A Brief Note On Public Relations And Journalism - 2001 Words

Public Relations and Journalism can be perceived as one profession but their function is different. PR practitioners and journalists have always had a divisive relationship but also share a mutual dependence. The press rely on PR practitioners for information to write good stories. PR practitioners depend on the press to publish positive stories about a person, event, organisation, and broadcast that information to the publics. Baines, Egan and Jefkins (2004) strongly believe that many practitioners consider the media to be the public for their organisation or believe that media coverage automatically means that they have reached and influenced a large audience. The media are conduits to strategic public organisations. The media is a†¦show more content†¦Harlow (1976) as sited by Tench and Yeomans (2009, p.4) â€Å"Public Relation is a distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance and cooperation between an organisation and its publics; involves the management of problems or issues; help management to keep informed on and responsive to public opinion; defines and emphasises the responsibility of management to serve the public interest; help management keep abreast of and effectively utilise change; serving and early warning system to help anticipate trends; and uses research and ethical communication techniques as it pri ncipal tool†. Journalism alternatively is the keen act of gathering, writing, and presenting of news information in newspapers, magazines, social media, radio and television. â€Å"Journalism is comprised of reports, story-telling and commentaries in the public media about events and ideas as they occur. Its principal elements are: judgment--broadly speaking, news judgment--and reporting, language, narration, and analysis† (Adam, 1989 p.73). A journalist is an individual that participates in the act of journalism with the primary aim of educating the public about events of life (News) with the use of communication techniques. It has been suggested that â€Å"along with the police, and the doctors and the fire brigade, the journalists