In the public interest?

Recently, I am sure many people are aware of the latest story to hit the news about the 13 year old Alfie Patten becoming a father. Everybody seems to have an opinion on this and it has been discussed at length between classes, friendship groups and families. But is it really in the public interest to know about this?

Some have said that of course it is. This should be a message to other children (which is what this boy is unfortunately, just a child) to demonstrates the implications of having sex before you fully understand the implications or at least the promotion of safe sex. This story could reach out to some who never in a million years thought "just once" could lead to a baby, before his voice has even broken. It could have an impact on the teaching of sexual education. To make younger children understand sex, but should 12 and 13 year olds be exposed to so much information about sex? Are they ready for that, or shoud they still be playing football with their mates?

There is, naturally, the other side of the debate which says that this one incidence should remain a private affair. It is not just the lives of the new mother and father, but also of a tiny baby to consider. There have been governmental figures commenting on this story! It has become huge and so far, this boy has no even been proved to be the father. Surely this is not of public concern. It is not directly impacting on the public at large is it?

Personally, I think this is a heartbreaking story which makes me feel deep sympathy for all involved. I know I, for one, could not have coped with a baby at 15 (the age of the mother) never mind 13. I do not think this is of pulic interest, used as a tool to teach others a lesson because there is so much to consider, mainly the baby.

What is PR?

Recently we were given this as an essay title and at first I thought this was simple, then I thought harder. PR is definitely not an easy thing to define. There are so many different views floating around from practionners and academics alike. Some list various tasks undertaken byPR officers, others try and pin point where it lies on the manger vs technican debate.

I looked at a number of different views fro a number of well rspected books:

Trench, R and Yeomans, L (2006) Exploring Public relations, Palgrave Macmillan
Theaker, A (2nd ed 2004) The Public Relations Handbook, Routledge
Harrison, S (2nd ed 2000) Public Relations, An Introduction, Thomson
Morris and Goldsworthy (2008) PR- A Persuasive Industry? Palgrave Macmillan

I found it fascinating that one job title could come under so many different definitions. It's hugely varied in it's activites obviously, but this still shocked me.

The CIPR states that:

‘Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.’(CIPR)

Reputations can make or break companies, so the PR is of extreme importance. Bill Gates famously said "If I only had one dollar, I'd spend it on PR". If this is not endorsement enough that even the giants need to build on their reputations I don't know what could be.

I, as a first year student, am still feeling my way through exactly what PR is through assessments and work experience. I am always learnign new aspects of the profession and I think from the initial research to the final press relaease, it is all as imporant. I think I will find itvery hard to ever be able to clearly define "what is PR" because it is such a leadin question.

Reflecting

Yesterday, in our PACE tutorial, we were discussing reflecting. Whether it be on our University work, or friends, or relationships, it struck me that everyone had completely different ways of reflecting. I assumed, naively, that the way I had been doing it was the only way and had had no contact with other methods. Some chose to write down their thoughts, others found talking things out worked best for them.

The challenge we now have, is to experiement with these differing way to find the most effective method to improve our work. To be honest, I don't think that my reflections were anything like as useful as the new types we looked at. I was definitely not honest enough with myself about how I could improve and tried to just ignore the problems.

So, I have started to change my ways! It is quite hard to harshly look at every bit of work and every presentation and not say, powerpoint broke. It was actually my lack of planning that led to powerpoint not putting the slides up. I'm also finding this very difficult in team work, but for other reasons. I tend to solely concentrate on what I could have done that let the team down, rather than what could we have planned that could have stopped any errors in the first place.

It will be a tuff but interesting journey for me to see where I am excelling and where I could really improve but it is most definitely a neccessary one.