Political PR, did it ruin the trust in politicians and is threatening democratic system?

The answer to this question isn’t easy (as to any of the questions people in my PR course had to face in debate battles). There are people who blame PR for government propaganda, for manipulating information and spinning it, for trying to control the media. People I’ve met who think PR is responsible for lack of trust in politicians are, however, a minority. Most individuals rarely think about PR as a cause of mistrust towards the government or politicians, because PR is rarely visible to them (unless they investigate on articles or study on PR issues for example).

While researching the reasons behind public distrust towards politicians and government, I came across a few statistics that showed that nearly 70% of UK population doesn’t believe public institutions. In his blog post "Trouble With Trust", Mark Thompson (director of BBC) explained that the media are responsible for the lack of this trust in public officials. Media always portray politicians in a negative way and even if they say the truth there always will be suspicion that he/she might be not telling things as they are. “Hardly ever a politician who does a good job hits headlines in the press or TV“, wrote one of the commentators of Thompson’s blogs.