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The Important Role Of Public Relations

By: Susan Chiang Public relations is fundamentally the art and science of establishing relationships between an organization and its key audiences. Public relations involves supervising and assessing public attitudes, and maintaining mutual relations and understanding between an organization and its public. The function of public relations is to improve channels of communication and to institute new ways of setting up a two-way flow of information and understanding. Most public relations practitioners were and are still recruited from the ranks of journalism.

The First World War stimulated the development of public relations as a profession. Public relations pioneers like Carl Byoir, Edward Bernays, and Ivy Lee, got their beginning with the Committee for Public Information, which organized publicity for U.S. objectives during World War I.

"When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans.. using it. So what I did was to try to find some other words, so we found the words Council on Public Relations," commented Edward Bernays, while describing the origin of the term Public Relations.

At present public relations as a career option exists in private companies or government institutions that actively market their product, service and facilities. Public relations training courses are widespread in educational institutions. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 122,000 public relations specialists in the United States in 1998 and approximately 485,000 advertising, marketing, and public relations managers working in all industries.

As public image is important to all organizations and prominent personalities the role of public relations specialist becomes pertinent in crisis situations. Public relations agencies provide important and timely transmission of information that helps save the face of the organization. In the words of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), "Public relations helps an organization and its public adopt mutually to one another."

Public relations is effective in helping:
* Corporations convey information about their products or services to potential customers
* Corporations reach local government and legislators
* Politicians attract votes and raise money, and craft their public image and legacy
* Non-profit organizations, including schools, hospitals, social service agencies etc. boost support of their programs such as awareness programs, fund-raising programs, and to increase patronage of their services

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For a more in-depth look at Public Relations, visit Susan's sites Public relations firm and Public relations agency. Susan also enjoys writing on a wide range of topics at Health and Fitness.

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