Is PR killing real journalism?

I recently attended a debate between journalists and PR practitioners on the topic “Is PR killing real journalism?”. It was at the University of Lincoln and you can read the following reports on it:

Rob Wells’s at The Linc.

Carli Ann Smith’s at The Linc.

Andy Green, who took part in the debate on the side of the PRs, on his website.

Personally, I think the effect of PR on journalism is very situational.

PR is based around representing a vested interest and promoting your client’s company, department – or whatever it is they’re trying to ‘sell’ – in a positive light. And, of course, should the brown stuff hit the fan then it’s all about damage limitation.

So, inevitably, certain negative information will be withheld, whilst positive information will be promoted. Much like journalists you will get good and bad practitioners. Their ethics decide whether they’ll lie or not. A large pay-cheque probably helps too.

Journalism is going through a period of change, which some call a crisis, whereby revenues are falling and journos are being laid off. This leaves fewer journos having to generate the same amount of content. Consequently, there’s a heavy reliance on press releases because of a lack of time to find original news.

This is where PRs can manipulate a difficult situation.

By making a press release written much like a news article, the journalist under pressure to write a gazillion articles in a day may well just cut and paste the release. PRs can then get their message, unchallenged and unchanged, smack bang in the middle of a newspaper. This is where unethical PRs can spread lies, and where more ethical PRs can spread a positive message about their client unchallenged.

Furthermore, they can use this lack of time and resources to make it incredibly difficult for a journalist to cover a negative story on their client.

Anita Raghavan, who works for the Wall Street Journal, spoke for the journalists at the debate. She cited an example where she was pursuing a negative story about a large bank. The PRs told her she was barking up the wrong tree, that there was no story, and sent her hundreds of pages of emails ‘proving’ that she was wrong.

It took Raghavan six months to go through everything she was given, but none of it disproved her story. She then published and, as a result of her ‘non-story’, a new law was passed in the US. This is a great example of PRs protecting their client’s interests by manipulating a journo’s situation.

This probably happens quite often, as you’d expect. But the underlying issue here is that, while the PRs were disgraceful in their attempts at covering up a story, ultimately it was the lack of time the journalist has to investigate properly that is the real issue. And that’s down to the issue of commercialism of the media, with its relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of journalists’ jobs and resources. See Flat Earth News by Nick Davies for more.

In sum: there are good PRs and bad PRs, just like there are good journos and bad journos. PRs are doing their jobs by representing a client’s vested interests (although representing someone like BAE Systems is indefensible, but that’s another argument for another day…) and the journos should be allowed to do their jobs which is pulling apart press releases and challenging every claim made. But, due to time constraints because of a lack of resources, they can’t – and that’s the real problem.