According to Kevin Moloney, the pluralistic society in which we live today has transformed PR into a powerful form of advocacy. In fact, today’s society is a competitive society: many voices want and need to be heard. The problem however is that media are saturated; people have therefore to compete and grab media’s attention to be heard.
Moloney point of view is valid; however it opens the door to political spin. In fact, if media are saturated with so many messages, who decides what message should be communicated?
So maybe it is better to embellish the truth to make the message more interesting, to make people want to listen to it. Then it is justified to spin if it is the only way to get a message heard.
But then again, there is not only one way to look at this problem. Political PR might be responsible for some spin but only because Political PR is responsible for the political communication. PR professionals do not rule countries, presidents and prime ministers do. Those are the people taking the important decisions; those are the people who make the choice to lie to their citizens. PR cannot be blamed for bad decision-making as it only communicates the message. If citizens do not trust their governments and politicians anymore maybe it means that politicians should try to do a better job and not blame it on bad PR.
And what happened to the fourth estate? What happened to journalists being the government’s watchdogs? What happened to the media being a forum in which all opinions can be expressed?
PR might have a part of responsibility in spin but it is definitely not the only one to blame.
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