If the average person knew how much of what they consume of daily news originates from or is influenced in some way by a public relations effort, it would likely blow minds. But such is the nature of the news (and PR) business. There’s an uncomfortable symbiosis between reporters and PR people that is both mutually beneficial and mutually unappreciated. And it is what is.
So it’s not without some sense of irony when much of the background work done by both reporters and PR people never sees the light of day. One noted occurrence from my past: A reporter, hounding our organization for months on end, was convinced of inappropriate hiring practices based on the allegations of one individual. The story had promised to be published at any day until, one day, a barrage of questions in one email was passed on to me.
Answering each one of the reporter’s questions would have certainly been an exercise in writing one’s own headline in the next day’s newspaper. Instead, the response was short, direct and truthful, something along the lines of: “The individual was hired by a committee of his peers. You will have to ask the committee members why they chose this candidate.”
The story, which was said to be months of ‘fact-checking, evidence gathering’ and so on, never saw the light of day. While I can’t speculate on what happened in the newsroom, I can say that more than once–in fact, with some amount of regularity–much of what I get paid to do will never see the light of day because, confronted with irrefutable evidence, many stories only rest on speculation, allegation and faulty eye-witness accounts. They are, in other words, flimsy, unreliable and they contribute to why people in general do not trust the news media.
Killing story lines, then, is a recurring strategy invoked by PR people in order to salvage, ultimately, the truth as they see it from their organization’s perspective. It is also why we get paid what we get paid (not bad, not great). It is also why our results are often intangible.
And it contributes to why we are so often misunderstood–some of our biggest successes are as much about what gets in the news as what doesn’t.
Final Spin
2 years ago
My current media relations doctrine is that it never hurts to answer questions and discuss issues with reporters, even those who are fairly hostile. It produces good results and on a few specific occasions, it clearly produced far better coverage than we would have had otherwise.
However, there were a few rare occasions when I realized that discretion was the better part of valour, when “no – just no” is the best answer. You provide an excellent example of when it’s a good option.
Great post!
Final Spin
http://www.finalspin.wordpress.com
bconrad
2 years ago
I couldn’t agree more. This particular reporter had a fetish for being obnoxious, unreasonable and outright untruthful — to the point of setting off another reporter out to investigate his story accuracy.
We eventually refused to talk to him altogether — but were free as birds with other outlets in town — after too many facts got in the way of fanciful stories.
As a rule, I tend to bend over backwards for members of the news media, sometimes to a fault. About 85 percent of the reporters I deal with are stand-up folks.
Thanks for your reply.