7. Today media and its content is driven, and often created by the PR industry

As I mentioned in an earlier post everything I’ve learned this semester has really opened my eyes up the media, but a lot of the in class films have opened my eyes up to my chosen profession, public relations. In today’s media climate public relations is a key ingredient to having a successful business. Public relations is a tool so powerful that it can change the way wars are fought and won. Today many news stations rely on public relations people to send them story ideas or leads. Usually accompanying these leads will be a VNR (video news release) and a wealth of background information. A lot of the news organizations will take clips directly from the provided VNR and weave it into their nightly news cast(s) passing the stories off as real news.

As a future public relations practitioner I hate that it will be my job to dupe the public like this. So many news stories we see are created by public relations individuals, who have a hidden agenda. It seems that nothing is truthfully upfront anymore. Most of the time it is impossible for the average American to tell what real news is and what is a packaged story? I believe that news stations should be required to tell the public which segments from the show were created and which segments were real news. This way the viewer will know which segment to critically dissect and to watch with a grain of salt.

Media and Society grazes over the issue of public relations in the media with a quick blurb, (pg 133) but in doing so raises some interesting questions. If the traditional model of news reporting is suppose to suceede something will need to be done in order to level out the playing field between journalists and public relations people. With so much of the daily news being provided by public relations people it is hard for journalists to maintain an edge. The prepackaged nature of a public relations media kit is hard for more grassroots journalists to keep up with.

Public relations has also taken up a large part of life in Feed. When a new trend or style is reveled via feed there is an instant notification and update available. There is no way that a reporter from a news paper could compete with this type of pre packaged, mass produced media kit. Most of what takes place via the feed is direct unfiltered public relations for products and services. One of the only parts in the book where Titus seems overwhelmed and overjoyed with his feed is when he gets his feed back after it was hacked. He scrolls through dozens of public relations promotions trying to soak it all up (pg 69). Public relations is a powerful medium that should be easy to spot and provide the consumer(s) with information about the company or person that is producing the public relations materials. This way it will at least give consumers a far chance at deciphering real news stories from manufactured public relations opportunities.

Put out by PR-Watch this video gets to the heart of the seamless relationship between PR and the American news media. This relationship not only jeopardizes content integrity, but it also sets a dangerous precedent that corporations must meet in order to get their business or product mainstream media coverage.