MEDIA RELATIONS.

Journalism has entered an introspective, self-critical phase. In Britain, the government launched an all-out assault on the BBC in the aftermath of the Iraq war and, improbably, appeared to gain a total victory. In the US, the Jayson Blair scandal has raised questions about the integrity of all journalists. Everywhere, business correspondents face difficult questions about their over hyping of the dot coms followed by their lack of scrutiny of unfolding corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat.

Newspapers are struggling to maintain circulations in a commercial market in which consumers expect news to be free. Reporters feel underpaid and poorly resourced when they glance enviously at the pay and conditions of those working in public relations and corporate communications. There’s an enduring myth of the journalist as Lone Ranger: the individual battling to uphold truth and decency in a hostile world; but in reality most journalists work for large organisations, often with diversified business interests and little stomach for lengthy, expensive and awkward investigations. Risk averse accountants and lawyers call the shots.

Within these constraints, reporters are under constant pressure to be first to break stories in a world where news is ubiquitous. Above all, they are struggling to adjust to an online age in which journalists have lost their monopoly on news.

Yet what has happened to the media in the digital and online era that was meant to lead to disintermediation? Rather than going away, the media has proliferated. The three terrestrial television channels in Britain in the early 1980s have become hundreds of channels today.




Newspaper circulation may be in decline, but their reach has massively increased through online means. As my colleague David Phillips points out, the UK’s Guardian newspaper (a low circulation broadsheet) has disproportionate worldwide influence via the web thanks to its investment in online content. While its circulation may be low, its reputation is riding high.

Trusted PR

If there are simple guidelines to suggest which news sites we find trustworthy, what are the principles behind trustworthy public relations?

Here are my suggestions. Public relations should be:

· Transparent (are you who you say you are? is it clear who you represent?)

· Creative (are your ideas good, though not necessarily whacky?)

· Credible (on whose authority are you speaking?)

· Sourced (is your research clearly identified?; three times this morning on the radio the question was put: 'what's your evidence?')

· Timely (not too soon, preferably not embargoed; not too late in the day; and never call the day after publication…)

We’ve known ever since Intel was forced to replace its Pentium chips because of Usenet mutterings back in 1994 (Gillmor, 2004, 46) that online forums can influence the media and cause even the largest organisations to rethink. Yet it’s when these mutterings tip into the media mainstream that we really sit up and take note.

We can influence the media through newsgroups and weblogs; we can know more of individual journalists through their blogs (for example, here’s The Independent’s Charles Arthur having a rant about badly-directed news releases); but the most satisfactory relationships sooner or later have to progress from the virtual to the real world.

Media relations remains as important and as unpredictable in the digital age as it has always been. It’s not the only game in town, but it still has a special place in making public relations distinct within corporate and marketing communications – since media coverage brings credibility to public relations messages. As the UK’s Institute of Public Relations suggests, ‘public relations is about reputation: the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you’. It’s the last of these clauses that’s hardest to influence, but most valuable to the PR practitioner.
REFERENCES:
www.websitemarketingplan.com/pr/

www.iaocblog.com/blog/