PR and the Media. A Collaborative Relationship?

Abstract

What do the relations between the PR industry and the media look like? Are they traditional media-source or pressure group relations from the PR side? What is the outcome of these relations and how do they affect journalism and news selection? This study, based on inter views with both sides, identifies a close and continuous, though mostly one-sided, contact, in which PR actors steadily provide journalists and editors with instrumental news angles with regard to news management. While the former claim that they often succeed in planting their promotional ideas in newspapers and programmes, the latter mostly deny such a claim. However, admitting that the PR sphere does constitute a skilful news producer, journalists relate that, in times of decreased editorial resources, they are dependent on material from outside sources. A mutually dependent, exchange relation can thus be seen as a summarized picture of the PR-media relationship.