Communication (good?) PR (bad?)

It always frustrates me when I tell someone that I practice PR and they say, "Oh so your a spin doctor?" Recently this has happened with increasing frequency so when I stumbled across this article I had to share it. The article, written by Merrie Spaeth, talks about how PR needs some PR.

It has been dubbed the "Sex in the City Effect" by and elite few.

Consider this excerpt from Spaeth's article:

The Globe & Mail's Simpson correctly identifies that all politicians like to make announcements which will make them visible to the voters, but says, "this illustrates the depths to which these politicians will descend to grab whatever tiny bit of the public-relations limelight they can find" and he says voters should "expect more cheap public-relations tricks." And, with one more slap at PR, he notes that elections force politicians to bring back "the little corruptions of petty public relations."

And this is the problem. He sees public relations as the practice of claiming undue credit, of hyping something and of being fundamentally deceitful. Actually, public relations is no more these things than the practice of law is inherently misleading juries or abusing the judicial system. There are lawyers who abuse the system, but we do not hold the legal system hopelessly tarnished by their behavior.

Now some may argue that Spaeth holds lawyers in too high esteem, but I think her point is well taken and it is why organizations like the Public Relations Society of America have established a Code of Ethics.