Journalists and PRs: can it ever be a marriage?
Last week I debated the various strengths and weaknesses of PR and the media at an event arranged by the CIPR’s Greater London Group in conjunction with the Media Society. Alongside Jo Tanner, and CIPR Hon Fellow, Peter Luff MP – I did my bit speaking up for our industry against a heavyweight media line-up which included Guardian columnist and former editor of the Daily Mirror, Roy Greenslade, the Independent’s first media editor, Maggie Brown, and the former BBC arts editor, Rosie Millard now of the Sunday Times.
Moderated by former BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter Sue Macgregor, the event was great knockabout fun in front of an audience of around 100 people.
We were debating the topic: Journalists and PRs: can it ever be a marriage? It would have been interesting to take a vote on that question at the end of the debate, but instead the vote looked to cover issues of trust surrounding news coverage and that was won fairly clearly by the Media.
My own view on the question of “can it ever be a marriage” is quite simple – it is a marriage and the question is actually what sort of marriage is it?
Having read Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, I am more convinced than ever that the pressure on the media of the 24 hour news cycle, the rise of the constantly updated news web site, and the ever growing influence of social media news sites, is actually affecting news quality adversely.
Meanwhile, our own industry gets larger and its influence on the news cycle also grows. And while some of you will see this as a good thing, generally speaking I believe the public is better served by a strong, accurate, and independent media.
What’s more, I feel that PR does its best work in that environment and that both organisations and individuals are best served by a strong media and strong tactical PR advice and programmes. A weak media, that swallows weak PR stories and doesn’t do enough verification and analysis, is not in the best interests of the good PR professional, the media, companies and organisations, or indeed the readers.
Cherry Chappell summed up the situation well: the debate should actually have been about standards and the need for both parties to keep improving. But that connects to a bigger issue in media land.
Because as the methods available to consume news continue to evolve, the media world needs to react and change in order to maintain and shore up its business model in the face of falling numbers – both in terms of circulation and advertising.
Charging for online content is, for example, currently a very hot topic. But in the UK, where a news web site as comprehensive as the BBC is available free and funded by the public purse, it is hard to see how any other outlet – beyond specialist sites such as FT.com - could begin to charge a subscription for access to news.
I’m sure therefore that it comes back to content. Content is king: it is what attracts and keeps the readers and that’s why both we, and the media, need to continue to work on improving the quality of our output.
I’m actually less interested in whether the relationship between the two sides is a marriage – and more interested in seeing that it stays healthy and survives.
Written by Kevin Taylor, CCgroup, first published in his capacity as President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations on his blog prvoice.typepad.com, 27th May 2009