White House PR Staff Gives Industry Bad Name, Pros Say

LOS ANGELES, CA — The White House public relations machine, with its "alternative facts" and "largest audience to witness an inauguration, period," is giving the PR industry a bad name, according to a new study released Tuesday by USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Regardless of political affiliation, public relations professionals give their White House counterparts failing grades, the survey found. According to the survey of public relations professionals, 73.2 percent of respondents of all political stripes believe the current White House communications team is hurting public perception of the PR industry.

"It's clear from the results of our survey that the PR industry would prefer to distance itself from the current White House communications team, whose practices are not reflective of the values of the broader industry," said Fred Cook, director of USC Annenberg's Center for Public Relations.

"The vast majority of PR professionals believe that honest, open communication leads to constructive dialogue and shared understanding, both of which are in short supply these days," he said.

The news only gets worse for White House mouthpieces Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway. Ninety percent of the professionals surveyed believe the pair has had a negative effect on the industry, and a majority said they would never hire either. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed describe Conway's effect as "very" negative, while only 59.4 percent describe the Spicer effect as "very" negative. Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' effect was described as negative by 56.5 percent, making her the White House standard bearer.

"It's always difficult to evaluate an individual's performance when you don't really know what's going on behind the scenes," Cook said. "However, it's obvious that the broader PR community is deeply concerned about the long-term consequences of the White House's approach to communications."

While 36 percent of PR professionals agree that current White House communications team members do "their best under difficult circumstances," the majority indicated they would not hire the current press secretary or deputy press secretary in a PR-related job if they were in a position to do so.

If President Donald Trump is unhappy with his team members, he'll have a hard time replacing them. If asked by the current president to join the administration's communications team, the overwhelming majority of PR practitioners said they would not accept jobs in the White House, with 6 percent saying they would accept the job of press secretary or deputy press secretary and 7 percent saying they would accept the job of director of social media. Of the conservatives polled, 75 percent said they would not accept an invitation to become press secretary.

Of the 900 survey respondents, 55.3 percent identified themselves as liberal, 29.6 percent identified themselves as moderate and 15.1 percent identified themselves as conservative. When asked if the current White House communications team is impacting the image of the PR profession, 77.4 percent of liberals agreed, along with 77.2 percent of moderates and 53.9 percent of conservatives.

When asked about various aspects of the perceived performance of the overall White House communications team members:

• 83.7 percent agree they "constantly change their views/statements";
• 80.2 percent agree they "distort the truth";
• 63.5 percent agree they "purposefully lie";
• 36.3 percent agree they "do their best despite the circumstances";
• 32 percent agree they "work hard to explain the administration's policies";
• 15.7 percent agree they "are treated unfairly by the media";
• 13.3 percent agree they "are strategic in their approach"; and
• 11.6% agree they "act like PR professionals."

The online survey was distributed to PR professionals across the United States via email and social media channels between May 30 and June 8, resulting in a "convenience sample" of 902 qualified responses, representing all 50 states. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents were between the ages of 35 and 64, and 51 percent have 20-plus years of experience in the communications field.

Fifty percent work in public relations or communication agencies; 26 percent work in public and private corporations; and 16 percent work in government agencies or nonprofit organizations. About 57 percent were female and 41 percent were male, with the remainder not identifying their gender.

City News Service contributed to this report. Photo: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer conducts a White House daily briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House June 12 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)