When people talk about PR, what do they really think is the meaning of the term? Does the term PR imply a positive or a negative?

There are people who understand the real meaning - the brain toil and the massive planning required to successfully run any PR campaign. On the other hand, there are people with half- baked information who think PR means talking high about oneself with little substance. Alas! The problem is 90% of the people in India today seem to be the latter, with the left 10% only from those in PR industry and maybe some other academic and corporate scholars.

Consider this editorial article, Da Vinci is Da Truth? by Ashok Row Kavi in Sunday’s HT edition editorial page. Although the story is not related to PR and his knowledge about his subject is undeniable, he has made some amusing reference on the PR term.

Take a look at these extracts-

After this dose of history, lets fast forward to the release in India of that new post-modern, post-fictional, magical realism a la Hollywood called The Da Vinci Code. Smack before the release, as if on a strange cue, the venerable Times of India, from her stable at Boribunder, suddenly publishes the only interview with the head of the shadowy secretive Opus Die, the Catholic Churchs superbly organised parallel policing force. The interview was by Carol Andrade, a dear friend I’ve been following judiciously for decades now. Carol is also the Indian Correspondent for Vatican Radio. Now the interview sounds so casual, so dismissive of The Da Vinci Code that it immediately made me put on my tattered little pagan rags and rush to the box office. Simply because Carol doing her PR job on the Opus Die is like Osama bin Laden writing objectively about 9/11 or Sitaram Yechury writing an objective piece about the Nepal Royal imbroglio.

Another one -

In any case, I think Dan Brown is definitely an excellent public relations officer for the garrison state we now have in West Asia. He’s at least given the Jesus legend a little more steam than needed.

Is Ashok implying that Carol’s and Dan Brown’s works should not be taken seriously because their writings somehow represented themselves as PR people of the Opus Die and garrison state respectively? Is there a tinge of mocking in these sentences that seem to imply - oh! that’s a PR write-up. It’s not good editorial. So according to Ashok and many journalists like him, there are two types of writing - first, unbiased journalist writing that represents the eternal truth - and second, PR writing that is muddled up with propaganda.

Which led me remember what I have been saying about the PR industry needing to do more PR for itself. But I wonder, who’s to blame for such perceptions to get developed in the first place.

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