I won’t enter the PR Week v PR Business debate. But I will praise a sophisticated analysis of public relations in Ukraine in PR Business (22 June 2006, pp 16-17 – website still not up).
The post-Soviet era development of the public relations industry is described by Martin Nunn. It’s a bleak picture to date, perfectly illustrating Kevin Moloney’s argument in Rethinking Public Relations: PR propaganda and democracy. ‘The more distance between journalists and PR people, the better for a liberal democracy. PR grows out of democracy, not democracy out of PR.’
In Ukraine, Nunn argues, ‘what had started out as the promising voice of democracy rapidly turned into cheap, unbranded advertising disguised as journalism.’ But there are reasons to be optimistic: the modern nation’s still a teenager and there are high levels of adult literacy. He is a strong advocate for ethical public relations practice and there are signs that it is taking hold in Ukraine.
Hi Richard,
As an international PR student, im interested in the development of international PR and i believe there will be a growth in this specialised field with the growth of Asia and other developing countries. Adn yes in terms of Ethics, it’s important to see how its importance and practice applied in different nations of the world esp where there are multinational companies. Do you have any research on trends and development in this field?