Pictured above is a recent hearing held by the joint investigation board for the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 4, 2011. At a similar hearing in December, NY Times investigative reporter David Barstow reported there were PR representatives who were there to answer questions than there were reporters who were there to cover the event. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Casey J. Ranel)
After reading a story had had been published on the ProPublica website back in May, I was stunned to find that the void that is being filled by rapidly shrinking newsrooms due to newspaper consolidations and massive layoffs are public relations agencies, whose main job is to push forth an agenda to ultimately affect public opinion. In the story, New York Times investigative reporter David Barstow explained there were more PR people representing the companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster testifying than there were reporters in attendance at a recent hearing that was held by the joint investigation board back in April.
“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. The muscles of journalism are weakening and the muscles of public relations are bulking up — as if they were on steroids.”
According to some academics in the journalism field, there is legitimate cause for concern. In their recent book, “The Death and Life of American Journalism,” Robert McChesney and John Nichols used U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data to track the number of people working in journalism since 1980 and compared it to those numbers for the public relations industry. What they found was shocking; the number of journalists that are working in the field have significantly fallen while the number of public relation workers have usurped those in the journalism field and multiplied at an even faster rate. Nearly three decades ago, there were about .45 public relations workers per 100,000 people in the population compared with .36 journalists, but nearly three years ago, that number increased to .90 PR people per 100,000 people in the population compared to .25 journalists — a ratio that is more than three-to-one.
What’s more is that public relations agencies are more equipped and financed than most individual news companies. According to R. Jamil Jonna, a researcher who worked with McChesney and Nichols, public relations revenues increased from $3.5 billion to $8.75 billion between 1997 and 2007. During that same period of time, public relations firms experienced a 30 percent increase in jobs from 38,735 workers to 50,499 workers, and these figures don’t even include smaller independent public relations agencies that work for large companies, lobbying organizations, advertising agencies, non-profits, or the government.
What’s even more troubling is the fact that the course of traditional journalism has steered in the opposite direction over the same amount of time. A report from the Newspaper Association of America found that newspaper advertising revenue was cut by nearly 55 percent from an all-time high of $49 billion in 2000 to $22 billion in 2009. This same loss in revenue also points to a loss in the amount of active reporters and editors working for publications nationwide. The American Society of News Editors found that the number of newspaper reporters and editors hit a high of 56,900 in 1990, but by this year, that number had decreased by 26.8 percent to 41,600.
For any journalist, including myself, these numbers and facts are extremely troubling. While I have found that public relations agencies that work for companies are often times very helpful in helping me gain access to company representatives or executives, the fact is that public relations agencies exist for one specific reason: to promote an agenda. However, this is not bash the function of public relations workers or the industry in general, but I believe that the job of public relations workers and journalism professionals serves two completely different functions. Although public relations workers need to be skilled in the art of journalistic writing for the purpose of writing press releases and structuring their responses in a way that would fit well in print, the main goal of public relations workers is to provide a fresh face to a company rather than serve the watchdog or investigative function that many journalists must perform as a part of their duties. I believe that it is this watchdog function and zeal to seek the truth — in spite of the damaging consequences that it may have on a company — that separates journalists from public relations workers.
All too often, it is easy for journalists to take the word of a public relations representative as truth, and I can say that I too have been guilty of it. The fact is that it is sometimes the easiest way to get information, especially at times when the deadlines are tight. While contacting public relations representatives may provide the basic context of a story and may some times be the only necessary means to gain access to a certain company, I believe that journalists need to look beyond the low-hanging fruit and seek out the truth by using alternative means, since the view that journalists are getting may not always be the most forthcoming one.
darinmoriki 