Propaganda and public relations

Because public relations is sometimes, even if erroneously, seen as an instrument of persuasion, it is useful to distinguish it from propaganda. The word itself originated in the Roman Catholic Church of the seventeenth century, when the Congregation of Propaganda was formed. This was a committee of cardinals in charge of foreign missions to seek out believers and make converts.

The prime propagandist of the Nazi movement, Josef Goebbels, (Harrison 1995:7) said:

Propaganda is an instrument of politics, and a power for social control. The function of propaganda is not essentially to convert; rather its function is to attract followers and to keep them in line. The task of propaganda, given suitable avenues, is to blanket every area of human activity so that the environment of the individual is changed to absorb the movement's world views.

This is what is being called black propaganda , the one that lies and abuses, deforms and practices an excessive form of demagogy. It is the political propaganda emerging everywhere, it is when prime – ministers and presidents lie in order to be voted by people, it is when they promise changes they know they will not be able to achieve, it is when they try to manipulate people.

But, there is also a clean and white propaganda ; this means that the source is known, its goal is truthful and it does not try to lie and mislead. When the Americans spread, during the Cold War in Eastern Europe , radio transmission on the channel “Voice of America”, everything that was being said was true. This was propaganda in favor of their social, political and economic system.

So propaganda is actually constituted of an ensemble of approaches destined to seduce the targeted public, to convince it and to impose certain ideas on it.

In public relations, when it's time to convince your target public to share your political ideal, to create sympathy relationships with it so as to make it adopt the idea or the point of view presented, you practice propaganda. (Dagenais 2002:72)

To conclude this first chapter, public relations is a domain that has a long history. There have been many attempts to define the term “public relations”. Thus, specialists reached the conclusion that PR is a planned and sustained effort in order to enhance the company's reputation. In this respect, the most important role is played by the PR practitioner , who is a specialist that interferes in his area of working with different fields of communication: journalism, marketing, advertising, public affairs and lobby and propaganda. This is why, as we shall see in the next chapter, PR practitioners need to have a strong knowledge in these domains and in many others.

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