PR professionals not ‘yes men’

Public relations professionals view themselves as an independent voice and not mired by organisational politics, researchers from Baylor University, Texas, have found.

Study participants said speaking up on sensitive ethical issues required courage.

The study was drawn from interviews with 30 senior public relations professionals with an average of 27 years of experience from Australia and the United States.

It found that the common misconception among senior executives that public relations are nothing more than a marketing tool, limited PR professionals’ role as problem solvers.

Read more at Baylor University

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2 Comments sorted by

  1. David Arthur

    n/a

    So, PR professionals would want to be truth-tellers to the great and powerful? Think how much better the world would be if, instead of just acting as Cheney's PR flacks in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Bush, Howard, Blair and Downer had told Cheney that he and Rumsfeld were fabricating their casus belli.

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  2. Robert McDougall

    Small Business Owner

    i suppose it depends on the motivation of the PR person/firm. If the motivation is money, or the difference between keeping and losing a client, the PR firm will give the client what they pay for, no matter the ethics of the individual

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