question: why can't psychologists talk about public figures?
comment: I think that professionals are to avoid the appearance of giving a professional opinion about someone they haven’t evaluated professionally.
passages: The controlling precedent in the United States was set in 1964 by the United States Supreme Court in "New York Times Co. v. Sullivan", which is considered a key decision in supporting the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
  
  A fairly high threshold of public activity is necessary to elevate people to a public figure status. Typically, they must either be:
  
  BULLET::::- a public figure, a public official or any other person pervasively involved in public affairs, or
   BULLET::::- a limited purpose public figure, those who have "thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved." A "particularized determination" is required to decide whether a person is a limited purpose public figure, which can be variously interpreted:
  
  Discussion of a person on the Internet may at times rise to the level that it causes the subject of discussion to be treated as an involuntary public figure.
   The position of chief reputation officer is concerned with "reputational risk" from sources including social media and inappropriate individual or corporate behaviour, and deals with public relations from that angle. This kind of risk was seen as a growing concern for many companies since at least the mid-2010s, related to the rise of social media.
  
  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported public relations specialists had a median annual salary of $59,020 in 2016.
  
  Section::::Career prospects.:United States.:Salary.:Public sector.
   However, Thompson also acknowledges that "media and visibility is a double-edged sword" meaning that even though they can be used to show an improved image (by managing the visibility), individuals are not in full control of their self-presentation. Mistakes, gaffes or scandals are now recorded therefore they are harder to deny, as they can be replayed by the media.
  
  Section::::Media.:The public service model.
   This possibility is exploited by celebrities and politicians, as "marketing individual personalities as products" is an effective way to gain millions of fans not just online but in real life as well. For celebrities of all types, online personas are their brands. Public relations for Justin Bieber and Barack Obama alike can easily control the "brand" and maximize exposure and profitability.
  
  On the other hand, personal branding may afford potential employers the opportunity to more accurately judge a candidate's abilities and cultural suitability, since blogs, profiles, websites, etc., are pieces of work that can be evaluated.
  
  Section::::Disclosure.
   To overcome this problem researchers decided to use personally familiar individuals as stimuli instead of celebrities. Personally familiar individuals, such as participant's teachers, are for the most part heard as well as seen. Studies that used this type of control also demonstrated the face advantage. Students were able to retrieve semantic information more readily when recognizing their teachers faces (both normal and blurred) rather than their voices.
   Public relations professionals both serve the public's interest and private interests of businesses, associations, non-profit organizations, and governments. This dual obligation gave rise to heated debates among scholars of the discipline and practitioners over its fundamental values. This conflict represents the main ethical predicament of public relations. In 2000, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) responded to the controversy by acknowledging in its new code of ethics "advocacy" – for the first time – as a core value of the discipline.
   The Supreme Court has struggled to define who exactly is a public figure, but over fifty years of cases, a framework has become defined. The first grouping of public figures are government officials. The test of which government figures was articulated in the Court's ruling in "Rosenblatt v. Baer" (1966). In "Rosenblatt", the Court said that government positions subject to this rule were those in which the "public has an independent interest in the qualifications and performance of the person who holds it, beyond the general public interest in the qualifications and performance of all government employees". Additionally, a court must question whether the "employee's position is one which would involve public scrutiny and discussion of the person holding it". Along with government officials, the Supreme Court held in "Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc." (1974) that people who "have assumed an influential role in ordering society" are considered public figures. This is the same for people who have "achieved...pervasive fame or notoriety" or who have "voluntarily injected themselves or been drawn into a particular public controversy". This has even been held to include Jerry Falwell, a major religious figure in the United States.
   Section::::History.
  
  Biographies, including autobiographies, have always contained a sociological dimension since their advent in the Antiquity (Plutarch). For the most part of the usage of this notion, biographers dealt with outstanding individual personalities (such as politicians and artists) but there were also exceptions, such as Ulrich Bräker's autobiography, "The Poor Man of Toggenburg" ("Der arme Mann im Toggenburg"). The emergence of Sociology influenced an approach to biography that extended this notion beyond the individual dimension, such as the works of Alphons Silbermann on the life of the composer Jacques Offenbach and Norbert Elias on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
   In 2004, the court denied "certiorari" in "Santa Barbara News-Press v. Ross", a case in which the appellant sought to establish that corporate executives such as the appellee were automatically public figures.
  
  Section::::Subsequent jurisprudence.:State interpretations.
   The public relations practitioner, therefore, must tap into the current of group energy. (pp. 118–122)
  
  Section::::Synopsis.:Part III—Technique and Method.
   Post-Jungians would loosely call the persona "the "social" archetype of the "conformity" archetype", though Jung himself was always concerned to distinguish the persona as an external function from those images of the unconscious he called archetypes. Thus whereas Jung recommended conversing with archetypes as a therapeutic technique he himself had employed—"For decades I always turned to the anima when I felt my emotional behavior was disturbed, and I would speak with the anima about the images she communicated to me"—he stressed that "It would indeed be the height of absurdity if a man tried to have a conversation with his persona, which he recognized merely as a psychological means of relationship."
   Modern America's size and heterogeneity "make it necessary to-day for the proponent of a point of view to engage an expert to represent him before society, an expert who must know how to reach groups totally dissimilar as to ideals, customs, and even language. It is this necessity which has resulted in the development of the counsel on public relations." The skilled public relations man provides a valuable service in overcoming heterogeneity to influence millions of people in the same way. This is done by using established communication media to communicate the right facts at the right time. (pp. 125–138)
   In the opinion of columnist David S. Broder, "the press has no obligation to go rummaging in the closets of White House contenders for any past indiscretions that may fall out. It is terribly difficult to resolve the issues of motivation, evidence and conflicting recollection that attend such past relationships – and politicians are easily victimized by people seeking to settle old scores." Broder said that after 20 years in politics, details about Clinton's private life and old girlfriends should be less relevant as a news story than the public understanding his political accomplishments. 
   Often, Bernays quotes Lippmann, an "overt act" is necessary to clarify a state of affairs so that it can become news. Lippmann wrote that a press agent stands between the event and the press in order to control the flow of information. Bernays writes that a counsel on public relations does not merely purvey news but create it. The resulting material must of course be truthful and accurate—and furthermore it must be well-written and dispensed with sensitivity to the needs of the various media through which it will be broadcast. (pp. 191–198)
   To model this aspect, it is necessary to specify and develop a more refined classification of reputation. A recommendation can be extremely precise; in the stock market, for example, an adviser, when discussing the reputation of a bond, can supplement his informed opinion with both historical series and current events. In informal settings, gossip, although vague, may contain precious hints both to facts ("I've been told this physician has shown questionable behavior") and to conflicts taking place at the information level (if a candidate for a role spreads defamatory information about another candidate, whom should you trust?).
   Public figure
  
  A public figure is a person, such as a politician, celebrity, social media personality, or business leader, who has a certain social position within a certain scope and a significant influence and so is often widely concerned by the public, can benefit enormously from society, and is closely related to public interests in society.
   Judy Simons criticized Paglia's "potentially sinister political agenda," and decried her "intellectual sleight of hand."
   Thus, regardless of the mass interest in psychology, an accurate account of psychology for the layman was rare. Many psychologists became concerned that their profession was failing appropriately to reach the public. 
   Following the Cash for Honours scandal, the Main Honours Committee is required to determine that an individual's nomination for an honour has not been influenced by campaign and political contributions. According to the Cabinet Office's 2011 report, "The Main Honours Committee must satisfy itself that a party political donation has not influenced the decision to award an honour in any way; the committee must be confident that the candidate would have been a meritorious recipient of an honour if he or she had not made a political donation."
   When political researcher Chip Berlet became editor of "The Public Eye" magazine in 1984, he first announced that the magazine no longer held to that characterization:
   Psychology in the Real World groups occur in community settings rather than stigmatising venues such as mental health units and are open to all members of the public. The bringing together of people with serious mental health diagnoses with other members of the public is a conscious strategy based upon the work of Gordon Allport aimed at reducing stigma.
   Section::::Career and research.:Honours and awards.
   According to Bernays, the public relations counsel is the agent working with both modern media of communications and group formations of society in order to provide ideas to the public's consciousness. Furthermore, he is also concerned with ideologies and courses of actions as well as material goods and services and public utilities and industrial associations and large trade groups for which it secures popular support.
   The determining factor for "a Thinker" (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist, "et al.") to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which he or she is implicated and engaged with the vital reality of the contemporary world; that is to say, participation in the public affairs of society. Consequently, being designated as a public intellectual is determined by the degree of influence of the designator's motivations, opinions, and options of action (social, political, ideological), and by affinity with the given thinker; therefore:
  