THE IMAGE OF THE PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSION IN THE PRINT MEDIA, 1980-1989

Although public relations has been a controversial subject for the print media as far back as the early 1900s, there have been few studies that have addressed the profession’s media image. This study examines how the print media portrayed the public relations field from 1980 through 1989. Using the words “public relations and practitioners” and “public relations and profession” in an on-line search via the Lexis- Nexis Academic Universe, 58 such articles were obtained from three American newspapers: The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. A content analysis resulted in three coded groups: favorable, unfavorable and neutral.

General findings revealed the overall public relations print image as favorable (24.1%), unfavorable (46.5%) and neutral (29.3%). In the study’s breakdown of characterizations, “favorable” and “neutral” characterizations included three portrayals: like any other profession (20.7%); as an advertising, communication, publicity, or image profession (20.7%); and as a business with economic or political power or influence (12.1%). “Unfavorable” included four portrayals, as: deceptive (24%); immature, weak or superficial (12%); discriminatory (7%), and intimidating, harassing, or conflicting (3.5%). A significant number of the unfavorable articles were written not by journalists, but by public relations practitioners themselves. If this is still the case in a suggested follow-up study, responsibility for correcting the public relations’ unfavorable image should be assigned to the public relations practitioners.