Week 2: The increasing power of the PR industry

This post is part of my 'Journalism, PR and The Media' theory module online portfolio 

The media is a very powerful tool in many ways; it can affect peoples behaviour, it can make individuals powerful, and it can influence public opinion. Media professionals have the ability to reach large audiences with their ideas and messages, whether it be through writing articles or producing TV documentaries. People now fear that media owners have influence over public opinion and behaviour as a result of their powerful position.

Last week we looked at the relationship between Journalism and PR but this week I am going to look more in depth at the power of the PR industry and how it can influence public opinion.

Julia Hobsbawn comments that 60% and more commonly 80% of any broadcast or broadsheet outlet has got a PR element in it. Thus suggesting that the PR industry has an increasing level of power over the news media. It could be argued that PR specialists use Joseph S. concept of soft power in order to get positive coverage in the media for their client. But is this coverage a representation of Karl Marx' theory of ideologies and are the press releases and press packages that fill our newspapers and magazines presenting ideologies rather than fact in order to shape a positive view of the client?

PR specialists are taught to learn how journalists think and work so that they can use specialised techniques to target the journalist and get the media coverage they desire for their client - thus, giving them them even more power over the journalist. The PR specialist has the power to speak to sources and get all the information the journalist would want for their story. Whereas the journalist might struggle to get this information out of the company themselves. For example the press department at the local council will be able to get all the information they need for their quotes and press releases but a journalist would struggle to get such information.

Last weeks reading spoke about the relationship between journalism and PR negatively, putting most of the blame on the PR sector, blaming them for the crisis journalism is going through. However, this weeks reading portrays less of this negativity and instead looks into the relationship from an unbiased viewpoint and concludes that journalists do in-fact need PR in order to fill their ever increasing publications.

The 'conflict' relationship presented recently is now seen as a 'trading' relationship. Journalists working in under-resourced and under-staffed newsrooms increasingly rely on PR sources to get them stories (Davis, 2002; Jones 2006; Larson, 2002; White and Hobsawm, 2007). The reading concluded how reliant current news is on PR by using charts, tables and various figures to support its statements.

Bibliography:

1) Justin Lewis, Andrew Williams & Bob Franklin (2008): A COMPROMISED FOURTH ESTATE?, Journalism Studies, 9:1, 1-20

2) Long, P. Wall, T. (2012), Media Studies, Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), New York, Routledge