On-line Readings in Public Relations by Michael Turney
	Media relations strategies may not be keeping pace with changing practices in journalism.
	© 2011 Michael Turney	Table of contents	Practicing Public Relations main page	About the author

 
Media relations - all of the different ways public relations professionals interact with the mass media on behalf of their employers/clients - has always been an integral part of public relations.

• Some public relations historians claim that media relations and publicity were the totality of public relations in the earliest years of the profession. (See Publicity phase of public relations for further discussion.)
• Today, public relations is seen as a much broader profession and media relations is just one part of it. - An important part, certainly, but no longer the sole or even the most important part.

Everyone won when media relations were based on cooperation.

In an earlier article about media relations I wrote "media relations should be a mutually beneficial two-way street" because I believe public relations practitioners and journalists should work cooperatively to provide media consumers with the most accurate and reliable information possible. While I realize this is a bit more idealistic than many people want to be these days, I, for one, still believe that public relations and media people are essentially co-dependent and that both groups and the public benefit when they have a positive working relationship with one another.

• Public relations practitioners need journalists in order to get their messages and their organization's viewpoint into the mass media and thus out to their various publics.
• Journalists need public relations people to offer them new story ideas, provide leads to subject matter experts and authoritative spokespersons, and to quickly answer questions that arise while the reporters are working on stories.

This perspective is neither new nor novel. It's been a widespread belief among journalists and public relations practitioners alike for more than a hundred years. It dates back at least as far as Ivy Lee, a pioneering public relations practitioner, whose 1906 Declaration of Principles promised open and honest communication with the news media and the public. It's a perspective based on old-fashioned news values, journalism ethics, and traditional approaches to reporting.

The reporters, editors, and media practitioners who operated under this approach basically believed that the news should be accurate, fact-based, objective, free of reporters' and editors' opinions, and as balanced as possible. They also assumed that under ideal conditions, which didn't always prevail, stories included in the news would be chosen for their significance, relevance, and public impact, not merely their salaciousness or celebrity involvement.

While these were valid assumptions for a long, long time, they may no longer hold true for most of today's American news media .

Led by television, the media's approach to news has changed.

Old-timers -- anyone born before the Vietnam War -- who remember reading newspapers or news magazines or watching television news while they were growing up or as young adults can simply reflect on what they saw then with what they see in the media today. Younger folks or old timers willing to do a little research can look in the periodical files of their local library or visit one of the many museums of radio and television that have sprung up around the country to see samples of pre-1980 news coverage and compare it to what they see today.

Personally, I have to admit that I'm one of those old-timers and that I used to love watching tv news and reading weekly news magazines. -- As a young journalism professor, I avidly watched all three of the evening network newcasts simultaneously and read all three of the major news magazines each week. -- More recently, I've done research to review and study 40, 50, 60, and 70-year old news stories from newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. And, quite frankly, I'm appalled at what passes for "news coverage" these days.

I was recently reminded of this in a somewhat surprizing way. I was reading Airframe, one of Michael Crichton's lesser-known novels that hasn't yet been made into a movie. It was first published in 1996 and doesn't quite measure up to Andromeda Strain or Jurassic Park, but it is an engaging and interesting story that includes some tense and believable confrontations between an aircraft manufacturer's corporate spokesperson and reporters who are covering her company's safety problems.

About a third of the way through the book, Casey Singleton (the protagonist of Airframe) emerges from a contentious interview with a reporter. Feeling exhausted and frustrated by the interview, she begins a self-reflection on American journalism:

"There was a time when reporters wanted information, their questions directed to an underlying event. They wanted an accurate picture of a situation, and to do that they had to make the effort to see things your way, to understand how you were thinking about it. They might not agree with you in the end, but it was a matter of pride that they could accurately state your view, before rejecting it. ...

"But now reporters came to the story with the lead fixed in their minds; they saw their job as proving what they already knew. They didn't want information so much as evidence of villainy. In this mode, they were openly skeptical of your point of view, since they assumed you were just being evasive. They proceeded from a presumption of universal guilt, in an atmosphere of muted hostility and suspicion. This new mode was intensely personal: they wanted to trip you up, to catch you in a small error, or in a foolish statement - or just a phrase that could be taken out of context and made to look silly or insensitive.

"Because the focus was so personal, the reporters asked continuously for personal speculations. Do you think an event will be damaging? Do you think the company will suffer? Such speculation had been irrelevant to the earlier generation of reporters, who focused on the underlying events. Modern journalism was intensely subjective - "interpretive" - and speculation was its lifeblood."

I couldn't have said that better myself and, obviously, I wouldn't have quoted it unless I thought it merited consideration. Crichton's view of the changes in journalism would have been worth reading and thinking about when it was written back in 1996, but it merits even more consideration now, in 2011, because the trends he highlighted have spread and intensified even more.

The full ramifications aren't yet clear, but they will emerge.

Regretably, most textbooks and references on media relations - including some of my earlier online articles - haven't kept up with these changes.

On the plus side, they ...

• recognize the growing number of people who claim the Internet is either their primary or only source of news and information,
• stress the importance of responding instantly because most news organizations now operate 24/7 and have a Web presence in addition to their broadcast and/or print schedules, and
• point out that changing journalism practices now allow reporters to put more of their personality and personal opinions into their stories.

On the other hand, they still mistakenly ...

• hold up Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Helen Thomas, and others of their age and ilk as the norms and ideals of journalistic performance and
• seem to believe that traditional views of media behavior, news values, and social responsibility will prevail, an assumption becomes less and less likely with every passing day.

It would be far more realistic for thoughtful practitioners to re-think what they can expect from successful media relations, re-assess how they approach the process of media relations, and renew their efforts to establish realistic yet mutually beneficial relationships with reporters and editors.