Discuss the relationship between Public Relations and news sources. How does the relationship impact on the news product?
In today’s society, Public relations can be described as ‘a profession of creating an understanding between an institute and its public,’ by practitioners who wish to conserve its small amount of positive credibility. On the other hand public relations can be seen as a way of using propaganda to undermine the values and beliefs of the public. These two descriptions show the difference between persuasion and propaganda. Propaganda is to “disseminate or promote particular ideas” (Jowett & O’Donnell, 2006, p.02); whereas persuasion is the “communicative process to influence others with a persuasive message” (Jowett
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These people may be, in government, large businesses, celebrities or public figures. Although, there are four key resources which restrict a source from improving their access to news producers in order to generate the coverage they want. These are; economic capital, gaining access to large amounts of money, media capital, endorsing legitimate authority to be easily identified by journalists and the public eye, human resources, the amount of power behind you from PR staff, media trained representatives and groups of volunteers, and media-source affinity, the extent at which you may seem newsworthy to producers. To increase these values sources engage a partnership with public relations representatives, to help issue the information they want told and protect the information they may want to keep private. This is a key stage of identifying a relationship between Public Relations and news sources.
The needs and wants of both communication forms, suggest there is a symbiotic relationship between Journalists and PR practitioners, in terms of supply and demand of the news source. In the first instance, Public relations personal represent the ‘news source’ with an “aim to secure coverage for the client, where truth is not an absolute requirement” (Theaker, 2001, p.64). A statement is written and issued to the public, to clarify the facts and
Ever since Bernany’s work, public relations have continued to become a vital part to businesses success, as the field continues to grow. While this progression has occurred, different public relations functions also have developed. Specifically,
Harlow (1976) defines public relations (PR) practice as “the distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communications, understanding, acceptance and cooperation between an organisation and its publics”. PR plays an important role in organisations because they are representing a broader group of activities, even encompassing all communication activities of an organisation (Lee, 2011). To put in a laymen term, public relations practitioners (PR) work to build long-term relationships among individuals and institutions through planned promotions of goods, services, and images of a company to create a good will for a person, place, and event and also to helps management to be informed and responsive to public opinion to further improve the organisation.
As public relations and journalism, the PR practitioners and the journalist are always related to each other nowadays. Both of them are important factors of the modern mass media, which aim to influence public opinions since the early twentieth century (Coombs and Holladay, 2010). In order to sharp citizen’s opinions, Charron(1989) mentions that the PR practitioners and journalists often prefer to work together and share information as cooperation. The dependent relationship, as Coombs (2010) explains, the PR practitioners scheme to cover through media, while the journalists are exploiting
Not only will they be seen as a communication specialist, but a mentor to other employees on current and future organizational demands. With this, relationships are developed within the company, finalizing the PR practitioner’s responsibility in building relationship with the public, stakeholders, and finally the
When the term public relations are heard, there is not an immediate understanding of the career, let alone its writings. The lines of the responsibilities of a public relations professional are often blurred and confused. However, the Public Relations Society of America composed a specific definition to help with the confusion: “public relations are a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics” (“About Public Relations”). Breaking down the definition a bit shows exactly what public relations is about – “mutually beneficial relationships” (“About Public Relations”). Professionals work to create and maintain various relationships, whether it be with journalists or clients, that will yield positive results for all parties involved. In an interview, Vallerie, who works in public relations, revealed she interacts “with upwards of 20 different people” daily (Mackillop). Publics are generally thought of as the general public population; this is true to an extent for public relations. A public is “anyone who ever has or ever will form an opinion about the client” (Roost). This means that it is possible to have more than one public that a professional is dealing with for their work.
The most recent definition of public relations, according to the Public Relations Society of America (2012), states that “Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Through the rapid advancement of modern media and technology, there have never been more outlets and opportunities available for accomplishing the goals of public relations. Believing the development of social media has not created serious changes in the way public relations practitioners go about their duties would be foolish and a fast track to falling behind in this rapid world of communication. The main goals of public relations are “to
Public relations has changed drastically since the early 20th century. In its earliest forms it was more focussed on the idea of publicity and advertisement. However, more recently it has been seen as a way to engage and build relationships between an organization and it’s publics. Public relations deals with promotional activities that foster a positive public image of a company or organization.
The negative portrayal of public relations in media has created a bias for those entering the field and working in the field. This impacts society by giving them a negative view when they’re really just uneducated on the profession. My grandmother, being 85 when explaining to her what I was planning to do with my life I made sure that public relations sounded exciting and useful and that stuck with her and that is what she will tell her friends, and our relatives. But for example when someone researches on it and finds only negative things, they will spread that, they will repeat the negative things they read and the key terms like “ manipulator, schemer, controller” will be used and thought of pertaining to the profession. Media has an extreme influence on everyone these days, especially the newer generations to come. Why when looking for a future job would someone follow a path of something people view as negative? As a joke, As a wedding planner with no jobs? Media is ruining the reputation of public relations with its harsh assumptions, its movie characters with their easy, boring, unchallenging careers, and just uneducated people writing stories on how they’ve been “manipulated” by someone in the public relations profession.
The public relations industry is very different from advertising. While advertisers pay for exposure and visual aids, PR specialists use language and conferences to earn the trust of the public. According to the Public Relations Society of America “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” PR specialists are image shapers and storytellers that can be used to enhance, protect, and build reputations through any form of media or self-created production. If the news is bad, they formulate the best response to reduce the damage. Their job is to create positive publicity for their client as well as enhance their reputation.
Public relations (PR) is defined as ‘the way organisations, companies and individuals communicate with the public and media.’ (IPR, 2012) It is essential for an organisation to have a strong public relations team as they are the ones who helped the organisations to build relationships and mutual understanding, to create a positive image for the organisation and to communicate effectively to its public. The term ‘public’ used here refers to not just members of the public, but also involves internal and external stakeholders such as the organisation’s employee, shareholders, clients they are working with, government bodies etc. There are no exact rules on how an organisation should practice PR. However, organisations should view the excellence
The success of a company depends on relationships with the public such as consumers, suppliers, investors, employees, government and media. Since public relation practitioners are the once who do the actual communication between their organization and its public it is obvious that public relation is a management function.
PR professionals must broaden their market to adapt to the globalizing economic environment. Everyone knows about China’s impressive economic charge into the global market. But it makes sense to learn about reputed and veteran PR firms who know the ropes of the state-run media and regulated markets. Government affairs always intertwine with PR, so PR strategies must adapt to this fact. PR work is as much a relationship with the government as it is with the people.
The theory explains that the value of public relations in organization and society lies in socially responsible managerial decisions and quality organization to public relations. Organisations must behave in ways that solve the problems and satisfy the goals of the stakeholders as well as the management in order to be effective. Good relationship with organisation’s strategic publics is helpful in developing and achieving goals desired by both the organization and its publics, reducing costs of negative publicity, and increasing revenue by providing products and services needed by stakeholders. Practitioners identify publics who are affected by or affect organizational decisions and communicate symmetrically with them to build high quality long term relations.
The public relations tactics in relation to the corporate context will now be examined. Customer relations can be associated with the monitoring of attitudes of key publics and stakeholders especially in regards to any negative incidents that have the potential to effect the organisation’s reputation and consumer trust (Wilcox, 2013, p.312). For Malaysian Airlines, this is evident given the potential for consumer boycotts with the missing aircraft’s (Crossman Communications, 2015, p2). Having over 12, 000 employees, employee relations are important for the organisation. Employee relations consist of monitoring employees’ attitudes and beliefs towards the organisation (Wilcox, 2013, p316) as there is potential for negative word of mouth by employees essentially damaging the company’s reputation. This is evident as according to Malaysian Airlines, they offer a “dynamic exciting environment that nurtures a diverse talented team that work to make great things happen” (2017). Finally, media relations are vital in a corporate context as “negative coverage can cause a corporation’s reputation to plummet” (Wilcox, 2013, p. 310). Having said that, it is important as public relations professionals to establish positive relationships with those who operate in the media industry. Kimberly Blessing argues the two fields (public relations and journalism) have an important working interrelationship with “60% of PR
As the name of the discipline implies, public relations is how an organization builds beneficial relationships with its key stakeholders. With effective communication as the practices’ primary tool, modern day organizations have taken advantage of proficient practitioners to boost exposure of their company and its message across to international audiences.