If you were to look up public relations in the dictionary you would find one of the following definitions.

1. The art or science of establishing and promoting a favorable relationship with the public.

2. The methods and activities employed to establish and promote a favorable relationship with the public.

3. The degree of success obtained in achieving a favorable relationship with the public.

4. (as a noun) a promotion intended to create goodwill for a person or institution.

Unfortunately, the methods used in definition 2 to create a positive effect in definition 1 are not always what people would consider scrupulous and the success we achieve in definition 3 is many times destroyed by those methods.

In today's world of immediate news access, public relations is more critical than ever. With stories breaking literally minutes after an event, public relations firms sometimes have little to no time in order to put out fires.

One need not look far to find public relations disasters, some being actual acts of God. When a natural disaster such as a hurricane hits a particular region that depends on tourism for much of its income, it is difficult to try to sell to the rest of the world that the region is still a great place to come and visit, to spend their vacation dollars. The recent hurricane that hit New Orleans is a perfect example. A public relations firm would have to literally be wizards to get anyone to come to a city that is now a ghost town.

Then there are the public relations disasters that are man made, such as the torturing of prisoners in Iraq. The public relations people of the US government had the near impossible task of trying to put a positive spin on this event. The war in general has been a difficult thing to sell to the American people.

Of course the most common public relations disasters are those associated with big business. An example of this, and there are many to choose from, would be when Coca Cola had to defend itself against allegations from Pepsi that its product manufactured in India contained high levels of toxins. The way the two companies handled this matter only added more fuel to the fire.

When someone eats in a fast food restaurant and finds things in their food that don't belong there, this is another public relations nightmare for the company. Again, in most cases when these things happen, the company only makes things worse by either denying the allegations or trying to cover them up.

The best way for any company, or government for that matter, to handle public relations nightmares is to deal with the situation honestly; present the facts and state their plan for correcting the problem. Most importantly, take responsibility. In today's world people expect honesty. If we give them the facts and our intentions for dealing with the situation honestly, most public relations nightmares can be avoided. Unfortunately, this is a lesson most of us have not yet learned.