Question:

Argue either the affirmative or negative to the following statement and make sure your work is supported with relevant academic citations:

‘Public Relations is the enemy of journalism.’

Answer:

Public Relations is the enemy of journalism

It is true that Public Relations (PR) is the enemy of public relations. Many media scholars have recognized the existence of a phenomenon in which journalistic ethics are systematically being degraded by contemporary economic pressure (Herman & Chomsky, 1998; Merrill, 2004). These scholars have for many years been cautioning against the serious damage caused by the market-driven press mechanism has on democracy (Karmen, 2005). In such a scenario, news businesses have been seen to be pursuing self-serving interests, thereby deviating from the traditional role of serving the public. This paper explores the various ways in which PR acts as the ultimate enemy of journalism.

In today’s highly world, technological advancements and market pressures have led to a situation where the duration of time that journalists dedicate to the pursuit of truth in news gathering and analysis is drastically reduced. Instead, the phenomenon has triggered a rapid rise in PR as a crucial source of information. With this rise, PR continues to have a negative impact on the extent to which information is disseminated impartially and accurately (Salter, 2005). Moreover, with the advent of globalization, impingement of media systems by PR from numerous fronts is guaranteed to continue being experienced around the world.

Nevertheless, the best way to understand how PR acts as an enemy of journalism today is to understand the distinct ways in which these two professions operate. According to Dueze (2005), the responsibility of the professional journalist is to gather and present information that is in the best interest of the public.  To do this, the journalist has to be committed to the work of impartially reporting accurate information and events without bowing to pressure to entities with vested interested. In contrast, the PR officer is mandated to use speech in a persuasive manner in order to serve the interest of certain stakeholders.

As more entities in both political and corporate worlds continue to hire PR experts, some of whom are professional journalists, conflict between journalism and public relations becomes more evident. In this regard, a major problem arises because PR experts are not always bound by the ethical code of journalism. Whereas the journalist is expected to report in an impartial manner, the PR officer’s core business is selling, in most cases using strategies of persuasion. The conflict is exacerbated by the fact that a big ethical divide that sets public relations and journalism apart.

PR becomes a serious threat and enemy of journalism whenever public relations experts cross the floor by inserting advocacy and advertising material for their respective corporate entities and passing them off as news.  This practice is particularly common among former journalists who chose at one point in their careers to join the world of public relations. By crossing over to the so-called “dark side” of PR, the journalists find themselves having to dodge questions (Dueze, 2005). This indicates a major change of role for the journalist, whose role is traditionally to ask questions and not to dodge them. This way, public relations seems to be the ultimate enemy of journalism.

In conclusion, it is true that public relations is the enemy of journalism. When some journalists choose to become public relations practitioners, they have to abandon the business of reporting and join the business of selling. In this processes the journalists abandon the ethical code of journalism, which is not applicable to public relations.

References

Dueze, M. (2005). What is Journalism? Professional identity and ideology of journalists reconsidered. Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Vol. 6, No. 4 pp. 442-464.

Herman, E. & Chomsky, N. (1998). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media. Pantheon, New York.

Karmen, O. (2005). Hybrid Public Relations News Discourse. European Journal of Communication, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 155-181.

Merrill, J. 2004. International media systems: An overview. Columbia University Press, New York.

Salter, L. (2005). The communicative structures of journalism and public relations. Pearson Books, New York.