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DOES THE US NEED A PR DEPARTMENT?

Written by: Nick Renton

Article Overview: Companies often have public relations departments charged with enhancing and protecting the image of their organisations. Of course, as always, while PR activity can assist a legitimate cause, it can never make a bad service or a bad product seem really good. This case study has some lessons for businesses on how they should not portray themselves.

DOES THE US NEED A PR DEPARTMENT?

Companies often have public relations departments charged with enhancing and protecting the image of their organisations. Of course, as always, while PR activity can assist a legitimate cause, it can never make a bad service or a bad product seem really good.

If the United States of America were indeed a company, how would its image be considered by the rest of the world? This case study has some lessons for businesses on how they should not portray themselves.

In the light of the examples below, would the United States be regarded as being modern and progressive?

# The US has failed to adopt the metric system of weights and measures (SI), which is used throughout the rest of the civilised world. The authorities have even made a feature of the fact that the Freedom Tower being built on the World Trade Center site in New York is to be exactly 1776 FEET high.

# The US still uses Fahrenheit for temperatures. Actually this draws attention to its non-scientific attitude whenever it broadcasts weather reports to the rest of the world.

# Businesses in the US also refuse to use metric paper sizes such as A4, continuing to use assorted quarto and foolscap sizes instead.

# People in the US think that the duration of a day somehow lies between the duration of a month and the duration of a year. They thus persist in writing dates in the illogical MMDDYY format, to the confusion of readers in the rest of the world.

# Companies listed on stock exchanges in the US in many cases still use scrip certificates, a highly expensive and inefficient system. The stock exchanges in civilised jurisdictions generally trade shares on an uncertificated basis.

# The belief in fundamentalism is very high in the United States, leading to pressure to teach creationism in schools as though it were a scientific fact. A recent survey found that an astonishing 65.4 per cent of the population still believes in the devil.

# In some states of the United States judges are elected officials. In more enlightened jurisdictions judges are always appointed officials and they are given tenure. This gives them proper independence from political intervention.

# Hypocrisy prevails. Large sections of the population in the US claim to be pro life when discussing a woman's right to have an abortion. They see nothing inconsistent in favouring the death penalty for certain crimes. The United States is one of the very few civilised countries which still impose this form of punishment.

# American citizens are remarkably narrow-minded in relation to nudity. To illustrate, more than 500,000 viewers in the US complained to the authorities when a female nipple was shown on television for a few seconds during the broadcast of a sporting event in February 2005. Such an extreme over-reaction in this day and age seems incomprehensible to most people in the rest of the world. A news report shortly after the incident gave the following further information:

"Jackson was exposed during a routine with Justin Timberlake. Federal regulators in the US have fined the CBS TV network a record $US550,000 for pop star Janet Jackson's `wardrobe malfunction' in February.

"The singer exposed her right breast during a dance routine with Justin Timberlake at this year's Super Bowl.

"Now the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has fined 20 CBS-owned TV stations the maximum penalty for indecency - $US27,500 - each.

"The fine is the largest ever levied against a US television broadcaster.

"The breast-baring incident generated a record number of complaints - more than 500,000 - and CBS was quick to apologize."

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Article Tags: civilised world, creationism, foolscap, freedom tower, inefficient system, legitimate cause, metric paper, metric system, mmddyy format, public relations departments, scientific attitude, scrip certificates, states of the united states, stock exchanges, system of weights, trade shares, weather reports, weights and measures, world businesses, world trade center site



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