Continuing the debate on the influence of PR over journalism, Peter Wilby in today's Media Guardian argues that Campbell's media critique is only half the story, the other half being Wilby's own critique of the PR industry:
"Most journalists at least aspire to some version of the truth. Public relations, at best, aspires to a partial truth and, at worst, to outright fabrication. Over the past three decades, it has become infinitely more powerful, and not only in government."
As a PR practitioner, I have to disagree with this statement. While many PR practitioners give the PR industry a bad name through laziness and poor practise (which is wherre Campbell, and the rest of the public, get their negativenperception of the PR industry from), PR's aspirations lie far above "a partial truth". The height of PR is "an organisations ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, respond to, and (ultimately) communciate with those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organisation are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values." (Robert L. Heath, Encyclopedia of Public Relations). That entails communciating the truth, but in a way that audiences undertstand and thus generate an understanding of the organisation in question.
As to the PR industry's hold over modern journalism, Wilby has this to say:
"The main reason why you read so little decent journalism, he argues, is simple: hacks don't have time to do it. In 20 years, the amount of space they have to fill on national papers has trebled. But staffing levels are, if anything, slightly lower. The position is worse on local papers, where journalists sometimes write 10 stories a day. A swollen public relations industry has filled the gap, issuing press releases, organising conferences and offering briefings that set the agenda. At least half the news in papers is generated not by journalists, but by PRs or spin doctors, and very little is subject to serious critical scrutiny."
I agree with this position, but just as hacks don't have time to write decent journalism, PR practitioners contribute this by sending through bad press releases. Whilst I think that the argument that PR practitioners don't have time to practise decent PR doesn't have a leg to stand on, there are many reasons why they practise poor PR - pressure from clients, pressure to pay the bills, etc. But often it is due to laziness. Journalists with not be criticised like this if PR officers subjected their own press releases to "serious critical scrutiny."
Wilby questions whether there is a solution to this rpoblem:
"Can anything be done about this state of affairs? Alas, both Campbell and Davies are stronger on diagnosis than cure. "I fear the illness is terminal," Davies concludes. "I don't care if this speech gets any media coverage or not," Campbell told his audience.
But let me make one tentative suggestion. The Northern Rock debacle has led to proposals for "narrow banking", whereby some banks would just look after your money for modest rates of interest without doing anything fancy or risky with it. Perhaps somebody could start a paper that carries only "narrow news". Every statement would be rigorously checked and attributed to named sources. Its journalists would never speak to PRs and use press releases only if they could corroborate the contents from other sources. Editors would apply some kind of test to distinguish the important from the trivial."
A new paper shouldn't have to be released for this to happen. PR officers should be checking and attributing named sources themselves so that journalists can be safe in the knowledge that what is sent to them is correct and credible. Good PR officers also should develop relationships with the key journalists in their sectors, meaning that when they speak to a journalist about a PR piece, the journalists knows that what the PR practitioner is sending through is credible. Otherwise, if a PR practitioner sends through a dud story or an incorrect source, the journalist thinks twice before using them, ad so the PR practitioner (and their client) loses out.
The PR industry shouldn't be attacked as a way of deflecting criticism from journalism. PR practitioners should not be journalist's scapegoat, but we have to help ourselves by upholding high industry standards if we don't want to see this kind of critique happen more often.
(Richard Bailey also talks about Wilby's commentary here)
No comments:
Post a Comment