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WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

_{PART II}

UNIT

ONE

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The basic purpose of public relations writing is to persuade. The objective is to create favorable public opinion about an organization - its policies and actions, its goods or services. The objective is to influence people. To be an effective public rela­tions writer, you must understand public opinion, why people have opinions, and how to affect those opinions.

Public Opinion

Public opinion is not just mass opinion. It is the sum of individuals'opinions on a subject that affects them. For example, the stockholders of a factory (a public) may favor moving to another location, while the employees (a public) may vigorously op­pose the idea. Meanwhile, the general public may be unaware of the controversy or aware but indifferent. The reason for the varying opinions is the variance in attitudes.

Attitudes and Opinions

An opinion is an expression of attitude. It may be expressed by writing, by speak­ing, by acting, or by not acting. People who fail to express their opinions may do so because their attitudes are weak or because they don't believe that expressing them­selves will do any good.

An attitude is a predisposition to think, speak, or act in a given way about a specific subject. No one is born with an attitude — all attitudes are learned. Some attitudes are deeply rooted; when tied into other attitudes, beliefs, and values, they may be very hard to change.

In the case of the proposed factory move, the opinion of the stockholders is prob­ably based on an attitude concerned with costs and profits. The opinion of the employ-