Lobbying in the United Kingdom
Formal procedures enable individual members of the public to lobby their Member of Parliament but most lobbying activity centres on corporate, charity and trade association lobbying, where organisations seek to amend government policy through advocacy. Companies and individuals who operate in this sector commonly use the terms "public relations", "public affairs", "political consultancy" or "corporate affairs" to describe their activities (though this was also a reaction to the negative publicity surrounding the word "lobbyists" following the 1994 Cash-for-questions affair). Professional public affairs agencies, representing multiple clients, undertake a significant proportion of lobbying activity in addition to individual organisations conducting lobbying on an in-house basis.
Crystallizing Public Opinion
Defending the role of the public relations counsel as a "special pleader", Bernays writes that the viewpoints which he fosters are not necessarily worse than those he would discourage. In reality, "the only difference between 'propaganda' and 'education,' really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don't believe in is propaganda." He quotes Elmer Davis's observation that "the relativity of truth is a commonplace to any newspaper man, even to one who has never studied epistemology." (pp. 208–213)