Media
panel tackles respect, ethics, credibility
By
Zainab Senhaji Rhazi
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing writer
The Public Relations Students Society of America (PRSSA) hosted a panel discussion
about building relationships between journalists and public relations practitioners
Monday.
“
This open discussion [is] aimed at increasing awareness and giving advice to
students about how to work ethically and effectively while developing and fine
tuning media relations skills,” said PRSSA President Louis Afrouznia.
The panel focused on the intricate differences between public relations and
journalism.
“
The writing component is what makes journalism and public relations close,” said
journalism professor Carla Yarbrough. “Everything else is different.”
Public relations practitioner and professor Mathew Cabot opposed the idea many
people hold that public relations is comparable to spin.
“
Spin is like putting a clean shirt on a dirty body,” he said. “That
is not the role of public relations practitioners.”
He added public relations practitioners have an obligation to serve their clients
and keep the general public’s interest at heart.
Professor Emma Daugherty Phillingane joined Cabot in his discourse. Having
worked for non-profit organizations most of her life, she said there should
be a distinction between the different components of public relations.
According to Phillingane, one of the most important constituents in public
relations is the employees.
“
We do advocate for an organization, but we do not lie,” she said. “That
is the worst a public relations specialist can do.”
Ethically speaking, the field of public relations is more likely to be compromised,
according to William Babcock, chairman of the journalism department and professor
at CSULB.
“
Client relationship is what sets public relations apart from journalism,” he
said.
All the panelists agreed journalists and public relations practitioners should
respect each other.
Another topic raised by the panel was credibility.
“
Not every journalist is a truth seeker, just like not every public relations
professional is an image builder,” added journalism professor Christopher
Karadjov.
Both journalism and public relations are applied broadly. Babcock addressed
the difficulty of establishing an accreditation system or a way to test both
fields. Such practice would infringe upon the First Amendment rights of freedom
of the press.
There was an agreement among the crowd that the media often portrays both fields
improperly. Phillingane said it was a common phenomenon now to see misleading
shows, such as “Sex and the City” where one of the main characters
was an event planner, portrayed as a public relations specialist.
“
People need to make a distinction between public relations and event planning,
spinning and flack,” Phillingane said. “Publicity and public relations
are two different things.”
Babcock said the main problem with public relations has more to do with omission.
The growing trend of focus on entertainment and “infotainment,” as
some call it, was a topic brought up in the discussion.
“
The Southern Californian culture is entertainment driven,” Yarbrough
said.
She said it contrasts immensely with the East Coast where media is driven by
politics in Washington D.C. and financial information in New York.
“
There is too much fluff and I encourage my students to watch the BBC and listen
to national radio,” she said.
Apart from the entertainment aspect that reins over news media in California
in coverage such as that of Natalie Holloway and Britney Spears, “there
is a certain degree of self-deception and delusion on both parts,” Karadjov
said.
Yarbrough said in order to be objective, journalists need an internal radar
or lie detector.
“
You still get to choose who will talk, you pick your sources,” she said,
however; the problem seems to be “we make the assumption that people
will tell us the truth; sometimes they just want their 15 minutes of fame,” she
said.
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