IV.5. Essentials of Public Relations

IV.5.1. Public Relations and Management

1. Public relations helps our complex, pluralistic society to reach decisions and function more effectively by contributing to mutual understanding among groups and institutions. It serves to bring private and public policies into harmony.

2. Public relations serves a variety of institutions in society such as business, trade unions, government agencies, voluntary associations, foundations, hospitals, and educational and religious institutions. To achieve their goals, these institutions must develop effective relationships with many different audiences or publics such as employees, members, customers, local communities, shareholders, and other institutions, and with society at large.

3. The managements of institutions need to understand the attitudes and values of their publics in order to achieve institutional goals. The goals themselves are shaped by the external environment.

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IV.5.2. On Public Relations in Great Britain

1. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the government enjoyed a close working relationship with the Reuters news agency for almost 100 years. Paul Julius Reuter, agency owner, was granted use of cables linking the empire’s outposts; in return, agency dispatches did much to further the nation’s commercial and political interests, and there is little doubt that the news sevice was careful to say at crucial points what the British government wished it to say. With such an arrangement, historians have noted, government propaganda was particularly effective in bringing the United States to its side in World War I. Today, Reuters operates with scant if any government influence.

2. The industrial and communication systems of Great Britain were already developed in 1910, when the Marconi Company established a department to distribute news releases about its achievements in wireless telegraphy.

3. In 1911, the first government public relations campaign was carried out when, at the instigation of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the Insurance Commission explained the benefits of the National Insurance Act, an unpopular measure that had attracted much adverse publicity. The Air Ministry appointed the first government press officer in 1919, and a year later the Ministry of Health selected Sir Basil Clarke, a former Reuters correspondent, as director of information.

4. In 1924, Clarke established a counseling firm, Editorial Services Ltd. in London. For his first client, a dairy group, he promoted the idea of milk pasteurization, an innovation that had met with some resistance from the public.

5. The first public officer so styled in Britain was Sir John Elliott, appointed in 1925 by the Southern Railway Company.

6. Government public relations was substantially enlarged after World War II. The offices are now organized into three sections: press relations, publicity and inquiry, and intelligence.

7. Via shortwave, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), chartered in 1922, carries a British point of view to an estimated 75 million adults around the world each day.

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