How public relations helps steer opinion and the news

— -- Sleazy. Disingenuous. Scumbags. These are all words used in U.K. newspaper coverage of the public relations industry.

Public relations, oddly enough, doesn't have great PR. People tend to think that PR involves being manipulative and saying whatever is in the employer's best interests. Authors Trevor Morris and Simon Goldsworthy, both PR professionals, don't disagree.

"There is much more gray than black and white in the field of PR ethics," they write in PR: A Persuasive Industry? Spin, Public Relations and the Shaping of the Modern Media. They call PR amoral, a tool for good or evil purposes. There was, alas, Hitler, Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine.

Industry professionals come down on both sides of the issue. Some say that PR is generally truthful, while others believe that white lies are part of the job. A poll of insiders revealed that most don't feel telling the truth is a duty of PR.

Corporate PR is what comes to mind when discussing the PR industry. But non-governmental organizations, so-called NGOs, such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International, also rely on PR.

A group that often derides PR professionals is journalists, who often see themselves as truth-seekers forced to deal with flacks in order to get information. Yet without the PR industry, Morris and Goldsworthy argue, there would be little news. A 2008 study of news stories in U.K. newspapers found that more than half contained mostly PR material. A study in the Columbia Journalism Review found that more than half the stories in an edition of The Wall Street Journal "were based solely on press releases."

Good PR is often subtle, informing an even larger percentage of news stories, the authors say. "If journalists do not get their stories from PR, where else do they obtain them?" the authors ask. Most journalists tend to be alerted to newsworthy stories, and most alerts can be traced back to PR.

Morris and Goldsworthy define public relations as: "the planned persuasion of people to behave in ways that further its sponsor's objectives. It works primarily through the use of media relations and other forms of third-party endorsement."