Media and Its Apprehensiveness for PR

Public Relations agencies fall in the service sector and like most of the other service sector in the nation they are growing by leaps and bounds. But this stride is bridled by a nonchalant media. A media which has a skeptic attitude towards any and every news story routed through a PR agency. Media’s apathy towards PR is on the pretext that PR agencies tend to misinform them. This results in erroneous news publication and thus creates a blot on the career of the journalist involved. Media personnel always think twice before taking up a PR story. This attitude creates an impression of journalists as an obnoxious group of people who have a cocooned life and are hard to impress.

These circumstances are a test of character for PR Professionals. Someone who is able to sail through this and is able to generate a rapport with media personnel is bound to be a successful PR professional. 

It is not that the fault lies only on media’s part, there are fallacies at PR agencies end too. The problem of PR sector is that unlike others in the service sector fraternity, the PR Professionals have to give a lot of importance to the whims and fancies of its client. They are bound to follow their diktat. It is a remorseful state of affairs which can be avoided with passage of time. As and when the organizations start to take PR seriously and understand it to be different from a mere marketing strategy the situation will move towards positivity.

Indian PR sector needs to learn from the PR agencies in the developed countries say the USA, United Kingdom and such others. The agencies out there act as a news source for the journalists and it is due to their sheer work ethic that no one dares question the authenticity of the news sourced from them. The understanding of Media-PR agency-Client is on such a scale that each one of them knows the limitations of the other and tries to refrain from excessism.

Once the scenario changes for good, PR and Media will be on the same page and will not be having any ill feelings towards each other. 

The author of this opinion article is Mr. Anand Prabhakar, Content Writer at PR Professionals