Sunday, December 9, 2007

Abuse and Self-abuse - PR and its USP, plausible deniability

I came across this article while doing research for my classic case study on Edward Bernays and his Torches of Freedom campaign. It was written by Richard Linning in 2004 and is published in the Journal of Communication Management.

In the article, Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee are - somewhat - credited with the creation of PR as an unethical spin business. This type of PR uses third party advocates to convey the messages of an organization without disclosing whom the third party is working for. Linning cites blogs and companies such as Raging Cow as the source of this spin.

What was most disenchanting about this article is that the author sates that the European Union has re-defined commercial speech as "all forms of communication seeking to promote either products, services o the image or he organisation to the final consumers and/or distributors."

In the United States, Public Relations speech has had some government protection when it is used by the organization to give out information. I think that in many cases, this speech should remain protected as corporate speech. If done correctly, and ethically, PR speech can be a benefit to society.

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