PR as a weapon of conflict in the news

December 9th, 2009 / 3:17 pm

When public relations (PR) is mentioned in the news media, have you noticed the aggressive headline or story contexts in which the PR expression occurs? I have, and since I started looking for especially military applications of the term, I’ve been amazed how PR is widely depicted as a weapon of conflict in the media. So, just for fun, I did Google news archival searches for the last 30 years and found a rising tide of the warlike presence of PR:

News, as a packaged media product, generally markets the story of conflict between different sides, and it seems as though contests between opposing forces must have winners and losers:

Even if it’s not one side versus another, PR often appears in the news as a shocking or destructive element:

In general, over the past several decades, public relations has experienced a much higher media profile and all the charts — which are an inexact but crude gauge — show generally similar trends. I hope this evidences a sign of increased professional regard for public relations, but sometimes it seems that PR in the media is seen as something to respect but often as much to be feared.