School: Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Track: Adult Class: Certificate Topics — Year 1 (Foundations) · Home: Advocacy Certificate behind this topic: "Public Relations Foundations" — LinkedIn Learning, earned by Minister Destiny Marie Morgan (Jun 06, 2025) Founded and presented by: Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan
This lesson is educational information from Minister Destiny Testimony Schools. It teaches the public body of knowledge in this subject — the same ground Minister Destiny studied for her certificate — in this school's own words. It is not the original course, it does not award the original credential, and it is not legal or medical advice. If you are in danger right now, call 911.
Before you start
- This school never asks your name. Your progress is saved only in your own browser on this device — the school collects and keeps nothing. If you pass this unit's quiz (80% or higher, retakes allowed), you earn a downloadable certificate with a blank line — you write your own name on it after you save it. Quiz answers are not shown; if you miss a question, re-read the lesson and try again.
- This is the concepts foundations topic: what public relations is, who it serves, and the ethics that govern it. Its sibling topic, Public Relations (PR) Foundations — The Practice Core, teaches the doing — campaigns, messages, and pitching — and the two cross-reference each other rather than repeat. Take this one first if you can.
- This topic's home is Advocacy: Minister Destiny Marie Morgan serves as a public relations director, and this school teaches PR as a truth-telling discipline in service of the public.
The lesson
Part 1. What public relations is — and what it is not
Public relations is the deliberate work of building understanding and a working relationship between an organization and the people affected by it. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) describes it as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. Every phrase earns its place: strategic — planned, not improvised; relationships — ongoing and two-way, not announcements fired into the dark; mutually beneficial — the public must gain something real, not merely be managed.
Just as important is what PR is not. It is not advertising: advertising buys space and controls the message; PR earns attention and cannot control what is finally said. It is not marketing, though they work side by side: marketing drives transactions with customers; PR stewards reputation and trust with everyone. And it is not spin that survives daylight. This school holds the line plainly: PR trades in truth, or in silence where truth cannot yet be told — never in invention. A reputation built on invention is a debt that comes due with interest, usually in public, usually at the worst moment.
The work serves organizations of every size: a multinational, a ministry, a food pantry, a single author. Wherever people must decide whether to trust you — with money, attendance, a story, a vote — PR is already happening, planned or unplanned. Foundations exist so it can be done deliberately and honestly.
Part 2. Publics and stakeholders — who, exactly, are you talking to?
PR's foundational word is publics: distinct groups of people who share a relationship with your organization and act on it. "The general public" is almost never a useful audience, because it does not exist as a decision-maker. Real publics do: residents on one street, parents of enrolled children, donors who gave last year, employees on the night shift, local officials, journalists who cover your beat, former clients, future volunteers. Each public holds different information, different concerns, and different power over your future.
Stakeholders is the wider term: anyone affected by what the organization does, or able to affect it — including publics who have not yet organized or spoken. The foundation skill is mapping: list your publics, state what each one needs to know and decide, what they currently believe, and what a good relationship with them looks like in a year. Then prioritize honestly. A small organization cannot serve twelve publics with equal energy, and pretending otherwise just serves the loudest one by accident. Segmentation is not exclusion; it is the discipline of speaking to real people in terms of their real stake, instead of broadcasting to a fog.
Part 3. The four-step process — research, planning, communication, evaluation
Professional PR, across textbooks and the PRSA tradition, runs on a four-step cycle. Research comes first, and it is the step beginners skip: What is actually happening? What do our publics know, believe, and misunderstand? What does the evidence — surveys, listening sessions, coverage, complaint patterns — say, as opposed to what the loudest voice in the office assumes? Research turns PR from opinion into diagnosis. Planning converts diagnosis into a program: a goal, defined publics, objectives you can measure, messages, tactics, a calendar, and a budget. A plan written before tactics are chosen keeps tactics honest; choosing tactics first produces activity in search of a purpose.
Communication is the visible step — releases, events, briefings, content — and the one the public mistakes for the whole profession. It is one quarter of it. Evaluation closes the loop: did awareness, understanding, attitude, or behavior actually move, compared to the objectives set in planning? Evaluation feeds the next round of research, which is why the four steps are a cycle, not a staircase. Skipping evaluation is how organizations repeat a pleasant failure annually, with better catering. This school's companion topic, the Practice Core, takes this same cycle and runs a complete small campaign through it.
Part 4. Owned, earned, shared, and paid media
Modern PR sorts channels into four families, often taught as the PESO model. Paid media is bought placement: advertisements, sponsorships, boosted posts. You control it fully and everyone knows it was bought, which limits its credibility and defines its cost. Earned media is coverage and mention you cannot buy: a journalist's story, a review, a citation, a community leader's endorsement. It carries third-party credibility precisely because you do not control it — the same reason it can be refused or critical. Shared media is the social layer: posts, shares, comments, and community conversation, where publics talk back in public and partly own the message's fate. Owned media is what you publish yourself: your website, your newsletter, your noticeboard — full control, and only the credibility your record has earned.
Foundations thinking uses the four together deliberately. Owned media is the home base where the full, accurate story always lives. Earned media brings outside validation. Shared media brings conversation and warning signals. Paid media, used sparingly and disclosed clearly, buys reach for what the other three have already made credible. Trouble starts when an organization tries to live on one family alone — especially paid alone, which rents attention a reputation should have earned.
Part 5. Ethics and disclosure — the load-bearing wall
PR's license to operate is trust, and trust is an ethics outcome. The PRSA Member Code of Ethics names six professional values: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, and fairness — and its provisions require protecting the free flow of accurate information, disclosing who is speaking and who is paying, revealing conflicts of interest, and safeguarding confidences. Translated to daily practice: never plant a story pretending to be spontaneous when your organization arranged it; never pay for coverage without disclosure; never use a front group to hide the real speaker; correct errors visibly, in the same channels that carried them.
Disclosure questions have a simple test: would the audience feel deceived if they learned this fact later? If yes, disclose it now, in plain sight. The school's own line is stricter than the industry's and worth adopting as a personal standard: truth, or silence, never invention. Silence is sometimes a professional duty — a client's confidence, a family's privacy, an unverified fact. Invention is never a tool. The practitioner who will not invent becomes, over years, the person journalists call when they need the straight account — and that standing is worth more than any single story.
Part 6. Measuring honestly — outcomes, not applause
What gets measured gets repeated, so PR measures carefully or lies to itself expensively. The field's shared standard, the Barcelona Principles maintained through AMEC (the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication), teaches the core distinctions. Outputs are what you produced: releases sent, posts published, stories placed. Outtakes are what audiences took in: reach, attention, recall. Outcomes are what changed: awareness, understanding, attitudes, and behavior — registrations, donations, corrected misinformation, policy moved. Outputs are easy to count and easy to inflate; outcomes are what the organization actually hired PR to do.
The Principles are equally clear about a seductive shortcut: advertising value equivalency (AVE) — pricing earned coverage as if it were bought advertising — is not the value of public relations, and the profession's bodies reject it. A front-page story is not worth "what that space would cost as an ad," because the story's credibility, tone, and audience effect are the whole point and none of them are the ad's. Honest measurement sets goals before the work, measures outcomes against them with methods you would show a skeptic, and reports misses alongside hits. A report that only ever shows success is itself a PR problem — the first audience whose trust you will lose is your own leadership, the day reality contradicts the chart.
Words to know — Public Relations Foundations
- Public relations — the strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics (PRSA's definition in substance).
- Publics — distinct groups who share a relationship with an organization and act on it, such as residents, donors, employees, or officials.
- Stakeholder — anyone affected by an organization or able to affect it, whether or not they are organized or speaking yet.
- Four-step process — the PR cycle of research, planning, communication, and evaluation.
- Earned media — coverage or endorsement you cannot buy or control, such as a journalist's story, carrying third-party credibility.
- Owned media — channels an organization publishes itself: its website, newsletter, and noticeboard.
- Disclosure — stating plainly who is speaking, who is paying, and any interest the audience would want to know.
- Outcome — a change in awareness, understanding, attitude, or behavior — as distinct from an output, which is merely what was produced.
- Advertising value equivalency (AVE) — pricing earned coverage as if it were bought advertising; rejected by the profession's measurement principles as not the value of PR.
Myths vs facts — Public Relations Foundations
- Myth: PR is free advertising. Fact: Advertising buys control of a message; PR earns attention it cannot control. They are different disciplines with different credibility.
- Myth: PR means spin — making bad facts sound good. Fact: Ethical PR, under the PRSA code and this school's standard, trades in truth or silence, never invention; invented reputations collapse in public.
- Myth: Your audience is the general public. Fact: Useful PR addresses specific publics with specific stakes; "everyone" is a fog no message can reach.
- Myth: A pile of press clippings proves the campaign worked. Fact: Clippings are outputs; the Barcelona Principles direct measurement at outcomes — what audiences came to know, believe, or do.
- Myth: Disclosure weakens a message. Fact: Audiences forgive interests they can see; they do not forgive discovering they were deceived about who was speaking or paying.
Think it through — Public Relations Foundations
A small legal-aid nonprofit asks you for "some PR" for its new evening clinic. The director suggests buying a large advertisement, sending one announcement to "the media," and counting success by how many newspapers print it. Using only this unit, reshape the request.
Walk it through: (1) Publics (Part 2): replace "everyone" with the real publics — residents in the neighborhoods the clinic serves, referring agencies, local officials whose support protects funding, and the two reporters who cover housing and courts. Each needs different information. (2) The process (Part 3): begin with research — do residents know the clinic exists, and what do they misunderstand about eligibility? Plan objectives in outcome terms: not releases sent, but first-time callers from the target neighborhoods within three months. (3) Channels (Part 4): the full, accurate clinic information lives on the nonprofit's own site; earned coverage from the housing reporters brings credibility; community groups sharing the announcement carry it into shared media; the advertisement, if used at all, is disclosed paid support for a credible story, not the campaign itself. (4) Measurement (Part 6): report outcomes against the objective and refuse AVE — the honest chart, registrations and calls, is the one that survives the director's board meeting.
Try this — Public Relations Foundations
- ☐ Map one organization you know: list four real publics, what each needs to know, and what each currently believes
- ☐ Write one PR goal as an outcome — a change in knowledge, attitude, or behavior — with a date and a way to check it
- ☐ Sort your organization's channels into paid, earned, shared, and owned, and name which family is missing
- ☐ Run the disclosure test on one recent message: would the audience feel deceived learning anything later? Revise until the answer is no
- ☐ Read the PRSA Code of Ethics summary on prsa.org and note the provision your own work most needs to strengthen
Resources to keep — Public Relations Foundations
- Public Relations Society of America (prsa.org) — the profession's U.S. association: definition of PR, the Member Code of Ethics, and practice guidance.
- Institute for Public Relations (instituteforpr.org) — free research library on PR measurement, trust, and organizational communication.
- AMEC (amecorg.com) — home of the Barcelona Principles for honest communication measurement.
- Purdue OWL (owl.purdue.edu) — free writing resources for the releases and statements PR work requires.
What you earned / what's next — Public Relations Foundations
✅ Public Relations Foundations complete (quiz score 80% or higher): You can define public relations and separate it from advertising, marketing, and spin; map publics and stakeholders; run the four-step process; use owned, earned, shared, and paid media deliberately; hold the ethics line of disclosure; and measure outcomes honestly. Your sibling topic, Public Relations (PR) Foundations — The Practice Core, turns these concepts into campaign practice — take it next to complete the pair.
Your certificate
Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Certificate of Completion — Public Relations Foundations
This certificate is presented by Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan
Awarded to: ______________________________ (write your name here after you download — your name is never collected or stored by this school)
Date completed: ______________
You have learned what public relations truly is: truth, told on purpose, to people whose trust must be earned. Carry it with clean hands. — Minister Destiny Marie Morgan
This is a certificate of educational completion from Minister Destiny Testimony Schools. It is not a state license, a government certification, or the original course credential.
What's next: Return to the Certificate Topics for your next Year 1 Foundations topic.
Sources
- Public Relations Society of America (prsa.org) — definition of public relations and the Member Code of Ethics: advocacy, honesty, expertise, independence, loyalty, fairness; disclosure and free flow of information.
- Barcelona Principles — AMEC, International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (amecorg.com) — goal-setting, outcomes over outputs, and the rejection of AVEs.
- Institute for Public Relations (instituteforpr.org) — research on measurement, trust, and organizational–public relationships.
Your Progress — On Your Device Only — Public Relations Foundations
- Learning outcomes: On completing this unit, the student can:
- Define public relations and distinguish it from advertising, marketing, and spin
- Map an organization's publics and wider stakeholders and prioritize them honestly
- Run the four-step process: research, planning, communication, evaluation
- Classify channels as paid, earned, shared, and owned and state a deliberate use for each
- Apply the PRSA ethics values and the disclosure test to a real message
- Distinguish outputs, outtakes, and outcomes, and explain why AVE is not the value of PR
- Study time: Approximately 1.5 hours — an estimate covering reading, activities, and the test. Students move at their own pace.
- Assessment: A 10-question test drawn only from this unit's lesson. 80% or higher passes and earns the unit certificate. Answers are not shown; your score is saved only in your own browser on this device, and retakes are allowed.
- Level: Certificate Topics — Year 1 (Foundations) · Adult school · working rank on completion path: Freshman → Sophomore.
- Version: Version 1.0 — October 2026.
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