Image of PR Practitioner in Movies and Television 1901-2011 1 The Image of the Public Relations Practitioner in Movies and Television 1901-2011 Joe Saltzman1 Professor of Journalism Director, The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC) A Project of the Norman Lear Center Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA
[email protected] Introduction In this article, we examine images of public relations practitioners in film and television appearing in more than 327 English-speaking films and television programs from 1901 to 2011.2 This is the largest study of its kind ever attempted and one of the first to include the image of the public relations practitioner in television programs. Many public relations practitioners believe the image of the publicist and the PR professional is one of the most negative in history. But this analysis indicates that the images of the PR practitioner are far more varied and even more positive than previously thought. Literature Review There have been previous studies on the image of the PR practitioner in film. They include Karen Miller’s landmark study in 1999 (which included film and print images),3 Larry Tavcar’s 1993 look at 17 films depicting public relations in the movies,4 Donn James Tilson’s brief look at public relations and Hollywood in 2003,5 and Carol Ames’ comprehensive follow-up to Miller’s study in 2010.6 In addition, Mordecai Lee studied images of the public relations practitioner in government and public administration, sampling 20 films from 1944 to 2000 in a 2001 study,7 and in a 2009 update8 added seven more films from 1996 to 2008.