Public Relations Industry

public relations

Burson-Marsteller: Burson-Marsteller is the world's largest public relations firm, and one of the nastyist. They helped the tobacco industry organize the "National Smoker's Alliance," defended the 1980s military dictatorship in Argentina that murdered Jews and leftists, rose to the defense of Union Carbide in the wake of the deadly toxic leak in Bhopal, and will pretty much stoop to anything.
Campaigns and Elections: A publication for political campaign professionals. Visit this site if you want to know in nuts-and-bolts detail how elections campaigns are run in the United States.
Center for Media & Democracy: This is our website! The Center for Media & Democracy is a nonprofit watchdog organization that monitors and exposes manipulative and misleading practices by the public relations industry. We publish a quarterly newsletter, PR Watch. Back issues are available online, along with other information about the center including reviews of our books.
Communication Works: One of the rare PR firms that actually specializes in working on progressive causes, campaigning for handgun control, and against the tobacco industry, nuclear power, and sweatshops.
Edelman Public Relations: One of the world's largest PR firms, Edelman has managed to cultivate a superficially "liberal" image, but this hasn't stopped them from working for the anti-environmental Wise Use movement, among others. Their website includes some case studies of their "crisis management" work for clients such as Merck pharmaceuticals and Odwalla, the natural juice company that faced a crisis when some of its juice turned out to be contaminated with deadly E. coli bacteria.
Fleishman-Hillard: One of the world's largest PR firms. Their website is searchable.
Gallup Organization: This site includes the results of some of Gallup's opinion polling.
Holmes Report: Paul Holmes, who previously edited Inside PR and Reputation Management (both now defunct), provides thoughtful analysis from a pro-PR perspective. We usually disagree with his conclusions, but he writes well, and if you want to know how PR insiders view the world, this site is important reading.

Institute for Crisis Management: Devoted to the PR speciality of managing business disasters, this site has a number of pages devoted to explaining the theory and philosophy of crisis management. "The reality," it observes, "is that most newsworthy business crises are the results of management decisions, actions or inaction."
Issue Management Council: This organization is devoted to the corporate practice of "issue management," a PR speciality intended to anticipate and control public debates over public policy issues before the public itself even begins to think seriously about them. "The phrase 'issue management' was coined by Howard Chase in April of 1976," the site explains. "Throughout the 1950s and 1960s in his role as a corporate PR officer, Chase was fascinated with the increasing influence that outside forces exerted on corporations."
Hill & Knowlton, International Public Relations & Public Affairs: These are the fine folks who flacked for the government of Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. Hill & Knowlton was also the architect of the tobacco industry's PR strategy, beginning in the 1950s, to evade responsibility for the deadly nature of its product.
Investor Relations Information Network: This site has online annual reports and other factbooks provided by numerous major corporations.
Karwoski & Courage Public Relations: Reputation management, crisis management. This website is done in a cutesey "medieval fable" style. Here's an excerpt: "All is not right in the kingdom," King Corporate sighed as he sat upon his royal throne in the Great Hall of Commerce. "I need someone who will make the town criers stop gossiping and saying those awful things. We need to improve the Queen's image and get the townspeople to sing her praises. I need someone who will prove that the moat water is harmless and that these old people are getting sick because they are old."
Ketchum Public Relations: One of the world's largest PR firms. Their site includes some analytical pieces, e.g., an article recommending PR strategies for "communicating with a hostile audience."
Lexicon Communications Corp.: This PR firm was founded by Steven Fink, who got his introduction to crisis management while working for the governor of Pennsylvania during the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island.
Media Insider: A website mostly for PR pros, with links to Profnet and PR Newswire, plus a newsletter of PR strategy tips.
Medialink: A major distributor of video news releases.
Museum of Public Relations: Created by the Specter & Associates PR firm, this site offers a largely sanitized stroll through the industry's history.
News USA: News USA calls itself "a national news and feature syndicate located in Washington, DC that distributes news features, fillers and op-ed material to thousands of daily, weekly and community papers across the U.S." It offers "nationwide media coverage" to 10,000 newspapers, 6,000 radio stations, 1,000 TV stations. Their idea of "news" includes stories such as "You Can Set Your Table with Coca-Cola Collectibles," "Telecom Deregulation Will Bring Faster Internet Access," and "Enjoy a Caribbean Getaway."
O'DwyerPR.com - Online Access to the Inside News: O'Dwyer's is probably the best PR industry trade publication in the United States.
Opensecrets.org: Home page of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the effect of money on the political process. Check here to find out who's giving to which candidate.
On-Line Public Relations Home Page: A great resource for information about the PR industry and related topics. This site includes links to online research sources for opinion polling data, plus powerful and specialized internet search engines, financial and medical information, etc.
Pandora's List: This email discussion list was created by European activists to "open the Box of Pandora" by exposing the role of the PR industry as "a critical partner of large corporations in for example image-building, greenwashing, creating strategies to deal with corporate critics."

Polling Report.com: Provided by The Polling Report, a bimonthly public opinion monitor, this site offers very frequently updated results and data from polling organizations including Gallup, Harris, Yankelovitch and the Princeton Research Associates as well as USA Today, NBC News, Fox News, Wall Street Journal and CNN/Time.

Porter/Novelli Public Relations: A major PR firm that specializes in health and consumer PR. Porter/Novelli specializes in what it calls "cross-pollination," a polite euphemism for what others would call "conflict of interest." For example, by offering free representation to nonprofit cancer research organizations, it has been able to recruit them in defense of its other clients such as pesticide makers.
PR Newswire: Online access to PR news releases.
PR Week: This slick, glossy magazine offers PR insider news in bite-sized McNuggets. (If you want detail and analysis from a pro-PR perspective, O'Dwyer's or The Holmes Report are both much more thorough.) Separate editions of PR Week are available for the United States, UK and Germany.

Propaganda: Analysis, with current and historical examples, of rhetorical tactics often used by propagandists, based on the framework developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis: name-calling, glittering generalities, etc.
Public Affairs Council: Based in Washington, D.C., the PAC is an elite trade association bringing together many of America's largest corporations, trade associations, and public relations firms.
Public Communications Inc.: A national PR firm. Their website lists a number of revealing case studies, such as their work to defeat health reform in Montana and to defuse criticism of infant formula makers' marketing practices in the Third World.
Public Media Center: The PMC is a nonprofit public interest advocacy group, which functions essentially as an alternative advertising and PR agency, using the techniques and skills of modern marketing to work for responsible social change: supporting human rights, environmental protection, cultural and biological diversity, sustainable development, corporate accountability and equality for women.
Stackig Advertising and Public Relations: This company boasts that its crisis plan was the one that was used when the deadly Ebola virus was discovered in a laboratory in northern Virginia. The crisis plan, it says, minimized "the negative impact on the company that operated the lab."