The Gulf oil spill was 2010’s biggest story, so when David Barstow walked into a Houston hotel for last December’s hearings on the disaster, he wasn’t surprised to see that the conference room was packed. Calling the hearing to order, Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen cautioned the throng, “We will continue to allow full media coverage as long as it does not interfere with the rights of the parties to a fair hearing and does not unduly distract from the solem-nity, decorum, and dignity of the proceedings.” It’s a stock warning that every judge gives before an important trial, intended to protect witnesses from a hounding press. But Nguyen might have been worrying too much. Because as Barstow realized as he glanced across the crowd, most of the people busily scribbling notes in the room were not there to ask questions. They were there to answer them.
“You would go into these hearings and there would be more PR people representing these big players than there were reporters, sometimes by a factor of two or three,” Barstow said. “There were platoons of PR people.”
An investigative reporter for The New York Times, Barstow has written several big stories about the shoving match between the media and public relations in what eventually becomes the national dialogue. As the crowd at the hearing clearly showed, the game has been changing.
“The muscles of journalism are weakening and the muscles of public relations are bulking up—as if they were on steroids,” he says.
In their recent book, The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert McChesney and John Nichols tracked the number of people working in journalism since 1980 and compared it to the numbers for public relations. Using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, they found that the number of journalists has fallen drastically while public relations people have multiplied at an even faster rate. In 1980, there were about 45 PR workers per one hundred thousand population compared with 36 journalists. In 2008, there were 90 PR people per one hundred thousand compared to 25 journalists.* That’s a ratio of more than three-to-one, better equipped, better financed.
How much better?
The researcher who worked with McChesney and Nichols, R. Jamil Jonna, used census data to track revenues at public relations agencies between 1997 and 2007. He found that revenues went from $3.5 billion to $8.75 billion. Over the same period, paid employees at the agencies went from 38,735 to 50,499, a healthy 30 percent growth in jobs. And those figures include only independent public relations agencies—they don’t include PR people who work for big companies, lobbying outfits, advertising agencies, non-profits, or government.
Traditional journalism, of course, has been headed in the opposite direction. The Newspaper Association of America reported that newspaper advertising revenue dropped from an all-time high of $49 billion in 2000 to $22 billion in 2009. That’s right—more than half. A lot of that loss is due to the recession. But even the most upbeat news executive has to admit that many of those dollars are not coming back soon. Six major newspaper companies have sought bankruptcy protection in recent years.
Less money means fewer reporters and editors. The American Society of News Editors found the number of newspaper reporters and editors hit a high of 56,900 in 1990. By 2011, the numbers had dropped to 41,600. Much of that loss has occurred since 2007. Network news did not fare any better—the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism estimates that employment there is less than half of what it was in the peak period of the 1980s.
“I don’t know anyone who can look at that calculus and see a very good outcome,” said McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois.
This is a surprisingly fair portrayal of PR from journalists, who usually focus on the negative and the past. Thanks for mentioning Ivy Lee instead of merely Edward Bernays. Your readers may also be interested in Arthur Page, whose legacy of ethical PR as a management counseling function continues today: http://www.awpagesociety.com/
I would also add that PR people don't 'outnumber' journalists in the sense that not all PR people do media relations and publicity exclusively. The field is much broader now and, as your article points out, often involves events and other direct communication with key publics.
It's also important to recognize that while PR professionals may misinform the public, this is not the standard practice. Like any profession, PR has its bad practitioners. But more often than not, particularly in politics, "spin" is perpetuated by people who do NOT have a degree in PR, are not members of PRSA and aware of its ethics code, and therefore should not be considered exemplary of PR as commonly practiced.
Finally, while criticisms of the PR profession are important for the purpose of continual improvement, it should also be noted that PR professionals contribute positively to democracy by enabling informed decision making. That's because journalists don't have the capacity to report everything, and they too, believe it or not, can get things wrong. The companion complaint to PR people putting out too much information is that they are silent. The public, and journalists, know sooner or later if they are being well served by ethical and truly professional PR practitioners or if they are being deceived by someone perpetuating the negative stereotype of the profession.
#1 Posted by Tim Penning, Ph.D., APR, CJR on Mon 2 May 2011 at 11:32 AM
Dr. Penning is right -- this article reflects an astonishingly limited view of public relations responsibilities. The profession has grown because the scope of its influence has expanded exponentially. The article fails to recognize that PR professionals are increasingly incorporated into organizational management and leadership. Professional responsibilities include community relations, internal/employee communication, investor relations, customer relations, corporate social responsibility, development communication, crisis planning and management and more. How myopic and cynical to suggest PR professionals are multiplying merely to spin and distort the news! PR professionals are increasingly held in high regard. Can journalists say the same?
#2 Posted by Alan R. Freitag, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 10:21 AM
How appropriate that the first two comments are PR from PR practitioners (or former practitioners). Their responses make me wonder whether they both even read all the way through the CJR story. The point is not lying or even spin per se, but that media relations people serve their clients (to make a buck) while journalists serve their audience (also to make a buck, and sometimes a higher purpose as well).
Also, please note the careful use of the word 'merely' in the third sentence from the last in Dr. Freitag's comment.
#3 Posted by Tim Curran, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 11:08 AM
PR people, like lawyers, represent their client's interests, whether the "client" is a business, a not-for-profit organization, an arm of government, an individual, a candidate, or even the media itself. If PR people are ethical, their stock in trade is asserting the truth, at least the truth as seen from their client's perspective. Good PR people are first reporters -- they report about their client organization to outside constituencies, often through the media, but sometimes directly. Good PR people work with editors and journalists based on mutually understood rules of truth and fairness, and yes, there are occasions when both sides violate or circumvent these rules. And yes, PR is about a lot more than media relations, and can span the entire realm of communications and relationships. Many journalists will concede, if they are candid, that they can only do their job well with the assistance of good PR people. The writer's notion that PR is gaining on journalism is perhaps a somewhat distorted version of the truth -- too much journalism is descending into infotainment, and journalism is being reinvented as a much more direct and diffused form of reporting through so-called social media.
#4 Posted by Charles Ebeling, APR, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 12:38 PM
My PR colleagues above have done a good job of providing a more enhanced perspective of what constitutes public relations. However, one point in this story requires comment: "But without the filter provided by journalists, it is hard to divide facts from slant.”
The Audi debacle of the 1980s was, in short, a media-enabled -- if not media-created -- scandal in which the car company's reputation took a major hit based on a fraudulent "60 Minutes" report.
The Toyota controversy of last year bears some resemblance in the level of negative fear mongering in the news media ("Faulty Toyotas have killed 52 in the United States," blared, falsely, a New York Post headline). The Atlantic posted yesterday an article that looks at the Toyota situation in detail. Toyota, the news media and NHTSA all appear to bear responsibility for the crisis.
News reporters, much like their PR brethren, are frequently guilty of blurring the lines of truth in how the select what they report, how they report it, and how their editors then finalize it -- which makes the above statement so ironic.
Fortunately, social media has enabled a level of transparency upon society that just about anyone – including reporters, citizens, Wikileaks and yes, even PR people, governments and corporations – can help purport facts and interpretations thereof. It is an error to assume this responsibility should fall anymore onto just the shoulders of journalists. Arguably, the marketplace is the great equalizer here – for better or worse.
That said, many of the practices discussed in this article are clearly unethical and should be exposed for what they are. It is a valuable article and worthy of increased discussion.
#5 Posted by Bob Conrad, PhD, APR, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 02:45 PM
The article notes the decline in journalism jobs vs growth in PR jobs, but it doesn't point out the professional migration from journalism to PR. I have many journalist friends and associates who have left, or are seeking to leave, J-jobs for PR gigs.
#6 Posted by George Hayward, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 06:01 PM
My sincere compliments to John Sullivan for a thoughtful and well-researched article.
I am a former broadcast journalist turned public relations consultant. I've worked for many large organizations and now run my own firm. I tell a story exactly the same way now that I did when I was in broadcasting. I gather information, determine whether it is worthy of presenting to an audience, what is wheat and what is chaff, and publish or broadcast. My bona fides: I make my living in public relations and have for 15 years, yet I've won awards as the best newspaper/online column writer AND radio talk show host in my market in the last 12 months in head to head competition against full-time professional journalists.
It's true that in any information disseminating role, I operate from a certain point of view. The decision-making process itself, no matter how an individual applies it, imposes a point of view. Report on "this" topic, but not "that" one. The sooner we realize that no information is truly unfiltered or biased unless raw documents and unedited video is posted, the more adept we are at processing that information.
There is very little difference between ETHICAL journalists and public relations professionals today. Both professions must be more aggressive about policing and calling out unethical practices, whether the egregious "pay for play" phenomenon of buying news interviews on local television or bankrolling front groups.
#7 Posted by Gayle Lynn Falkenthal, APR, CJR on Tue 3 May 2011 at 10:01 PM
This piece, and the resulting discussion, reflects in many ways the evolution of what journalism and public relations is all about: Communication. Those of us who adhere to ethical public relations practices strive for accuracy in messages and promote open lines of communications. And, this former journalist always strived for accuracy when researching and filing articles for publication. However, I find it puzzling that author Mr. McChensey proclaims "demise of journalism at the same time we have an increasing level of public relations and propaganda." Yet he fails to point out that the "demise" of journalism may have been exacerbated by the work of people like Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke and Jack Kelley -- "journalists" who wrote fiction and passed it off as facutal reporting.
#8 Posted by Edward M. Bury, APR, CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 10:23 AM
Well done, Mr. Sullivan. The central fact--that the ratio of PR flacks to reporter hacks has gone from near-parity to an almost 4-to-1 advantage for the flacks--cannot be spun.
Mr. Bury's comment deserves a retort.
Journalists may not be entirely independent, and we're not all very good, but one thing about us: we don't take pay from the people we write about. Even though doing so would improve our incomes to PR-practitioner levels.
Also, we don't make excuses for people like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass. Unlike PR folks (and politicians, and stock analysts and, say, credit ratings agencies) who, once in a while, "burn" the public via dissemination of a whopper, journalists who do that really are finished.
They go to law school or become consultants or life coaches.
#9 Posted by edward ericson jr., CJR on Wed 4 May 2011 at 02:12 PM
Being an honest broker conflicts with the job description, which requires people to filter out unflattering information. You can acknowledge that without saying PR is evil.
With all due respect to postmodernists above: if paid spokesmen feel they're competing as equals with an investigative reporter, that is sad. But the attitude it shows -- the confidence and lock-step conformity; the lack of question marks or self-doubt -- suggests they found the right career.
I'm not sure it's wise to parry that by adopting the same approach. Any media workers who mislead the public are instantly canned? Come on. (I guess there's one guy here who's never watched Jon Stewart.)
Sycophants like Glass and Blair get as far as they do because they're adept at stroking egos, and authorities make excuses for their bad behavior. Some co-workers flagged ethical concerns; often, supervisors ignored them until later, when the violations of public trust became too glaring.
It's rare to find a monolithic newsroom. Most seem to be a mix of smart, interesting individuals, and people who couldn't distinguish a newsworthy story from a daytime soap opera if it bit them. And honest journalists have gone to law school. I'd never follow them, but I can see the upside for people with families to feed.
Let's not pretend it's only the crooked ones who leave, and only capable ones remain. Purges aren't always a good idea. Of course: should the media truly enact such a policy, it would be nice never having to see Bill O'Reilly's ugly mug (or Glenn Beck's hideous one) again.
#10 Posted by Anon., CJR on Sat 14 May 2011 at 07:08 PM
Comment of the Month to Tim Curran. Funny. And Ed Ericson's is no slouch.
#11 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Fri 20 May 2011 at 03:24 PM
I wrote a column for NY Observer from 1987 to 2009. In one of the earliest, I stated baldly that I would be open to any submissions from PR firms and publicists, and would use the material tendered to the maximum embarrassment of the client. Over the following 22 years, I heard from not one publicist
#12 Posted by Michael M Thomas, CJR on Sun 5 Jun 2011 at 08:37 AM
As some have said, PR people can be good or bad. But there's no argument that they have become much more important as newsrooms have lost staff. The reporter and editor shrinkage is bad, but the reliance on PR people isn't automatically negative.
Reporters always have been pressed for time, but fewer reporters means that specialization has decreased; a reporter who might have covered one beat now often is trying to become well-versed in two or three subject areas. At the same time, access to information has increased through disclosure laws and the Internet, so the quantity to be gathered before writing has increased. (Editors know that more facts are available than ever before, and they usually demand them.)
I relied on help from PR people increasingly in the last several years of a four-decade newspaper career because I finally realized that the good ones would gather much of the information I needed but lacked time to chase down. This meant we relied on each other to be honest and accurate. I rarely was disappointed; the good PR people never lied, even when I asked for information that wouldn't make those they were representing look good. Sure, they could try to put their client or organization's information in the best light -- that's part of their job -- but it is the reporter's job to see through spin and challenge it, to demand more information when needed, and to present contradictory information or views, if any. It's also the reporter's job, as always, to accurately represent the facts without bending them to an agenda.
PR people who tried to mislead me -- and there weren't many -- got cut off. I simply never spoke to them again.
#13 Posted by Neal Gendler, CJR on Sat 25 Jun 2011 at 10:26 PM
I have qeustion and feel free to answer based on the above article :
Is the increasing role of PR no longer a problem if the source is clearly identified, either by the agency itself or by reporters? Or is any incursion into the newsroom by paid opinion-makers a matter of concern?
#14 Posted by MANUAL , CJR on Tue 27 Sep 2011 at 06:48 AM
I see a clear trend emerging that represents a fundamental shift in both the practice of Public Relations and the value it provides to customers that will begin to make our profession more enduring and respected. As the traditional media continues to fractionate, PR professionals will pick up their (both) game and become “PR Journalistists” writing/publishing directly to their customers through various mediums. Because we live in an “open” Social Medium, this will force and allow PR professionals to be recognized as honest providers/brokers/facilitators of information/knowledge that seek to tell the truth well.
#15 Posted by Brian Cohen, CJR on Sun 22 Jan 2012 at 08:33 AM