PR ISN’T JUST an acronym but also a social field, communication tool, human trait (as in ma-PR, one who possesses abundant pleasantness) etc., has evolved into a one thousand and one meanings.
Although I was already in my movie reporting career—really now, in this day and age of modern forms and substance of mass media, entertainment reporting, is, after all, a professional job—that I had known and seen what PR meant although I had a little background of the practice.
During college, I was informed that one of the specializations of the course Mass Communications is Public Relations.
That was my first exposure if not a shallow or misinformed orientation about PR, its most common expression. Later, I would discover many things about it.
By the way, PR also stands for press release.
PRO or Public Relations Officer is another term related to the subject.
In my fifty years or so of movie writing, I always encounter situations about PR or questions about it.
In showbiz alone, there are diverse stories about PR.
The abbreviated PR, I think, is the most abused, misplaced and misused language in multimedia.
Is PR good or bad?
It depends.
PR comes in many forms and distributing press releases is one of them.
NEWS RELEASE
A press release or shall we say, news release, its euphemism, for instance, is when a rah-rah girl or boy of a certain public official states the current projects of his or her office, usually stating the general information about them or a product launch or announcement of activities.
These days, however, we always say and hear in mass media circles that PR lays down a particular truth or layers of truth or reconstructs them if there are other truths countering them or variations thereof especially if the information is destructive or damaging to its image in order to favor the one being made over if not peddled.
At this time of information overload, disinformation and misinformation, a copy or a story pitched as a press release when churns out by a messenger and goes to the hand of a reporter or an editor would connote subjectivity or objectivity or both, partiality, one-sidedness, “spinned” or spun, biased etc. about an issue especially siding with a subject or it could be a genuine piece of truth.
But hey, there is such a thing as an absolute truth.
Or to a certain extent, a PR is subject to suspicion for “perks” or money or a coded “envelopmental journalism.”
In the Philippines, how do you differentiate a journalist from a PR or a PRO? Or has the line that separates them already blurred?
These principles or observations may as well apply in the hierarchy of other journalism beats.
How do you distinguish then a PR from friendship or affiliation functioning as “paki (request)” in the same way as promoting an individual (artist or any creative of a film, TV show, music, theater and other multimedia artefacts) or a product (movie, teleserye and other types of boob tube programs, recording or concerts or any musical shows, one-act or full-length plays)?
Friendliness is also tantamount to PR mostly talking about a friendly person as the case maybe, like distributing press releases, we also usually mean, good PR, educated in a PR school or not.
If PR, according to an AI definition, is “the strategic communication process that builds positive relationship and trust between an organization and the public,” then most writers, if not all, are PROs and publicists because the safest and common practice in writing, aside from the reportorial, is the affirmative slant and presentation.
In one way or the other, we (including myself and other writers, known or nebulous) are doing PR, paid or not.
Anything critical is an entirely different thing for it isn’t easy to be a critic in the real sense of the word and knowing fully well its freedom and responsibility.
Criticism is a discipline and a moral obligation.
SHOWBIZ OUTFITS
Organizations in showbiz would mean Regal Entertainment, Star Cinema, GMA Pictures, Solar Films, Viva Entertainment, Philippine Movie Producers Association, Film Academy of the Philippines, Famas, Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, ABS-CBN, UNTV, TV5, Philippine Movie Press Club, GMA Network etc.
In media relations, PR rebuilds an image of a tarnished organization or it constitutes decay.
PR, most often than not, thrives in crisis management by protecting an individual or a group of brand reputation during bad press or negative events.
Here’s a classic example of what is PR, what isn’t or the grey areas in between:
When the still missing TV host, star builder, talent manager and entertainment writer Boy C. de Guia was running columns for tabloids and fanzines, he was accused of writing PR stories (as if it’s a crime or bad behavior) which appeared to most as dull reading because he would just write reportorially about his subjects like Carmi Martin, Christopher de Leon, Hilda Koronel, Phillip Salvador, Michael Laygo etc., among the living ones and the late Nora Aunor, now National Artist for Film Lino Brocka etc.—their latest activities mostly in plain announcement.
Readers, especially from show business would also browse on him, of course, but would set him aside for the moment.
Instead, they would look for “hot news” or first turn on the pages of fanzines, tabloids, broadsheets and other reading matters on the likes of Lolit Solis, Giovanni R. Calvo, Alfie Lorenzo, Inday Badiday, Billy Balbastro, Oskee Salazar, Ricky F. Lo, Jobert Sucaldito and other dead movie journalists or the living ones like Cristy Fermin, Ogie Diaz, Boy Abunda (the last two were print media writers before they ventured into full entertainment broadcasters) and their ilk.
KUYA BOY DE GUIA
I kept on thinking what and how in the world Kuya (a term of endearment to an older man by affinity or older brother by blood) Boy de Guia differed from the rest of them while he just wrote reportorially while others had writing flair of sensational flavor but they, in one way or the other, espouse PR as well.
Most of them handled or still handle publicity, directly or indirectly, officially or self-appointed, by and of, of celebs or artefacts if not holding connections or linkages, personal and otherwise, with each other.
Meanwhile, an un-PR narrative, generally, is equated with gossip—verified (as truth) or not, hard-hitting opinion, distorted fact, out-of-context presentation, intriguing statements and other types of write-ups or broadcasts, and in the case of social media, anything that strikes the curiosity and interest of the reader or watcher.
When is a bitchy column PRish and when is not?
There are items that hide the selling (hard or soft) of goods or drumbeat for a client-person by attacking them in the most intriguingly positive ways. This is different from an AC-DC (attack and collect, defend and collect) syndrome. There are cases that the subjects themselves create their own narratives, however confusing and exposing like washing dirty linen in public just to attract readers, viewers and eventually, audio-visual projects or any multimedia assignments.
Or in the case of social media algorithms, fake news or forced if not forged stories, they are gauged by, the more numbers of views or shares etc., the better.
Still, one of the most worn-out aphorisms “negative publicity is still publicity,” works.
A piece of opinion can also be a venue for PR or spinning a bad press to make or paint a person good or an institution or a situation in the eyes of the public.
TV SHOWS BY GENRES
For me, it’s rather absurd when I hear people in the newsroom and elsewhere among communication fields justifying that an entertainment news is okay as PR material because it just comes across a movie, TV show of all genres, concert, theater play etc. and nothing is jeopardized because it is just entertainment.
But a movie or a teleserye is a collaboration of two or more creative heads where all the elements of literature, audio-visual creativity and technology and the many aspects of human or animal lives including morality or the choice between good and evil, specifically positive values for the judgement of the audiences.
When journo Luchie Aclan Arguelles sent me a column feed on Dr. Angelina “Nina” Galang, a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) who wrote a book titled “A, The Charm of Life: Remembered, Revealed,” a compendium of the life experiences of the author (her quiet moments of self-realization, reminiscing the past, inspiring others through real friendships, designing the future etc.), is she, aside from being the editor of the memoir, a publicist as well of the book and the author?
Aclan Arguelles also announced that the book is off the press on August 8, 2026.
When I write it here, am I a PR of the item being presented or promoted?
What is my role in the dissemination of information about the book which is also a commercial product since it is priced when it gets to a bookstore, electronic or e-store or a physical book supplier such as Rex, National, Fully Booked, Book Sale, Pandayan, Goodwill, Merriam etc.?
What is my responsibility when critics would assess the values of the book its blurbs I wrote about?
If a critic or simply, a reader, likes the book or not and other predilections in between, what are my assets and my liabilities as a purveyor of the intellectual, visual or emotional product?
In summation, though, there’s nothing wrong with PR.
The only question though is for whom?
Would it improve the lives of the many Filipinos especially those who dwell at the bottom of the social pyramid?
Or would it only benefit or fatten the wallets of the PRO themselves or doing a Robinhood deed instead in the service for the majority of Filipinos by awakening them from slumber of oppression?