Elegant Understatement: A New Paradigm for Public Relations Practice

Public Relations Quarterly, Winter 2006/2007 by Gibson, Dirk, Gonzales, Jerra Leigh

The professional practice of public relations has a lengthy and distinctive history. It is an important profession in a variety of ways, as the public in general has benefited on numerous occasions from public relations campaigns. At the same time the sponsoring corporation, organization or governmental agency enjoys the strategic outcome that was the impetus for the public relations activity in the first place. Symbiotic relationships between public relations practitioners, the media, corporations and the public are complex and diverse, but the typical outcome is some degree of satisfaction for each of these major stakeholders.

Unfortunately, there is a dark cloud to this silver lining. The ethical conduct and rhetorical style of many past professionals in this field was unsatisfactory, to the extent that a decidedly damning and certainly controversial image of public relations practitioners has been created and accepted by a significant segment of the American public. We share the same level of esteem as politicians and used-car salesmen. This is not a positive or beneficial development and it has negative implications for both the ethical and practical dimensions of public relations practice.

A new paradigm for public relations practice is proposed in this article. We believe that an elegant understatement style might address ethics and credibility concerns while also serving to improve the image of the public relations profession and individuals engaged in the practice, and their clients or employer. Three main sections will present the case for elegant understatement; 1) Overstatement is a cause of the negative public relations image, 2) Ethical and credibility consequences of bad reputation, and 3) The elegant understatement paradigm.

Overstatement and the Negative Image of Public Relations

Not everyone has a negative impression of public relations, of course, but a substantial part of the population of the United States does. And there are numerous causes of the public relations profession's poor public image besides exaggeration and overstatement. Nevertheless, it is our conviction that the failure of past practitioners to limit their rhetoric to the reality of the situation has been a significant cause of public disrespect and disbelief. In this section past and contemporary instances of overstatement in public relations practice will be discussed and the role of overstatement in public distrust of the profession will be considered.

Past Public Relations Overstatement

Early public relations activity produced public skepticism. "Credibility was also a problem," noted public relations educators David W. Guth and Charles Marsh. They added that "These early public relations efforts followed a one-way model: Publicity agents were zealous to put forward the views of their clients and often left accuracy by the wayside. Sources of information were often hidden, creating a public that was increasingly suspicious of anything carrying the 'publicity' label" (2007, 65).

Contemporary Public Relations Overstatement

Unfortunately, the same overstatement tendencies have been passed down to some contemporary practitioners. This has resulted in the same credibility problems confronting earlier practitioners.

"It's no secret that Hollywood likes to hype things. So do some businesses," noted Stephen Abbott, CEO of Abbott Public Relations (2006, 1). The prevalence of overstatement among American corporations in misrepresenting themselves as 'green' companies was described by Sharon Beder:

But reputation management is often a public relations activity that has little to do with social responsibility. Instead, corporations spend much effort and money on creating the impression of responsibility. They gain credibility for their claims of responsibility through token reforms, codes of conduct and by aligning themselves with amenable environmental and human rights groups as specially created coalitions of such groups (2002, 1).

A similar perspective was voiced by Lee Edwards, a professor at the Leeds Business School in the United Kingdom:

Symbolic power is generated by dominant groups misrepresenting their interests to the public, thereby normalizing social structures and habitus that support their position. Bourdieu (1991) regards language as one of the main tools through which symbolic power is perpetuated and symbolic violence exercised, because of its role in actualizing symbolic power relations. In fact, Bourdieu (1991) characterizes certain professionals - journalists, politicians, public relations professionals - for whom language is at the heart of their work, as symbolic producers, transforming or disguising interests into disinterested meanings and legitimizing arbitrary power relations (2006, 230).

Credibility and Ethical Consequences of a Negative Reputation

Not all public relations practitioners in the past were careful to respect the truth and avoid substantial overstatement, and unfortunately the same can be said of the present day. It is quite likely that these exaggerating professionals asked themselves the bottom line question - so what? They evidently decided that the consequences of overstatement were relatively minor compared to whatever benefit they hoped to accrue.