Flack Attack
By Neil Dodds
10 March, 2006
Good for Jeff Jarvis: He's running a one-man campaign against the pernicious influence of the PR industry in US newspapers - even though the Washington Post has joined the New York Times in criticising weblogs for cosying up the PRs!
Here's Richard W. Edelman, president of Edelman PR (who Jeff also quotes):
“PR plays much better in a world that lacks trust...In a world where we don’t have a belief in a single source, you don’t have a Walter Cronkite anymore. PR is the discipline on the rise."
“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack: Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let’s show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show. (The newspapers are) not God anymore."
Jason Horowitz, reporting on the USA's annual PR bash for the New York Observer, quotes some more PR self-congratulation:
"The role of public-relations people is to act as the gatekeepers for news and information," said Andy Plesser of Plesser Holland Associates, “many journalists want to believe they are being enterprising on their own.”
"Presumptuous? Maybe", writes Horowitz, "But consider the publicist’s perspective: They are incessantly reading and watching stories that they remember pitching to reporters only days before. Still, most any self-respecting journalist will bristle at the mere suggestion of dependence."
Read any more from this party, thrown to celebrate PR Week's annual awards, and it begins to sound like the devil Screwtape and his friends congratulating themselves on the souls they have consigned to the Inferno.
So what's the solution? More transparency from journalists, first of all. No wonder the public is disillusioned with newspapers, when flacks can boast of how they make sure which stories see the light of day and which don't. Jarvis has a three point plan, which should be printed above all reporters and bloggers desks:
1. If a story starts as a pitch from PR, say so.
2. Any information in a story that comes from PR or a source with a vested interest should be identified as such.
3. Reveal any help you got from PR and official sources in doing a story: setting up interviews, lunches, digging up information.
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