising.
The Public Relations Society of America describes what PR does rather than what it is: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” 2 Again, an emphasis on two-way exchange, although PRSA’s highest organizational award is the Silver Anvil, “symbolizing the forging of public opinion.” Either way, PR is the middleman, whose loyalty to the client often supersedes everything else.
To be sure, PR has been—and is being—used to good ends. Even the noblest of causes can benefit from the services of a communications expert to clarify facts, disseminate information, and counter unfair arguments. And there are plenty of ethical PR people out there to do this.
But with PR so intricately woven into every major industry and movement in today’s mass media reality, the stakes of spin have become incredibly high. And ethics do slip. PR often crosses the line into misleading, withholding, or simply lying. And when it does, society suffers—sometimes tragically so.
THE BEGINNING OF SPINNING
In what may be the first recorded discourse on public relations, Aristotle spoke of “rhetoric” in ancient Athens and urged that everyone be taught how to use it in order to tell truth from lies. His insight remained relevant over the millennia as the methods for distorting information evolved everywhere in the world. For example, in eighteenth-century Russia, Grigory Potemkin went to extremes on behalf of his empress (and supposed lover), Catherine the Great. A field marshal and adviser to Catherine, Potemkin made sure foreign leaders were impressed when they visited Russia by having artificial villages built throughout the countryside to create the impression of growth and prosperity. In so doing, he unwittingly ensured that his name would live throughout the ages—the term “Potemkin village” is still used to describe things that falsely imply substance.
Gossip, innuendo, and deception were common in publications and politics in the earliest years of the United States. Businesses manipulated the new nation’s mass media as early as the 1830s, when the New York Sun , one of the early penny presses, offered to publish free “puff” stories (promotional material presented as regular news) for its advertisers. In the same period, American showman P. T. Barnum regularly pushed the limits of spin to a point that seems shocking even today. Barnum had no qualms about inventing
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