What is a “public”?

PR = public relations, a technique of communication of ideas.

One hears “the public,” a star says “my public.” You look in the dictionary and you find “public” means an organized or general body of people.

A casual investigation of the activities and effects of “PR” as practiced in the first 70 years of the 20th century gives one ample data to regard “PR” with caution.

There is a specialized definition of the word “PUBLIC” which is not in the dictionary but which is used in the field of public relations. “PUBLIC” is a professional term to PR people. It doesn’t mean the mob or the masses. It means “a TYPE OF AUDIENCE.”

The subject is one which can be said to be dangerous in its incomplete stage of development or in the hands of inexpert or unscrupulous people.

The broad population to PR professionals is divided up into separate publics. Possibly the early birds in PR should have begun to use “audiences” back in 1911. But they didn’t. They used the word “publics” to mean different types of audiences for their communications.

Thus we have three major liabilities in PR usage:

So you won’t find this in the dictionaries as a PR professional term. But you sure better wrap your wits and tongue around this term for USE. Otherwise you’ll make more PR errors than can easily be computed.

1. It is an incomplete technology as developed and used up to 1970.

WRONG PUBLIC sums up about 99% of the errors in PR activities and adds up to the majority reason for PR failures.

a. The human mind was not a known field.

So what’s a “public”?

b. Any early technology of the human mind was perverted by the University of Leipzig studies and animal fixations of a Prof. Wundt in 1879 who declared Man a soulless animal subject only to stimulus-response mechanisms and without determinism.

In PRese (PR slang) use “public” along with another word always. There is no single word form for “public” in PR. A PR never says THE public.

c. Further perversions entered upon the scene in the 1894 libido theory of Sigmund Freud attributing all reactions and behavior to the sex urge.

There is the “community public,” meaning people in the town not personally grouped into any other special public. There is the “employee public,” meaning the people who work for the firm. There’s the “shareholder public,” meaning the birds who own shares in the PR’s company. There’s the “teenage public,” meaning the under- twenty people. There’s the “doctor public,” meaning the MD audience the PR is trying to reach.

PR is essentially a matter of reaching minds. Therefore, the above three factors have given PR strange elements and bedfellows which have curtailed its development as a subject.

There are hundreds of different types of publics.

Naturally you’d have to know something of the mind to handle PR. Yet if a PR man is operating not only without knowledge of the mind but with a corrupt idea of it (as in Wundt or Freud), his use of PR technique can spread a fantastic amount of aberration into the society and can result in an aberrated society. PR men operating in the “mass media” (press, radio, television, magazines and in lobbying parliaments) push strange mental ideas.

An interest in common or a professional or caste characteristic in common — some similarity amongst a special group — determines the type of public or audience.

2. Inexpert PR men can make a gruesome mess out of the subject and the society.

The PR needs this grouping as he can expect each different type of public to have different interests. Therefore his promotion to them must be designed specially for each type of public.

a. Working with an incompletely developed subject, yet using the powerful communication systems of the society, it is not only not unusual for the work of a PR to recoil on his own employers but is usual to bring them into decay.

In the PR world there aren’t kids — there is a “child public.” There aren’t teenagers — there’s a “teenage public.” There aren’t elderly people — there’s an “elderly public.”

3. PR lends itself to the use of unscrupulous persons and cliques.

The PR man thinks not in huge masses. He thinks in group types within the masses.

a. The extremists such as the Nazis and Stalinists saw in PR techniques the means of subjugating their own people, perpetrating horrors and

PR is an activity concerned with presentation and audience. Even when he writes a news release, he “slants” it for a publication that reaches a type of audience and he writes it for that audience (modified by editorial idiosyncrasies).

bringing their opponents into disrepute. Such extremist groups were enormously assisted by PR techniques.

A PR surveys in terms of special publics. Then he presents his material so as to influence that particular public.

b. Using PR technique to bring about disrepute of their imagined enemies, unscrupulous persons have brought about an atmosphere of war, crime and insanity on the planet.These are of course harsh words. But it is better to know all sides of a subject.

He doesn’t offer stories about wheelchairs to the teenage public or Mickey Mouse prizes to the elderly public. If he is a good PR man.

PR practitioners of course spread PR about PR. But the use of black PR far exceeds its other uses in this year of 1970. Yet teachers of PR in the smoky cloister (smoke from marijuana) give us only the Sunday school version. According to them, PR is a nicey-nicey way of bringing good works to public notice and that is their favorite definition. In actual fact ten times as much PR work is done in getting rid of someone or something imagined to be dangerous to the PR’s employer.

All releases should be designed to reach a special public.

Bribing newspapermen and “free-lance writers” to write horrible lies about a competitor, bribing or lying to congressmen or ministers or members of Parliament to get a law passed to enable a fast buck to be made and countering the ploys of the other firm’s PR men are the common duties of a working public relations employee.

When you mix it up, you fail.

This scene doesn’t seem to be quite the same as PR as represented in the ivory skulls of its professors.It’s a PR world.

When you get it straight and survey it, you succeed.

When you read the papers, books and watch the TV of the 20th century, it’s not a very nice world. Well, that’s PR at work.

The “police public” is not going to buy the glories of hash. The “criminal public” isn’t going to go into raptures over the “heroes in blue.”

The far right PRs against the far left. And in between, more moderate groups PR both.Every government department in England has a PR office. The beginning of the decline of the British Empire and the first British government “information office” are of similar date.

All expert PR is aimed at a specific, carefully surveyed, special audience called a “public.”

The unsavory history of PR, its use to perpetuate questionable interests and cause needless and murderous quarrels must be confronted as part of the study of PR.

When you know that, you can grasp the subject of PR.

It is not for no reason that PR men are often of pitiful morals and degenerate character.

When you can use it expertly, you are a pro PR!To give some examples of wrong publics, Ron’s Journal was designed for org staffs as an intimate chat with staff members to let them in on what’s going on and what we’re planning so that staffs could be informative to the Scientology public. It was a “staff public” medium of communication.

The countless trillions of volts of radio and TV, the rivers of newsprint and pages tearing through presses, pour fantastic lies into the overwhelmed population of Earth.

Somebody (in NY) broke the rules, played it to the Scientology public. Then somebody else figured it was a substitute for a congress and dropped congresses.

The prevailing tone of dismay and contempt across the world is stimulated and kept alive by PRs.

The exact end result was to cut totally my comm line to org staffs. The other day I heard how staffs missed hearing from me.

So disabuse yourself of any idea of a pleasant scene in the field of PR.

If my line to staffs in orgs is going to be played to PE attendees, that’s it. Wrong public. No comm line to staffs.

Even if you are engaged in the promotion of the most worthwhile objects pushed by the most altruistic leader, PR work is done cheek by jowl with some pretty questionable characters whose objects are far from worthwhile and whose masters are about as altruistic as a rattlesnake.

I do a briefing of SO members on Flag, some dimwit uses it to play to Public Div public. Wrong public. So that line is cut.

Thus PR easily becomes a cynical activity. The PR deeds of the bad hats throw the field into disrepute and throw the whole world into a whirlpool of hate and decay.

Clear News publishes Treason orders on students to promote an AO! Wrong public.

So in entering or studying this field, do not walk into it like a wide-eyed virgin making an incautious visit to a military brothel.

Clear News is used for an FSM newsletter. Wrong public.

There is no reason to be disillusioned if one does not start out with illusions.

Clearing Course fliers go to new book buyers. Wrong public.

PR is a partially-developed technique of creating states of mind in different types of audiences or publics.

Letter Registrars write to people on a mailing list sent in by a mail order house. Wrong public.

PR can be used or abused.

A conclusion someone not knowledgeable in PR technique could reach would be “promotion doesn’t work.”

Thus before proceeding any further with the subject, it was necessary to restudy the subject and find out what was wrong with it, add it to the subject and thus make it less dangerous to use.The liabilities of PR, as taught and used before 1970 were

Promotion never works on wrong publics.

A. It inevitably recoiled in greater or lesser degree to the harm of its user.

B. It had long repute as a carelessly or badly used subject, full of failures.

The PR has to figure out his precise publics. There may be several distinct types.

C. It is normally used into the teeth of competitive PR.

Then he has to survey and look over the reactions of each different type.

Unless these objections could be nullified or new discoveries and developments could be accomplished, the basic techniques of PR were about as safe as a cocked Spanish pistol — ready to blow up its user long before it hit anyone else.This is what has been done with PR in our hands:

He then plans and designs his communication and offerings for each one.

1. Its more dangerous points have been located.

An orderly org has each different public categorized and labeled in Address.

2. A full study of its texts is required.

Then the PR sends the right message to the right public in each case. There may be a dozen different messages if there are a dozen different publics. Each one is right for that public.

3. It is designed now for use that is beneficial as well as offensive and defensive.

The PR is after a result, a call in, a reply, a response.

Thus the standard texts of PR have to be studied and studied well. And they must be studied WITH THE ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENTS KNOWN AND GIVEN HIGH IMPORTANCE.

The right message in the right form to the right public gets the result.

Only then is it safe to use PR techniques. Otherwise PR activities are almost a complete liability and will lead to trouble.

A wrong message to the wrong public simply costs lots of money and gets no result.

In this series we will bring PR up-to-date from the liabilities which exist in its purely PR college textbook practice.

Even if a PR is engaged in “molding public opinion,” it still requires a different message to each different public.