Is this Public Relations?

This week’s lesson was about the law and it’s importance to public relations. The First Amendment is one of the most influential laws in our constitution and contributes a lot to public relations. The First Amendment’s purpose is to protect our right of expression and free speech and this is clearly critical in PR. In the Handbook of PR, states that the constitutions protection does not apply to all messages at any medium. The Supreme Court is more lenient on political speech for example debates on public issues. Commercial speech is more restricted than political speech because it is based on making a profit. However, now pure commercial speech is protected to a certain extent.

In addition to the constitution, there are other federal agencies that regulate speech. It’s important for PR practitioners to understand all of these agencies and what exactly they regulate. The last thing a PR practitioner would want is to jeopardize their company or client by unnecessarily breaking a law, something like that can and should be avoided at all costs.