We might be slow, but we just discovered FAIR, a Web site dedicated to the fairness and accuracy in reporting. One of their “issue areas” is the PR industry.
According to the site, “the drive to maximize profits compels corporate news outlets to produce more and more news with fewer and fewer reporters. With less time to do each story, journalists are increasingly pressured to rely on the public relations industry to do much of their work for them: Reporters can rewrite press releases rather than do their own independent research, and TV stations can broadcast promotional videos that are designed to look like news footage. This symbiotic relationship between news outlets and the industries they cover, however, is a bad deal for the public.”
On this site, you can view at least 20 articles on how the public relations industry is hurting the news and lying to the public.
At some point we must stand up for ourselves! Please post any and all ethical media relations programs you’re doing. How do you work with reporters? How do you help them report on the news? How do you find angles that aren’t always self-serving?
Remember we think spin sucks so we only want to hear about programs that are helpful and keep extremely high editorial ethical bounds.