Reflecting on six editions of The Public Relations Handbook
In 1990, Peter Gummer, Chairman of Shandwick plc (now Lord Chadlington), stated ‘I believe that PR will increasingly be seen for what it really is – an indispensable tool of management’. In this environment of confidence and expectation of an improving reputation for public relations, in 1991 the first edition of The Public Relations Handbook appeared. In 2020, in a context of deliberate miscommunication, fake news and lies commonplace in public life, the sixth edition of the same text has been published.
When Richard Bailey asked me to reflect on what has changed over the life of the book, it’s disappointing to find that in some areas, not much has improved from two decades ago.
When I researched the glass ceiling in PR in 1995, it was clear that the industry was adopting an ostrich like approach to the question of why there were so many women in the profession yet so few in the boardroom. The then IPR Chief Executive, John Lavelle, told me that trying to compare the salaries of men and women would be like comparing “apples and pears”.
I was asked to oppose the motion, “Increasing feminisation is devaluing the reputation of PR”, at a debate at a national IPR conference, held on a poorly attended Sunday morning where most participants were suffering hangovers from the party the night before, an indication of how seriously the Institute took the issue then. There continues to be a disparity in pay between men and women, with the CIPR (2019) reporting the average salary for men was £58,100 and that for women £45,700.
The PRCA (Golob 2018) found an increase in the pay gap of 21% despite an increase in women managing directors. Women continue to make up the majority (61%) of the profession, compared with the UK workforce as a whole (46%). The industry continues to be overwhelmingly white (90%) (Lee and Aherne 2017). There continues to be a focus on working long hours, with practitoners working at least 10 hours over their contracted hours each week (Golob, 2018). The Index (2019) reported that heavy workload, unrealistic deadlines, unsociable hours were the top causes of stress.
Some things are obviously different. For the first edition’s chapter on media relations, I surveyed journalists about how they liked to receive information – by post, email or fax (remember that?).
In the second edition in 2004, I suggested that the phrase ‘it’s only a PR exercise’ might even disappear from common usage. In 2007 however, George Pitcher proposed the motion that ‘public relations has a duty to tell the truth’ and lost, opposed by Max Clifford, who won.
So, same, same but different. I refer to this in recent editions as “glacial shift”. It’s not that there aren’t excellent practitoners out there passionately concerned with delivering excellent strategic communications counsel and ethical and targetted campaigns to achieve tightly crafted objectives.