The relationship between PR and the press has long been antagonistic. This tension has several sources, including the complex interdependence of the two professions as well as the press’s skepticism about PR practices. Some of the press’s complaints about PR have led public relations practitioners to take steps to enhance their profession’s image.

Elements of Interdependence

Journalists have historically viewed themselves as independent professionals providing a public service: gathering and delivering the facts about current events to the public. Some have accused PR professionals of distorting the facts to serve their clients’ interests. Yet journalists rely heavily on public relations practitioners to provide the information used in creating news reports. Many editors, for instance, admit that more than half of their story ideas each day originate from PR work, such as press releases. In the face of newspaper staff cutbacks and television’s growing need to cover local news events, professionals in the news media need PR story ideas more than ever. This doesn’t sit comfortably with some journalists.

As another example of the two professions’ interdependence, PR firms often raid news media’s workforces for new talent. Because most press releases are written in the style of news reports, the PR profession has always sought skilled writers who are well connected to sources and knowledgeable about the news business. But although many reporters move into the PR profession, few public relations practitioners—especially those who started their careers as journalists—move back into journalism.

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PR practitioners, for their part, maintain that they make reporters’ jobs easier—supplying the kinds of information reporters used to gather themselves. Some members of the news media criticize their own ranks for being lazy. Others, grateful for the help, have hesitated to criticize a particular PR firm’s clients—which brings up questions of journalistic ethics.

Journalists’ Skepticism about PR Practices

In addition to the uncomfortable interdependence characterizing the journalism and PR professions, several specific complaints about PR from journalists have heightened the tension between the two groups. Specifically, some journalists maintain that PR professionals undermine the facts and block reporters’ access to information. Journalism’s most prevalent criticism of public relations is that it counters the truths reporters seek to bring to the public by selectively choosing which facts to communicate or by delivering deceptive information. To be sure, outright deception is unethical, and the PR profession has worked to eradicate it in its own ranks. But deciding which facts to present is something that journalists do, too. After all, a reporter cannot say everything about a particular event, so he or she must choose which information to include and which to leave out. Journalists have also accused PR professionals of blocking the press’s access to business leaders, political figures, and other newsworthy people. This strategy, reporters explain, attempts to manipulate reporters by giving exclusives to those most likely to write a favorable story, or cutting off a reporter’s access to a newsworthy client if the reporter has written unfavorably about that person.

Others dislike the PR field’s tendency to present publicity as news. Journalists critical of the PR profession claim that PR thus takes media space and time away from organizations and individuals who do not have the money or sophistication required to attract the public eye. These critics also complain that by presenting client information in a journalistic context, PR gains credibility for its clients that the purchase of advertising does not offer.

Shaping PR’s Image

Questionable PR moves in the past and journalism’s hostility toward PR prompted some public relations practitioners to direct their skills toward improving their profession’s image. In 1948, the PR industry formed its own professional organization, the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America). The PRSA functions as an internal watchdog group that accredits PR agents and firms, maintains a code of ethics, and probes its own practices, especially those pertaining to its influence on the news media. In addition to the PRSA, independent organizations devoted to uncovering shady or unethical public relations activities publish their findings in periodicals like PR Week and PR Watch. In particular, the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch seeks to serve the public by discussing and investigating PR practices. Indeed, ethical issues have become a major focus of the PR profession (see Table 12.1).

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Data from: The full text of the PRSA Code of Ethics is available at www.prsa.org.

Note: Adherence to the PRSA Code of Ethics is voluntary; there is no enforcement mechanism.

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PR practitioners have also begun using different language—such as strategic communication, institutional relations, corporate communications, crisis communications, and news and information services—to describe what they do. Their hope is that the new language will signal a more ethically responsible industry. Public relations’ best strategy, however, may be to point out the shortcomings of the journalism profession itself. Journalism organizations only occasionally examine their own practices, and journalists have their own vulnerability to manipulation by public relations. Thus, by not publicly revealing PR’s strategies to influence their news stories, many journalists have allowed PR professionals to interpret “facts” to their clients’ advantage.