The relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists has been a conflicted, and yet symbiotic relationship. Various studies have centered on what is regarded as a 'source-reporter relationship' -- an ongoing relationship between the two professions where PR practitioners try to "manage the news and journalists try to manage the sources in different direction for their needs" (Shin 2006). Previous studies are concerned with the perceptions of each profession, the origin of conflict between professions, how conflict would be characterized, and what factors (education, personal, experience, etc) impact the perceived relationship between both professions.
White and Shaw (2003) proposed that journalists who have taken undergraduate or graduate classes in public relations tend to have a less negative perception of PR practitioners, and journalist educators' perceptions of PR tend to be more positive than expected. Negative perceptions of PR may be rooted in journalism culture by exploring the history (and previously deceiving) profession of PR in the late 1800's.
A couple interesting points this study made when defending PR practitioners was that the author noted that many [good] PR efforts are not visible outside the organization and therefore not acknowledged when discussing the PR profession. What is acknowledged by journalists is mainly that PR is all about media relations (in other words, publicity) and PR practitioners will do whatever it takes to earn some space in print or broadcast media (hence, the stereotype of 'spin doctors' and 'obstructionists'), which is actually quite different from the overall practice of public relations.
Both professions in this study acknowledged that "journalists depend on public relations-originated material due to "inadequate staffing levels in most newspapers." Thus, it may be noted that dependency is changing due to the changing world of journalism, which could be a good or bad change depending on a PR practitioner's ethics and morals.
Other than journalism educators and journalists, Pincus, Rimmer, Rayfield and Cropp (1993) previously surveyed business, news and sports editors of major California newspaper publications about their perceptions of PR practitioners. Sports editors were more prone to PR practitioners, whereas news editors were more skeptical. These differing opinions could influence the relationship between different PR practitioners and editors. Non-profit PR practitioners may have a harder time exchanging an information subsidy rather than sports PR practitioners, even though the issue proposed in the non-profit news release may be more relevant, newsworthy and meaningful.
More importantly, however, two recent studies were done on actual conflict within the source-reporter relationship. These may be the most relevant because of their timeliness and proximity to the issues of 21st century journalism, especially the fact that many major publications are combined under one corporate umbrella. Shin (2006) presented a paper at the International Communication Association Convention based on the organization-public relationship (i.e. PR-journalist relationship). This study "integrates conflict and conflict resolution models to the contingency theory in PR." The contingency theory is elaborated by a relational scale of pure advocacy to pure accommodation in the source-reporter relation. The study analyzed the different strategies journalists and PR practitioners use to respond to conflict in the relationship between the professions. It was concluded that various factors influence conflict in the relationship, like struggle for power, resources and ethnocentrism. Journalists are more likely to escalate any nature of conflict in the relationship, while PR practitioners are likely to negotiate and accommodate with journalists and organization's views. However, with the changing structure of journalism, journalists may approach conflict in the source-reporter relationship like PR practitioners generally do and try to accommodate with the PR practitioner's needs, as well as the newspapers needs.
In 2009, another paper was presented on the source-reporter relationship at the International Communication Association Convention that added more to Shin's study focusing on behavioral and verbal conflict in the source-reporter relationship. The results were quite surprising, supporting that both professions agree with each other that they have experienced similar behavioral and verbal conflict with each other. PR practitioners, however, believed that they had experienced more conflict rather with journalists than journalists believed they had experienced with PR practitioners. Thus, this may be an opening in the source-reporter relationship because journalists don't see as much conflict, which could potentially make journalists more open to information subsidies.
___________________________________________________________
Although these are in-depth and well researched studies, I would like to compliment this research by investigating how the downsizing of newsrooms and peril of journalism in the 21st century will affect the source-reporter relationship. Will journalists be more open to (and dependent on) information subsidies? Will they be forced to because of economic constraints? If so, will they be a little less skeptic of the PR profession? Will PR evaluate their work based on individual ethics and morals, and present journalists with honest and necessary information?
No comments:
Post a Comment