The primary corrective discovery about PR has to do with the ARC triangle of Scientology.
This triangle is Affinity-Reality-Communication. If one corner (say A) is raised, the other two will rise. If one corner is lowered, the other two are as well.
Thus with high affinity, one also has a high reality and a high communication. With a low affinity one has also a low reality and a low communication.
With a high or low R one has a high or low A and C.
And so it goes. The whole triangle rises and lowers as one piece. One cannot have a low R and a high A and C.
PR is supposed to be a communication technique. It communicates ideas. Suppose one were to try to communicate an out-the-bottom R. In such a case the communication would possibly at first reach, but then it would recoil due to its R.
This is of course an advance in the mental technology of Scientology. It was not available to early pioneers of PR. So they talked (and still talk) mainly lies.
Older PR practitioners preferred lies. They used circus exaggeration or black propaganda. They sought to startle or intrigue and the easiest way to do it was with exclamation point „facts“ which were in fact lies.
„Mental health“ PRs dreamed up out of whole cloth the „statistics“ of the insane. „Nine out of every 15 Englishmen will go insane at some period of their lives“ is a complete lie. Streams of such false statistics gush from PR lobbyists to get a quick pound from Parliament.
The stock in trade of PRs, whether hired by Stalin, Hitler, the I Will Arise Society, the US President or the International Bank, has been black, bald-faced lies.
The US President has given 2 different figures of the percentage of increased government cost per year in 2 months. His PR man was trying to influence Congress.
The „Backfire 8“ as the „Car of the Century“ and the parachute exhibition „record delayed drop“ and the ambassador's press conference on „Middle East Aims“ are all PR functions – and salted throughout with lies.
You pick up a newspaper or listen in the street and you see PR-PR-PR – all lies.
A battle cruiser makes a „goodwill visit“ to a town it is only equipt to crush and you have more lies.
The tremendous power of newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and modern „mass media“ communication is guided by the PRs of special interests and they guide with lies.
Thus PR is corrupted to „a technique of lying convincingly.“
It makes a cynical world. It has smashed idealism, patriotism and morality.
Why?
When an enforced communication channel carries only lies, then the affinity caves in and you get hate. For the R is corrupted.
PR, dedicated to a false reality of lies, then becomes low A, low C and recoils on the user.
So the first lesson we can learn that enables us to use PR safely is to KEEP A HIGH R.
The more lies you use in PR the more likely it is that the PR will recoil.
Thus the law
NEVER USE LIES IN PR.
The trouble with PR then was its lack of reality. A lie of course is a false reality
The trouble with PR was R!
In getting out a press release on a new can opener that opens cans easily, and you want to say „A child could use it,“ find out if it's a fact. Give one to a child and have him open a can. So it's true. So use the line and say what child. Don't call it the „Can Opener of the Century.“ It won't communicate.
Just because radios, TVs and press pour out does not mean they communicate. Communication implies that somebody is reached.
Don't tell a lie to city officials when the truth is just as easy to tell. Why go to all the work of dreaming up a lie? If you do, it will weaken you if it is found out that it is a lie. Now you do have a PR problem with the „official public.“
Any lie will either blunt the C (communication) or end the C off one day with revulsion.
Handling truth is a touchy business also. You don't have to tell everything you know – that would jam the comm line too. Tell an acceptable truth.
Agreement with one's message is what PR is seeking to achieve. Thus the message must compare to the personal experience of the audience.
So PR becomes the technique of communicating an acceptable truth – and which will attain the desirable result.
If there's no chance of obtaining a desirable result and the truth would injure, then talk about something else.
PR is employed to obtain a result desired by the PR and his group.
Or it is employed to cancel out the undesirable PR of others.
Thus there is offensive and defensive PR.
In defending against hostile PR, once more it is the R that counts. Sun Tzu in his book about warfare gives several types of agent. One of these is the „dead agent“ because he tells lies to the enemy and when they find out they will kill him.
Hostile (or counter-PR) is usually the usual fabric of lies.
If one finds out the lies being told and documents just one as being false, he has made counter-PR recoil. His hearer will never believe him again. He's dead.
In the war between psychiatric hostile PR and the truth of Scientology, the „dead agent“ caper has a field day. Psychiatric PR has been lying for 20 years. Documented, the fact of these lies are lies is killing off psychiatry.
You understand, it's not one PR's word against another's. It's one PR's documents against the other PR's lies! That is correct defensive PR.
So you see that using out-R PR can be very dangerous.
If one is trying to PR an abuse into decay (a dangerous activity in itself), he obtains the desirable result by documenting TRUTH. But using the „dead agent“ caper is quite enough almost always.
The use of R not only involves truth, it involves acceptable truth and that involves the fixed opinions of another or others and their experience. All this is contained in the subject of REALITY.
What is the R of another or others?
This involves SURVEYS.
Then you know what truth he or they will accept.
Imagination in PR is not limited at all. It takes lots of imagination. But the imagination should be devoted to how the truth is made acceptable to the R of others and how the comm is delivered.
A totally imaginary statement or story is quite useful so long as it is known to be imaginary and not passed off as truth.
In a PR world truth is the almost unknown commodity. This world is full of the „noise“ of many lies, many babbles, many old fixations and hates.
But truth has comm value. All the lies will dead-end someday.
A (affinity) supports the R and C.
Therefore PR which seeks to incite hate will not have the C value of a message that carries actual affinity.
But affinity can also be falsified and in the PR world too often is.
A person who is sane has a high ARC value.
So the PR who is sane has a high potential. And those who have corrupted their A, R and C into a hole, wind up on the bottle or beating their dogs or cynical beyond belief.
Serving mad masters, a PR hasn't much chance.
So there is a technique known as public relations. And it has the high liability of abuse through lies and the degrade of its practitioner.
But if one strictly attends to the values of truth and affinity, he will be able to communicate and can stand up to the strain.
Knowing this, PR becomes a far more useful and mature subject.