King Hussein

Like it or loathe it, PR has become a key ingredient in our lives, but surprisingly little serious thought is given to what PR is and what its practitioners do. Glancing, usually disparaging references to PR abound, and journalists and others feel free to make overarching comments based on scant evidence, but PR remains under-examined and hard to study. The big PR firms remain shadowy, and by tradition PR people working within big organizations do not seek the limelight. If PR is an industry, it is a fragmented and diffuse one, scattered across all parts of the economy and society in thousands of small cells. In both the UK and the US, for example, the largest consultancies employ fewer than 1% of those who work in PR. Similarly even the largest companies have PR departments that rarely have more than a hundred staff and usually many fewer. PR also operates under many aliases – it seems that only a minority of practitioners like calling themselves public relations people – and its border territories with other communications and marketing disciplines are blurred and often disputed. This makes it difficult for outside observers and scholars to get to grips with PR, but also surprisingly hard for those working in PR to know their own business: no one individual has real experience of all the main areas of PR work.

Aujourd’hui plus que jamais, au Pakistan, en Afghanistan, au Maghreb des bombes explosent. Aucun territoire ne peut aujourd’hui affirmer qu’il ne sera pas, un jour où l’autre, confronté à un acte terroriste. Ce film met en récit l’histoire minutieuse de la terreur, ses moyens, ses cibles et ses objectifs. Il donne la parole à ses acteurs : anciens terroristes, juges, avocats et enquêteurs. Il met en évidence les influences idéologiques, les liens entre les différentes organisations, les échanges de savoir-faire.