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Papers from the Alan Rawel CIPR conference 2007
Introduction
There is a raging debate on the role of public relations in society, only partially reflected in public relations own literature, which has tended to ignore or dismiss the attacks on its practices.
On one side of the debate are the critics of public relations (Miller, Stauber and Rampton, Chomsky, Ewen, among others) who argue that public relations, past and present, undermines democracy and stifles or distorts debates. On the other side of the debate public relations' defenders (Grunig, Dozier, Cutlip, Gregory, Vercic and others) tend to minimise public relations' historical roots in propaganda. The Excellence project has the laudable aim of improving public relations practice by emphasising the best and demonstrating how others can improve. However, there has been tendency to marginalise the role of persuasion ([59] Moloney, 2000), concentrating instead on the positive role that public relations makes to society and democracy. Between the two is a small body of interested academics (L'Etang, Pieczka, Moloney, Weaver, Holtzhausen and McKie among others) who note the extensive involvement of public relations' pioneers in wartime government propaganda (before the term became pejorative) but (L'Etang especially) emphasise differences between the growth of the field in the USA (whence most of the core texts have come) and in Europe and the UK. This paper draws on their work and applies some of the issues they raise to the different models of public relations practice.
Research approach
The paper draws on a wide range of literature from the fields of propaganda, the psychology of persuasion and public relations literature as well as ethics. The paper takes a critical perspective ([34] Hall, 1980) on public relations' attempts to distance itself from propaganda. As [38] Heath (2001, p. 53) says, "the purpose of the critical perspective is to be confrontational". Heath also refers to [9] Burke's (1966) discussion of this and the use of terministic screens, where language is used to shape perception, evaluation and behaviour, with the dominant forces in an organisation (or in this case, field of study) attempting to determine the perspectives of others. Role models are examined for their underlying assumptions, in particular in regard to ethical behaviour.
The paper attempts to compare attitudes to persuasion and ethics,...