Public Relations: The Distorting Lens through Which We View the World
David Beckham’s apparent rant against the honours committee for denying him a knighthood, and the BBC’s recent “Panorama” programme giving a candid view of one of HM’s prisons, appear to have little in common. However, both are contrary to their respective images that are projected for public consumption. If David Beckham’s hacked emails are genuine, we’ve learnt that his charity work may not be out of pure altruism, but part of a larger scheme to enhance “Brand Beckham” by paid public relations. And the same public relations have tried to limit the damage – if not exactly by outright denial as in the Rebecca Loos controversy – then by using the rather vague phraseology of PR, suggesting they were taken “out of context”. This is despite the unlikelihood of ever taking a clearly targeted tirade using the f- and c-words out of context.
Widespread evidence of the state of UK prisons seems to be at variance with the stance of successive governments. The true scale of problems such as overcrowding, too few warders, little in the way of rehabilitation, easy access to drugs for the inmates and violence and intimidation by prisoners against fellow inmates and warders, seems to have been denied by government PR machinery that skilfully relegates endemic problems to isolated ones. With various governments refusing to recognise the magnitude of the problem, the question has to be asked whether they’re unaware and out of touch, or aware and unwilling to take the necessary, and likely expensive, action.
Reticence to take appropriate action seems to be based on an unwillingness to admit failure. Yet without recognising failure how are things to be improved? For every cover-up, the problem takes longer to rectify. Failure is important to society in recognising where things are going wrong, and what needs to be put right, fulfilling the same function as pain in the human body. Denial of either could have serious consequences.
As for David Beckham, does it really matter that his manipulated public persona is different from the fallible human being he really is? Maybe it’s felt that having been elevated to a role model – as much by his diligent PR as by his own sporting achievements – his inevitable human failings have to be hidden from public view. This gives the impression of life being a search for some sort of prescriptive perfection. But that seems to be at the expense of ignoring the fallible human condition. The real challenge is in recognising and allowing for our weaknesses and, similarly to any type of failure, dealing with them in the most positive way when they occur. Perhaps that’s the message our celebrity role-models should be conveying directly, not inadvertently by candid glimpses into their real lives that have managed to by-pass their PR.
