SALİM KADIBEŞEGİL

The topic of this year’s online Betûl Mardin Seminar at Bilgi University was “Social Reconciliation and Public Relations”. Below is the speech I delivered at the online event on December 15, 2020.

Perceptions are real, but what about facts?

I’m picking up where I left off last year.

Where and how do we reconcile?

First, we need reconciliation on what a public relations professional’s function is.

No need to discuss that Public Relations (PR) is simply a problem of an identity and reputation today.  It’s a fact, plain and simple!

In order to understand where this problem is rooted, a bold confrontation with the past is needed in the history of this profession.

Were we to look at how public relations become a profession in the first place, way back in the early 1900, we see that:

• Rulers obtain their powers from public opinions. Actually, public opinion is the backbone of why rulers exist.
• Rulers don’t refrain from trying any and every method in the book—at any cost –in order not to lose their grip over those whom they rule over.
• PR is good at “glamorizing” things, allowing it to exist for as long as it has. However, while doing this, there are things that shouldn’t be associated with public relations at all in terms of values. Hence, public relations is in between the values of the rulers and the society where we can explore what tarnishes the reputation of this profession.

Let me explain this: Very recently in the US, when this profession had flourished and spread to the world within a period of two years, three presidential advisers were thrown into jail because they lied, on behalf of the president at the time, to the public about their PR and communications activities.

Problems of PR

The following should also be noted about the identity problem of public relations:

• Uncertainty always looms over who can and cannot be a PR expert…
• No method hasn’t been tried…
• No one wants to become a PR expert anymore, as you can choose from other cool titles like corporate communication specialist, strategic communication consultant, new media manager, sustainability communication, expert or even corporate citizenship expert.
• There is even worse confusion these days over what should be taught at university.
• The constant bickering between those who receive public relations services (and their expectations) and those who offer them only makes us question PR’s function even more.

People’s demands focus on PR’s two primary areas:

• Making what we have look more unique and impressive than it actually is in order to sway public opinion,

• Blanketing our mistakes and wrong doings

While efforts have been made to cultivate a purer, more natural, and more innocent PR based on mutual understanding between society and organizations, the aforementioned two areas dominate that image to the point that they eclipse it.

So, what’s my point?

Few PR specialists tamper with the profession’s history. Here in Turkey, virtually no one has published any article on the subject. A handful of projects that a few people undertook in the 1930s embody all that we know about PR’s history. There isn’t a single book that tells us about how PR had removed politicians from power that they obtained through democratic elections. No one tells how conglomerates have used PR to confiscate the property and output of underdeveloped countries.

In other words, you shouldn’t enter a career without knowing its history and researching its pros and cons first.

If we did do our homework and do research, then we could at least fix our mistakes.

I majored in Journalism and Public Relations at Ege University. I don’t recall having even a single lesson—let alone book or course—about PR at all during four-year programme. And yet, I’d received my diploma from the Department of Public Relations!

What have I witnessed years later?

In 1994, the CEOs of the world’s seven largest tobacco companies testified under oath to American Congress—one by one, their right hands in the air, swearing on the Bible— that that “smoking doesn’t harm human health”. They spent billions of dollars on PR to lie to the public for years on end. They paid scientists to write fake reports. They created associations and foundations and put their PR manager the board of directors to protect their interests. The leading actors behind global warming today still continue to do this!

However, while we ought to define the backbone of PR as protecting the interests of society, history has shown us otherwise. Hence the source of the trouble, no matter what you want to call it, PR or otherwise…

Ethics… Ethics…Ethics…

The fundamental problem lies beneath “ethics” …

What are ethics? They are the personal convictions that we make beyond laws and regulations. Those representing PR put ethics at their agenda and wanted to remedy the world alongside professional organizations. Here is where it has arrived a century later:

• We need to discuss what ethical(?) communication management is
• We need to create an environment where not only the prospective communication professionals but everyone from all disciplines can benefit from that. The only way to do this is to take PR to the graduate level at universities. Electrical engineers, biologists, chemists, civil engineers, and urban planners should all be able to equip both themselves and their careers with PR. Only then will companies be able to do their jobs whilst fully conscious of their responsibilities to society and to the planet, the resources of which they use free.
• A communication specialist’s life would be easier were one required to hold master’s degree to serve on any corporate executive board. In the very least, it would render you capable of communicating your job in top management better.

With 45 years of experience under my belt, I can’t help but say that:

• Organizations without values cannot have public relations, period!
• You cannot conduct PR at any organization that lacks an ethical committee!
• Those who lack PR training (as I’ve defined it) shouldn’t be allowed to become CEOs!