Public relations and international affairs: effects, ethics and responsibility.

• Author: Grunig, James E.
• Position: Power of the Media in the Global System

On 20 October 1990, during the escalation of the Persian Gulf crisis, a teary-eyed 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl known only as Nayirah testified to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had seen Iraqi soldiers take babies from hospital incubators in Kuwait and leave them on the floor to die. Months later, an op-ed piece in the New York Times, followed by stories on the television programs "60 Minutes" and "20-20," revealed that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.

The hearing had been arranged by the Hill and Knowlton public relations firm on behalf of an organization called Citizens for a Free Kuwait -- an organization funded primarily by the exiled government of Kuwait. In a book on Robert Keith Gray, then head of Hill and Knowlton's Washington, DC office, freelance author Susan Trento reported that Hill and Knowlton had provided witnesses for the hearing, coached them, wrote testimony, produced videotapes detailing the alleged atrocities and ensured that the room was filled with reporters and television cameras.(1)

Fewer than three months later the United States attacked Iraq. By that time, Hill and Knowlton had received $10.7 million from Citizens for a Free Kuwait. With the money, Hill and Knowlton among other things -- organized a press conference with a so-called Kuwaiti freedom fighter, "National Prayer Day" services for Kuwaiti and American servicemen and "Free Kuwait" rallies at 21 college campuses. It also promoted an Islamic art tour, produced advertisements and video news releases, arranged luncheons with journalists and spent more than $1 million polling the American people.(2)

Critics have asked whether or not these extensive and expensive activities by an international public relations firm led the United States to war. The answer is probably no. As Trento put it:

H&K's efforts succeeded in the United Nations, the Congress and

the media because, in each case, there was a receptive audience.

The diplomats and congressmen and senators wanted something

to point to to support their positions. The media wanted interesting,

visual stories.(3)

In short, the Hill and Knowlton campaign probably encouraged decision makers and public opinion to move in a direction in which they were already headed.

Even though the war probably would have occurred without the campaign, one still must ask whether such campaigns are ethical. As Trento noted:

In the end, the question was not whether H&K effectively altered

public opinion, but whether the combined efforts of America's

own government, foreign interests, and private PR and lobbying

campaigns drowned out decent and rational, unemotional debate.

When practiced ethically and responsibly, public relations provides a vital communication function for organizations, nations and even the world, helping to develop an understanding among groups and eventually reduce conflict. When practiced unethically and irresponsibly, however, public relations can manipulate and deceive. More often, though, such public relations merely makes "decent and rational, unemotional debate" on issues difficult.(5)

In this article, I will first describe a theory of public relations and its role in a national and global communication system. Next, I will discuss ethical issues related to the use of public relations firms by governments and political factions. I will then use this theory to analyze several cases of international public relations. Finally, I will analyze the effects and ethics of these international campaigns and derive recommendations for how international public relations can contribute to global diplomacy without obfuscating or corrupting the process.

MANAGEMENT AND DIPLOMACY

The Management Function

Most people, including journalists, understand public relations simplistically as an attempt to influence the media or make an organization or person look good -- in short, as image-making. The term image is a nebulous, poorly defined concept that has over a dozen meanings.(6) As a public relations theorist, in contrast, I conceptualize public relations as one of the critical management functions in modern organizations.(7) Most public relations practitioners work for organizations, either in a department of the organization or as a counselor in a public relations firm serving a client. Although some clients are individuals -- such as politicians, movie stars or sports heroes -- even these clients are backed by organizations.

Organizations, like people, must communicate with others because they do not exist alone in the world. If people had no relationships with family, neighbors, friends, enemies or co-workers, they would have no need to communicate with anyone. Organizations also have relationships -- with employees, communities, governments, consumers, financiers, supporters, detractors and other publics. Organizations are successful when they achieve their goals. Seldom, however, can they select these goals alone. Publics also have a stake in organizations' goals, and they strive to affect an organization's mission.(8)

Organizations that communicate well with stake-holders know what to expect from them, and these publics know what to expect from those organizations. The two entities may not always agree or have a friendly relationship, but they do understand one another. Although an organization with good public relations may have to incorporate the goals of strategic publics into its mission, in the long run it will choose better goals and will be able to pursue these revised goals more effectively than if it ignored or fought the goals of publics.

As a result, public relations can bring money or other resources into an organization by allowing it to sell products and services to satisfied consumers, secure funds from donors, bring in funds from governments or other sources, or secure legislation and policies that enhance an organization's mission. Public relations can also save an organization money that might have been spent because of lawsuits, regulations, unfavorable government policies, boycotts, strikes or training of new employees.

Public relations is an essential management function, therefore, because of its contribution to the long-term, strategic management of the organization. Organizations use strategic management to identify opportunities and dangers in the environment; to develop strategies for exploiting the opportunities and minimizing the dangers; and to develop, implement and evaluate their choices. Without strategic management, organizations typically "live from day to day and react to current events."(9) Public relations contributes to the planning process by communicating and building relationships with publics that support the mission of the organization, or that can constructively divert it from its mission.

Still, most organizations carry out the same public relations programs year after year without stopping to determine whether they are still communicating with the most important publics. David Dozier and Larissa Grunig have pointed out that at some point in their history, most organizations probably develop their public relations programs strategically -- that is, the presence of an important stake-holder probably motivated the initiation of the public relations program. As time passes, however, organizations can forget the initial reason for the efforts and continue communication programs that are no longer strategic for targeted publics.(10) In particular, many public relations programs become mindless attempts to gain media exposure with no particular public in mind, or the endless spewing of such tools of public relations as publications, press releases or video news releases.

International Organizations: Public Diplomacy

Such diverse organizations as governments, political parties, revolutionary factions and multinational corporations are affected by publics in other countries, and many of them have developed public relations programs. Recently the growth of international media, global business and global politics has strengthened the role of international publics. Two public relations scholars, the Austrian Benno Signitzer and the American Timothy Coombs, have attributed the growth of international relationships to the expansion of communication technology and broader public participation in the process of foreign affairs.(11) Modern governments and other international organizations thus find themselves using public relations strategies as they conduct what political scientists have called public diplomacy.

Signitzer and Coombs traced the similarities between theories of public relations and theories of public diplomacy. Traditional diplomacy was based on formal relations between governments or government-to-government communication. Diplomacy was a process of talking over differences, clarifying aims and exploring alternatives to maintain peace with other states. It entailed highly skilled communication among trained envoys.(12)

According to Signitzer and Coombs, "the field of diplomacy is shifting from traditional diplomacy toward public diplomacy."(13) Whereas so-called old diplomacy regarded an appeal to the common people on an issue of international policy as an act of vulgarity, many governments and other organizations are now turning to publics for their opinions.(14) Signitzer and Coombs defined public diplomacy as "the way in which both government and private individuals and groups influence directly or indirectly those public attitudes and opinions which bear directly on another government's foreign policy decisions."(15) Today, they added, governments speak to other governments but they also speak and listen to the people, and

the actors in public diplomacy can no longer be confined to the

profession of diplomats but include various individuals, groups

and institutions who engage in international and intercultural

communication activities which do have a bearing on the...