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News releases include news items, feature stories, bulletins, media advisories and announcements which are sent to media offices in an attempt to get favourable news coverage. Although many news releases are not successful and do not result in a news story, enough do succeed to ensure that much of the news people read or watch on television is based on such releases, rather than discovered by journalists. Most journalists rely on these sources to supply the "raw material of their craft, regular, reliable and useable information" (Walters and Walters 1992, p. 33). This flow of 'free' information saves the journalist time and effort finding stories to write about. Yet it is very difficult for the public to be able to distinguish real news from public relations generated news. Often news stories are copied straight from news releases, other times they are rephrased and sometimes they are augmented with additional material. For example a study of the Wall Street Journal, a well known and influential newspaper, found that more than half the Journal's news stories were based entirely on press releases. These stories appeared to be written by the Journal journalists but were hardly changed from the press releases. (Lee and Solomon 1990, p. 66) This does not vary much between large and small papers as larger papers need more stories and smaller papers have fewer staff to write their stories. According to various studies, press releases are the basis for 40-50 percent of the news content of US newspapers. The art of PR is to 'create news'; to turn what are essentially advertisements into a form that fits news coverage and makes a journalist's job easier while at the same time promoting the interests of the client. Ironically this is often far cheaper than paying for expensive television advertisements that many people 'zap' with their remote controls anyway. Public relations people, many of whom started their careers as journalists, are able to turn their promotional material into a news story that is of interest to journalists, time it so that it has most impact, and target it to appropriate journalists. "In other words, behind the media gatekeepers is another whole level of information gatekeepers who are skilled in that most modern of projects, media relations and the making of 'reportable events'." (Nelson 1989, p. 18) The reporting of news releases and pre-planned events by the media have three advantages to public relations firms. Firstly, they give credibility and legitimacy to what might otherwise be seen as self-serving publicity or advertising by giving it the appearance of being news delivered through the agency of an 'independent' third party—the media. While the public will be cautious about what they hear in an advertisement they put more faith in a news broadcast. In this case the media, with its profile of truth-seeker, serves the role that corporate front groups or think tanks fulfil for corporations; it can put the corporate view while appearing to be independent of the corporations that will gain from it. Secondly, news releases and packaged news events are advantageous for public relations because they displace investigative reporting. The reliance of journalists on sources such as PR personnel and government officials is referred to as source journalism, as opposed to investigative journalism. By providing the news feedstock, they cause reporters to react rather than initiate. Journalists who are fed news stories are less likely to go looking for their own stories, which could bring negative publicity. Even the minority of newspaper stories that are the outcome of investigative journalism are often based on interviews which rely on access to important persons arranged through PR people. Thirdly public information officers, corporate spokespeople and PR firms, appreciate that the "media set the public agenda of issues by filtering and shaping reality rather than by simply reflecting it" (Weaver and Elliot quoted in Walters and Walters 1992, p. 32). By being the primary source of a journalist's information on a particular story, PR people can influence the way the story is told and who tells it. They also put journalists onto 'selected' experts to ensure their viewpoint is backed up by an 'impartial' authority in the news story. PR advice to corporations and industry associations is usually to develop, train and even put on retainer, "credible outside experts to act as 'news sources' for journalists." (Adams 1992) What the press release does is to establish lines of control regarding information. It initiates the news-making process, and sets ideal boundaries around what is to be known by emphasizing some information and leaving out other information.... what the public-relations practitioner must do is establish the framework for the event, the language by which it will be discussed and reported, and the emphasis to be maintained. (Nelson 1989, pp. 43-4, 46) Public relations-based news stories are "more likely to reflect positively on the organisation providing the information and to reflect it's issue agenda" than non PR-based stories. Jeff and Marie Blyskal in their book PR: How the Public Relations Industry Writes the News (1985) explain why: Good PR is rather like the placement of a fish-eye lens in front of the reporter. The facts the PR man wants the reporter to see front and center through the lens appear bigger than normal. Other facts, perhaps opposing ones, are pushed to the side by the PR fish-eye lens and appear crowded together, confused, obscured. The reporter's entire field of vision is distorted by the PR lens. (p. 69) News releases do not necessarily go directly to newspapers. Often a public relations service will place it with a wire service first. (Some large agencies have their own wire services.) By 1985, PR Newswire in the US was transmitting 150 stories a day from a pool of 10,000 companies directly into 600 newsrooms belonging to newspapers, radio and television stations. Such stories may be picked up by newsrooms or rewritten by wire services such as AP, Reuters, and Dow Jones. In this way the news release becomes a 'legitimate' news story and will be more likely to be taken up by journalists on the newspapers. An example of the successful use of press releases in a public relations campaign was that of the aerosol industry which, during the 1970s, managed to forestall a ban on the use of CFC gases for several years. The $3 billion industry sought PR advice after the New York Times published an article putting forward the theory that aerosol use could deplete the ozone layer, causing serious public health and environmental impacts (Blyskal and Blyskal 1985, pp. 170-1) The PR response began with a press release which was reprinted with little change in the New York Times emphasising that the theory was just a hypothesis and not fact. In the ensuing campaign many more 'news stories' were 'generated' which were favourable to the industry in papers such as the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fortune magazine and the Observer in London. Briefing papers, press releases, transcripts of industry testimony and successfully placed news stories were distributed to aerosol industry people all over the country so they were able to answer media questions. They were also sent a guidebook for testifying at hearings and answering media questions. (Blyskal and Blyskal 1985, pp. 171-2) For example, in answer to a question suggesting the aerosols be banned because there was a chance they would damage the stratosphere, the following answer was suggested: there is a slight risk that thousands of different products could be modifying the atmosphere to one degree or another. I do not think it is reasonable or proper to ban products at random to eliminate a threat that many qualified people doubt even exists. (Blyskal and Blyskal 1985, p. 172) The symbol of children's story book character Chicken Little exclaiming that "The sky is falling!" was used to great effect as part of the PR campaign and used in various newspaper headlines. And the industry front group, the Council on Atmospheric Sciences, retained 'independent' scientists to present their point of view in the media. Eventually CFC propellents were banned in 1977 in the US. Ken Makovsky, the PR man at the centre of the campaign says: "If we had not taken the offensive in this situation, the ban would have come a lot sooner, and the industry itself would have been unprepared to face market realities..." (Blyskal and Blyskal 1985, pp. 172-3) However, in many countries the aerosol industries managed to postpone a ban for several years after this, allowing US and other manufacturers to continue putting CFCs in aerosol cans for non-US markets.
Blyskal, Jeff and Marie Blyskal, 1985, PR: How the Public Relations Industry Writes the News (New York: William Morrow and Co.). Lee, Martin A. and Norman Solomon, 1990, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Carol Publishing Group). Nelson, Joyce, 1989, Sultans of Sleeze: Public Relations and the Media (Toronto: Between the Lines).
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Adams,
William C. 1992, © 2003 Sharon Beder