Public Affairs

It is fashionable nowadays among many people in communications to describe their work broadly as Public Affairs, implying that public relations is a branch of that umbrella activity, rather than the opposite. I will not debate here the appropriate terminology because so many words have been spoken or written on that subject elsewhere. Suffice to say that for our purposes we will take the term “public affairs” to mean that part of the communications activity that is directed toward government representatives at local, national and supranational level. These representatives may be elected legislators or the civil servants whose translation of laws into a host of regulations can often have more impact than the laws themselves.