Video: What is public relations by CIPR founder Tim Traverse-Healy

CIPR founder Tim Traverse-Healy sets out a definition for public relations. It’s as relevant today as it was in 1948.

Tim Travers-Healy was a founding member of the Institute of Public Relations (IPR) in 1948. It subsequently became the CIPR when it received a Royal Charter from the Privy Council in 2005.

Tim was one of the first people to set out a vision for the PR profession in the UK following World War II. He describes it’s role as a service to the public.

I first met Tim when I was President of the CIPR in 2014. I published his personal Credo for the future of PR which he wrote around the same time.

In this interview recorded last year, Tim talks about the role of PR in helping organisations engage with the public. The outcome is trust and mutual understanding, he says.

Tim calls on practitioners to be the voice of the public within the organisations that they serve. This was a founding principle of the PR profession in the UK. He sets out a clear distinction between PR and publicity.

“To be correctly termed, PR has to contain three elements in almost equal measure: truth, concern for the public interest and dialogue.”

I'm delighted that Tim has contributed a foreword to Platinum, the crowdsourced anthology of essays that I’m editing for the CIPR’s 70th anniversary. His vision for PR is as relevant today as it was when the IPR was founded.

The interview posted on YouTube was produced by the Arthur W Page Centre for Integrity in Public Communication.