global discussion. local perspectives.
I sometimes think that we get a little obsessed with what PR is and isn’t, and I am not always sure that these conversations do anything more than keep us busy navel gazing. What I’d like to think about is what PR is becoming…and that’s everything. My personal belief is that formalized communications evolved because it was the only way to manage as organizations grew in size. What is happening today, in my opinion, is...
Something awful is happening in my country (Italy) these days, with many implications on public relations (specifically in the sense of public diplomacy) which I feel we should all be aware of. …
Yesterday, Friday October 12, the Italian Cabinet issued a decree which recognizes the value and regulates lobbying activities related to the Government, its various Autorities and the Public Administration
All of us have run across examples of communications that are so inept or so risky that we are tempted to quote Tony Blair in the movie The Queen, when he exclaims “Someone save these people from themselves”! This week I ran across two examples so blatant, that I had to share…
Yesterday, the people of Ukraine cast their ballots in national elections for the third time in three years. In just a few days, Ukrainians will know who will run this country for the next four years or so. The race is extremely close, and what with all the speculation of falsification and such…
Of the many possible angles to approach the terrible case of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, a tremendous shock to everyone in Portugal, the UK and arround the world, I decided to bring to this forum a communication point of view on this case.
A run on the Northern Rock bank in the UK this week got me thinking about ‘the public interest’ again, especially after Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England told a House of Commons select committee that he would have preferred to give covert aid to Northern Rock, without the public being aware of the Bank’s intervention, but that would be illegal.
Recently, an articulate and highly informative article by Ann Landman appeared on pr watch. Although quite critical and explicitly biased, it details Philip Morris’s current public relations activities to modify existing regulation of the tobacco industry in the United States, and (I believe) provides a most interesting backstage analysis of our profession—very stimulating food for thought for all of us.
In a recent post I had raised the issue of the ambiguity of public relations concluding with the question: Are we ready to challenge ourselves over our own ambiguity?. Here are Anne Gregory’s thoughts, lucid and controversial as ever
Portugal has a 33 years old democracy achieved after a peaceful military revolution that ended a dictatorship that had lasted for several decades. Propaganda was one of the major strengths of our dictatorship (as with all the other similar regimes) and people-to-people grass roots communication was the major weapon of the revolutionary. But Public Relations in Portugal is still to accomplish some important revolutions. Here’s why…