Your Move, Hollywood: Are PR People Good Guys Or Bad Guys?

In the media and popular culture, it can be pretty hard to find accurate descriptions of public relations professionals. It seems that our profession is often harshly criticized, and pop culture references don’t help. From modern TV shows like?Flack, which portrays the absolute worst in celebrity PR practices, to older media references like the film?Phone Booth?or the film noir classic?Sweet Smell of Success, PR people are often unfairly characterized as being morally challenged publicity hounds or fixers.

And while there may be a few bad apples in the PR barrel—and real-life embarrassments show up every so often—I’ve found that the vast majority of these characterizations are simply not true. Public relations is an honorable profession that provides conscientious communications support across a multitude of areas that are critical to the operation of a business, as well as our larger society.

So, what’s good about PR?

Business communications is a great starting point for understanding the goodness of PR. Without PR, nobody would know about corporate news like product launches or have any visibility into IPOs or mergers and acquisitions and just about any other significant happenings in the business world. In addition to quarterly earnings, announcing new widgets and executive comings and goings, public relations teams are also tasked with legally mandated disclosures like?8-K events?across nearly every industry. Without the constant delivery of information to the media and the public via PR, a lack of visibility could inhibit commerce and simultaneously make it difficult to govern and regulate businesses. Some might consider business communications to be dull, but they are necessary to conducting commerce.

In the same way, PR serves an essential function for government—from small cities and counties to states and up to the federal level. Communications professionals such as public information officers help get the word out about a variety of subjects that impact everyone. They deliver news ranging from updates on legislation and public health announcements that help society cope with events like the pandemic to more mundane but nevertheless important daily information like road conditions on a snowy day. We usually don’t think about this huge daily flow of information and the way that it impacts us all, but its absence would be hugely disruptive. Imagine a world without daily updates from government institutions like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the United States Geological Survey (USGS)—without the steady flow of relevant and useful information that PR people feed to the media, we would be living in the dark.

What’s more, public relations also plays a significant role in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. News from NGOs and other players in civil society impacts us all, from communications around disasters or other unplanned happenings to the latest research from think tanks and universities or other institutions. Behind each tidbit of news that makes up our day, there’s a hardworking, ethical PR pro behind the scenes who gathers information and packages it for delivery to the larger world.

Hey, journos: Take it easy on us.

Another key misconception when it comes to PR people is the notion that journalists don’t like or respect PR practitioners. For every critical piece published about how bad PR people can be—with off-target, spammy pitches and never knowing when to give up and stop calling about a questionable client or story idea—there are thousands of instances of PR people helping to make news happen for reporters.

Every day, we serve as efficient and effective intermediaries between an organization, the media and, ultimately, the public. The best PR people are storytellers: “corporate journalists” who approach their work with a reporter’s perspective and can understand what resonates with the media by keeping an eye on the news, popular culture, trends and the societal zeitgeist. They tailor their media approach in such a way as to be well-received by writers and editors. This is, of course, the talent and finesse that are associated with our profession; a consistent, sensible approach to PR isn’t highlighted often enough.

We need to do PR for PR.

At the end of the day, I think PR people truly are the good guys. A fairer media characterization might suggest that we serve our clients like the character Uhura (Zoe Salda?a-Perego) in the latest Star Trek movies. In her role as an expert communications officer, she is part diplomat, part publicist, part researcher and part content creator—but no matter the circumstances, she’s always at the center of what’s going on and is in control of the facts.

This more multifaceted definition of a PR professional is the sort of “PR for PR” that we should be advancing when we talk about the profession. This is especially true now during times of economic uncertainty. We PR pros should help facilitate communication when the news isn’t good, we should help preserve and burnish corporate and organizational reputations, and we should be instrumental in sending the right messages to constituencies like shareholders, customers and employees at the right time.

For a job that’s portrayed as pretty one-dimensional in the media, modern PR and communications pros bring an amazing portfolio of skills to the table and can do far more good than we often get credit for. Your move, Hollywood.

This article originally appeared in Forbes.