Is PR damaging democracy? 92
Power and PR · 2006
The previous chapter argued that PR propaganda has either no effect on democracy; or that it has a beneficial effect. A possible third outcome of the PR and democracy relationship is negative effects on democracy. These effects include: the PR ‘voices’ of dominant groups in society are heard more than those of less dominant groups; PR gives advantages to special interests at costs to the public interest; and this asymmetry of communication expresses and reinforces unequal power relationships. Other effects are that PR ‘clutters already-choked channels of communications with the debris of pseudoevents and phony phrases that confuse rather than clarify’, and that it ‘corrodes our channels of communication with cynicism and “credibility gaps”’.1