Dependencies of Journalists have on Public Relations Practitioners

Both PR practitioners and media journalists depend on each other to complete their respective jobs and responsibilities. Journalists rely on PR practitioners for information and materials for their news reports, while PR practitioners can influence the news agenda that were given to the journalists. Hence, there must be mutual trust between both professions so as to produced reliable pieces of news for the public, which are favourable to the PR organizations as well.

Much portions of the information in the news reports that were published on newspapers and even broadcasted on Television were provided by the PR organizations and specialists, rather than solely discovered by the media journalists. Most journalists depend on the news information provided by the PR practitioners as supporting sources for their ‘raw materials’ and news drafts. These include the news articles, feature stories, bulletins, media releases and announcements. The reason is PR practitioners speak on behalf of the organizations/clients that they work for, and thus, they are the ones who are regarded as the gatekeepers of news information, and journalists need quotes and information from these clients of the PR practitioners. In addition, these information can be copied straight from the media releases given by the PR practitioners, and had definitely saved much of the journalists’ time and efforts on finding news sources to publish their news stories. In my opinion, I believe that such practices may not vary much for both large and small publishing firms, as large publishing firms need more news stories to report on, while small publishing firms may have fewer journalists or reporters to write for stories.

Furthermore, I too feel that when news information was provided for the journalists, this can reduce the possibilities of negative reports on the organizations that the PR practitioners are working for. The reason is journalists may be less likely to go look for their own news sources, which may bring negative publicity to the clients of the PR practitioners. Therefore, being as the primary writing source for journalists on their stories, PR practitioners can influence the contents of a story and how it was published. As a whole, I feel that both media journalists and PR practitioners have an interrelationship with each other, whereby journalists should recognize that PR practitioners are the gatekeepers of news information, and PR practitioners can help journalists accomplish their tasks by helping them with facts and figures checks, so that the journalists have the story right.