Myth :
Public Figure – Someone who like people – celebrity party organizer – artist – glamorous publicity, extensive promotion, dealing with the commercial world and external public only.

Reality :
Public Relations is dealing with issue management, reputation management, crisis management, engineering of trust, establishing relationship of an organization and its public based on mutual understanding and acceptance. It deals with both the internal and external public of an organization. It is mostly concerned with strategic communications based on truth, ethical code of conduct and professional standard of performance.

Theoretical framework of public relations

• Is a management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or an organization with public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance. (Cutlip, 1985)

• Public relations practice is the deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organization and its publics. (Harlow, 1976)

In practice – public relations refers to many things.

• Some people refer to just public relations, PR – Purel or Humas (in Indonesian). It appears with anything that attracts media attention. Others see public relations as an effort to hide the truth or putting a positive spin on bad news. Public relations means different things to different people and often has a negative meaning (Cutlip, 2000)

Some not’s of public relations

• Not a free or unpaid advertising
• Not a soft sell neither promotion nor publicity
• Not meant to cover up bad management concept