Spin, Silence, and the Myth of Mutual Understanding
What Public Relations Gets Wrong About Communication
Communication is more than words. Tone, symbols, and context shape how meaning is built between people. It’s rarely simple — what one person intends is often filtered differently by another.
Scaled up to institutions, communication becomes mass communication. Its role is not just to exchange meaning but to shape how large groups see the world. Journalism and public relations both emerged to manage this scale, each claiming a place in the public sphere. At their best, they contribute to the commons of ideas by framing events, decisions, and debates for wider audiences.
Persuasion and Its Consequences
Yet mass communication has always carried with it another layer: persuasion. Whether through headlines, speeches, or campaigns, both journalism and PR have long relied on persuasive strategies to capture attention and compel audiences to see the world in a particular way. Both fields have faced the consequences of leaning too heavily on persuasion. Journalism’s early association with sensationalism and the “yellow press” eroded public trust, as audiences came to see reporting as entertainment rather than information. Over time, the field responded with new standards of objectivity, verification, and independence, developing methods designed to counteract its reputation for distortion. Public relations, by contrast, has struggled to shed its own association with spin and propaganda. Despite professional codes of ethics and academic models promising dialogue or mutual understanding, PR has yet to establish comparably rigorous methods to separate credible practice from manipulation.
This article reframes PR through the lens of Dean Barnlund’s transactional model of communication, a normative framework that sees communication as co-construction rather than delivery, where feedback and mutual presence shape meaning and create shared social realities.
Just as journalism strengthened its practice by adopting rigorous standards, public relations can evolve by grounding itself in a model that embeds feedback, reciprocity, and accountability into its methods. This article contrasts PR’s trajectory with that of journalism to examine the consequences of tactics like silence and message control, which erode public credibility. It will also explore how methods such as organizational listening, corporate social responsibility, and participatory design can help restore trust and, more importantly, provide mechanisms for stakeholders to hold power to account within the relationship between practitioners and their clients or employers.
The Communication Model PR Left Behind
Barnlund’s transactional model positions communication as a reciprocal process — meaning is co-created through feedback, context, and mutual interpretation. This framing makes clear what PR so often neglects: communication is not transmission, it is exchange.
But public relations has struggled to define itself beyond outputs: campaigns launched, messages delivered, coverage secured. Even more sophisticated frameworks, such as Grunig’s model of PR — a spectrum from propaganda to two-way symmetry — emphasize distribution and outcomes rather than the actual process of shared meaning-making. What PR frequently labels as “two-way communication” is often little more than opinion polling or stakeholder mapping used to refine messaging, not to reshape institutional decision-making.
Here, the transactional model exposes PR’s blind spot. Without mechanisms for genuine reciprocity, persuasion drifts toward manipulation, and silence becomes a tactic for control rather than a space for reflection. Journalists have long echoed this critique, describing PR as unethical, manipulative, one-sided and deceptive.
Again, the transactional model offers an alternative: one that is dialogic, ethical, and fundamentally democratic. It does not reject persuasion, but it demands reciprocity. Without feedback, there is no dialogue — only persuasive messaging dressed up as mutual understanding.
The Canadian Public Relations Society, which also outlines a professional code of conduct for practitioners, defines the practice this way:
Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals and serve the public interest. (Flynn, Gregory & Valin, 2008)
Taken this way, PR’s credibility problem is not persuasion itself, but its lack of methods to embed feedback into practice. Professional bodies may define PR as a function that achieves mutual understanding, but rarely explain how reciprocity should work in practice — how practitioners are expected to listen, interpret, and act on stakeholder feedback. Nor do they offer clear guidance for dealing in good faith with journalists or the public when silence or obfuscation threatens accountability and the right to know.
That gap matters. Increasingly, companies are declaring responsibilities beyond their shareholders, adopting the language of accountability to society as a whole. If institutions are moving in that direction, PR — as the self-declared function responsible for managing relationships and communication — has to move with them. Its credibility depends on developing both the methods for reciprocity and the standards for accountability that make those commitments real.
This raises a critical question: if communication is to be judged by reciprocity, what would reform look like in PR? Journalism’s efforts to rebuild credibility point to a few lessons.
Journalism and the Transactional Model: A Communication Practice Evolving
To understand the gap between communication and reciprocity in public relations, it helps to look at the other end of the media spectrum. Journalism, too, has its roots in persuasive communication.
In the late 19th century, newsrooms embraced sensationalism, exaggeration and emotional appeals to sell more newspapers. This “yellow journalism” used persuasive communication tactics to influence attitudes and behaviours aligned with their own economic or political interests — much like public relations would later do.
But journalism changed. Under pressure from critics and reformers, it developed professional norms of objectivity, verification, and editorial independence. By the mid-20th century, journalism had shifted away from entertainment and toward a civic function. Investigative reporting or ‘muckraking’, turned public attention to social problems and helped spark reforms ranging from food and drug regulations to workplace safety laws and antitrust action.
These shifts are not perfect or universal. Advocacy groups still pose as newsrooms while ignoring the standards that safeguard credibility and integrity in the public’s eyes.
The rise of digital media, social platforms, and now generative AI capabilities on the open market has all disrupted traditional business models and eroded public trust in Journalism.
But there are trailblazers in journalism who are finding sustainable solutions to these problems. Practitioners like Jennifer Brandel and Joy Mayer (Trusting News) and researchers like Andrea Wenzel are advancing models that treat audiences as collaborators in reporting. Their methods — engagement ethics, community-centred reporting, and solutions journalism — reflect a structural commitment to dialogue.
At its best, journalism engages with the social and cultural contexts of the public. It listens to events, institutions, and communities, and reflects them back in ways that help people make sense of economic and political power and its influence on their lives. In this sense, journalism is attempting to be accountable not just to accuracy, but to earn trust. Not to command it from audiences but to respect trust, an attitude that’s strengthened through dialogue.
And, in the process, it’s moving closer to a normative representation of the transactional model of communication.
Public Relations: Close to Power, Far from Dialogue
Where journalism has evolved mechanisms to insulate itself from undue influence — standards of independence, editorial firewalls — public relations has remained closely aligned with hierarchy.
From its founding voices, such as Ivy Lee, who faced criticism for manipulating information to his client’s benefit, and Edward Bernays, who felt public sentiment could be engineered by a handful of privileged elite, PR has served those at the top of institutions.
Today, practitioners are often employed by governments, corporations, nonprofits and politicians to shape perception without ceding real influence to the publics affected by those decisions. In this role, PR functions much like finance: both are support systems for executive decision-making. Finance manages money as an organizational resource; PR manages reputation. Each provides legitimacy in its domain.
But proximity to power comes with risk. Finance departments are bound by accounting standards and regulatory oversight that discipline their methods. PR has no equivalent. Too often, its legitimacy rests only on its ability to “manage” crises or find positive nuance in damaging situations. In other words, their practice is deaf by design. The proactive design of feedback loops with stakeholders is frequently neglected in planning communication strategies. Without clear methods for incorporating stakeholder feedback, PR risks becoming a shield for leaders rather than a conduit for accountability.
Here, the transactional model again provides a valuable lens. If communication is reciprocal, then PR’s fidelity to its employer or client cannot mean message management alone. Fidelity also means conveying stakeholder perspectives back into decision-making. Feedback, when gathered rigorously, is not just data for reputation management — it is leverage for aligning institutions with the expectations of employees, customers, shareholders, and society.
Absent this feedback loop, PR falls back on tactics that erode trust: selective disclosure, spin, or suppressing inconvenient truths. Such practices may protect executives in the short term, but they undermine the long-term credibility of both the institution and the profession. Journalists, whose constitutional role is to hold power to account, are quick to recognize these practices as manipulative, widening the trust gap even further.
For PR to strengthen its legitimacy, it needs a methodological “firewall” of its own — practices that protect against being co-opted by narrow leadership interests. Equipped with stakeholder feedback, practitioners can use their position inside organizations not only to promote decisions but also to influence them positively. In doing so, they act with fidelity both to their employers and to the publics those employers ultimately serve.
Spin, Gatekeeping, and Silence: Trust-Damaging Methods
If public relations claims to build mutual understanding, it cannot rely on methods that deny reciprocity. Spin, gatekeeping, and silence are not strategies of communication — they are strategies of control.
Spin selectively frames facts to create a misleadingly positive picture. It distorts reality by emphasizing what flatters the institution while downplaying or omitting what may harm its reputation. Gatekeeping, meanwhile, withholds information altogether. Often justified under the banner of confidentiality or legal caution, it too easily becomes a tool for shielding leaders from scrutiny rather than protecting legitimate interests. Both tactics are presented as strategic, but in practice, they undermine trust. Stakeholders sense when they are being managed rather than informed, and journalists recognize when access to information is being deliberately restricted.
Silence, the refusal to comment or engage when questions are raised, removes communication altogether. Each of these methods may serve the short-term interests of executives or clients, but they erode credibility in the long term. They also contradict PR’s own ethical codes, which emphasize honesty, transparency, and accountability.
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Journalists recognize this gap immediately. Their role, constitutionally protected in democracies like Canada and the U.S., is to hold power to account on behalf of the public. When PR practitioners refuse to engage, reporters are denied access to the information needed to perform that role. Silence, in this context, is not discretion — it is obstruction.
Recent examples highlight the damage this causes. In 2025, the Investigative Journalism Foundation reported on Crestview Strategy’s lobbying work for the Government of Rwanda, a regime accused of surveillance and repression. When asked for comment, the firm offered nothing — no denial, no clarification, no context—just silence. The absence of response did not protect credibility; it confirmed suspicion.
Research in relationship management theory underscores why this matters. Control mutuality, the balance of power and influence in a relationship, is a key dimension of organizational trust. When PR defaults to silence, it signals not mutuality but domination: institutions reserving the right to act without explanation. In political contexts, where asymmetries of power are sharpest, such practices mutate into coercion, more commonly recognized as propaganda.
The lesson is clear. PR’s problem is not persuasion itself, but the absence of standards to guide how persuasion, disclosure, and dialogue should be practiced in good faith. Without those standards, spin, gatekeeping, and silence remain acceptable tactics, even when they undermine both public accountability and the profession’s legitimacy.
Building a Communication Practice That Listens
It’s true that journalism is not without its flaws. There are irresponsible reporters and newsrooms that stray from professional codes. But the practitioner’s best defense is not retreat into silence — it is fluency. PR professionals strengthen their credibility when they understand journalistic principles, the standards that guide editorial decision-making, and when they are prepared to call out reporting that fails those standards. Defensiveness or stonewalling only deepens mistrust; engagement grounded in mutual accountability builds respect on both sides.
From there, PR must look inward. The unchecked reliance on spin, gatekeeping, and silence has eroded trust with stakeholders and the public. To rebuild, practitioners need methods that embed reciprocity into communication itself. Participatory design, experience management, and organizational listening offer tested approaches. Each emphasizes feedback as a structural element rather than an optional add-on — processes that invite stakeholders into shaping outcomes rather than being managed after decisions are made.
Professional bodies have a role here as well. It is not enough to publish a code of ethics and let enforcement remain invisible. Credibility would be strengthened if associations maintained a public registry of accredited practitioners, set transparent processes for ethics reviews, and published the results of violations. In doing so, they would signal not only the profession’s aspirations, but its willingness to hold itself accountable to the public.
PR’s credibility problem is not persuasion itself, but its lack of methods and standards to embed reciprocity and accountability into practice. The transactional model of communication provides the foundation: communication is co-created, contextual, and mutual. The question is whether PR will build on that foundation with methods that match its claims. Doing so would not erase persuasion, but it would reframe it — from managing consent to fostering dialogue. And that is the difference between communication as control and communication as credibility.
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About the Author
Lindsay Mackenzie is a communications strategist and educator with 15+ years of experience in journalism, healthcare, and public affairs. She teaches in the Communications Management program at RRC Polytech and holds a master’s from McMaster University. Her work examines how organizations can foster trust through stakeholder engagement, experience management, and ethical communication practices that promote long-term credibility and institutional sustainability.
