Public relations practitioners want their clients discussed positively in the news. When a product or event is discussed by journalists, that third-party endorsement lends credibility to the information and to some extent the organization or product (Callison, 2001; Lamons, 2002; Murphy, 2001). For some, a positive mention on the network news is the epitome of a successful placement. It is important to know what happens, though, when network news anchors and reporters throw around phrases like “public relations battle,” “PR nightmare,” or “PR war,” and say that a company’s positive actions amount to “just public relations.” Through content analysis, this study seeks to systematically examine the use of the term “public relations” and related terms on network evening news broadcasts from 1997 to 2005.