Media Relations

Jane Johnston; Allen & Unwin, 2007.
264 pgs.

Media Relations: Issues and
Strategies
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Meenakshi Upadhyay, Academician,Public
Relations, UDCJ
Media Relations in the Public
Relations Mix
Media Relations is often seen as the soft part of
public relations, not as complex as issues
management; not as urgent as crisis
management; not personal as community
relations; and not as specialised as financial
relations
It is although important to recast media relations
as providing important access point and
communications avenues for the industry as a
whole
A strong working relationship with the media
translates into smoother practices right across the
spectrum of public relations activities and
functions

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The Manager and the Technician
Media Relations is often viewed as a technical
area of work.
It is indeed technical especially work such as
writing and distributing press releases, arranging
and holding press conferences and keeping up-to
date media lists are all crucial parts of the role.
But it is actually more than what is mentioned
above. It requires skills that are far more complex
than using the media simply to get a message out
or control a story.
Successful media relations is not just what to do
to achieve your goals but considering why you do
what you do in the first place.

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For some media relations is central to their job;
for others working with the media falls outside
their job parameters
Media relations like other functions of PR has
become specialist field requiring specialized
knowledge and understanding. Though it overlaps
with many areas of public relations
It is important in all three: political,corporate and
NGOs

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Defining Media Relations

The ongoing facilitation and
coordination of communication and
relationships between an individual,
group or organisation and the news
media

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It is not rocket science!
It can be fun and extremely fulfilling, at the same
time it is a lot of hard work and can be very
frustrating
You can be handling businesses, advocacy
groups, politics or NGOs, it is important to
understand that you will be working with one of
the toughest and demanding publics in the field of
public relations!
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Media as a monitoring tool
The media provides two critical services for the
public relations professional:-
The first is to get information out to a target public
To provide a monitoring tool about your industry or
organisation, event, issue or product, your
competitor, an overall industry or trend or society as
a whole
As such we use the media for research, for
forward planning and for targeting, analysis and
evaluation

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Clark (2003) notes the following use
of media
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One part of systematically monitoring the media
environment is the identification and management
of issues which may effect an organisation, group
or individual
In this way the media can be used as a
barometer to give us information about global
events and issues, finances, our competitors, the
environment, ourselves and much more
Media monitoring thus forms an integral part of
issues management (fig 1.1)
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Issues Management
The term issue management was first coined by
corporate American public relations officer Howard
Chase in 1976.
He was interested in how organisations were
influenced by outside influences and the timing of
organisational responses to these influences
The original model of issue management consisted of
5 primary steps:-
Issue identification
Issue analysis
Issue change strategy options
Issue action program
Evaluation of results (Crane, 2004)

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Crane(2004) notes that issues management
involves the following:-
Public relations, lobbying or government relations
Futurism, trend tracking, or media monitoring
Strategic or financial planning
Law

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Understanding the media
environment
Traditionally the functions of media is to educate,
inform, entertain, investigate and make money
Schultz refers to various guises of the modern
media: a political player, an economic agent, a
social agent, and a technological innovator(1994,
pg 23)
These functions are not clearly aligned though as
there are times when they bring medias missions
come into conflict for e.g. its roles of social
responsibility and its commercial imperatives

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Common themes of the modern news media is
seen in its increasing need to move within tight
budgets to produce material and the trend
towards the entertainment function
The importance and pervasiveness of the news
media can highly be overstated.
Tiffen (1989) argues that it represents the central
political arena of contemporary liberal
democracies
Craig says that media have become the sites
where politics and public life are played
out(2004, pg. 4)
Value of media relations lies in tapping into the
medias radar and ultimately the medias agenda

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Functions, Working Models, Ownership models,
Regulations of the Indian Media
History of media in India with reference to
newspapers
Relationship between the Newspaper The owner,
publisher, editor
Traditionally the newspaper organization was
divided into two halves: reporting & the desk
Different beats: Editors and Reporters
Newswires and their functions
Advertising, circulation, R&D and HRD
Press Council of India and its role

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Media and Free Speech
Butler and Rodrick (2004) say free speech is
needed for three reasons:
It enhances our humanity
It is the way truth is discovered
It enhances the quality of democracy

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Function: Fourth Estate
This term was coined in 1970 by British politician
Edmund Burke, who referred to the media as the
Fourth Estate because of its relationship with the
three existing estates in the British Parliament:
Lord Temporal, the Lord Spiritual and the
Commons
The reference was about the importance of the
media when positioned against the ruling sectors
of society
The term is used today to refer to the mass media
as a watchdog in liberal democratic societies
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Function of the news media in their Libertarian
role of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
were primarily to provide a public forum for
debate about the issues of the day, to articulate
public opinion, to force governments to consider
the will of the people, to educate, to channel
communication between groups, and to champion
individuals against abuses of power
The more recent model, the 20
th
century Social
Responsibility Model, (Four theories of the Press)
saw media as having the responsibility to ensure
that all sides of the story were presented fairly.
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Criticism of media as the fourth estate: since the
news media has been subsumed by big business
and monopolistic control, it cannot function as an
objective watchdog and can no longer offer a full
range of perspective
Criticism of this theory: does not take into account
the need of the media to balance internal
commercial realities with their obligation to
society

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Media in India: Vanita Kohli
Its nature, origin, history
Current Ownership
Print Organisations
Broadcasting Organisations
Newswires
Community Media or Alternative media or Niche
Media
Media Regulations : Constitutional guidelines and
Press Council, Various Acts.
Media Convergence in India

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Theorising Media Relations
What is mass media?
The fourth estate and ownership: previous
chapter
How is news created?
Role of sources in news

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How is news manufactured?
News organises our perception of a world outside
our first hand experience (Fishman) 1980
In media relations, through our dealings with the
news media we play a central part in presenting
words and images to society to create these
perceptions
But we all know that events and issues that occur
do not metamorphise into a news story
Nose for News, judgment, selection, omission
and creation process will transform any event into
news stories
During this process a journalist will instinctively
use their knowledge of news values to determine
the newsworthiness of the case
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A list of journalistic values such as impact,
conflict, timeliness, proximity, prominence,
currency, human interest, the unusual or novelty
and money
In categorizing stories like this, journalists assign
a value to them
These news values in turn frame the event,
rendering it understandable in the terms of the
ideological system (Drechsel, 1983, p .14)
News values are enforced at the organization
level because they help to sort where the story
goes in the broadcast lineup or the newspaper
pages
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This leads to emergence of news themes as
stories develop into groupings to provide
continuity and context within an otherwise
haphazard news agenda
Thus news is constructed or manufactured from
real life: news itself simply reflects and recreates
life
But if we closely look at news it becomes
apparent that some news just happens and some
news is made to happen
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News may be divided into actual or created
varieties
These have been defined over the years as
routine journalism and manipulated
journalism(Fishman,1980, p.15)
Daniel Boorstin (1961) famously observed : In
the last half century a larger and larger proportion
of our experience, of what we read and see and
hear, has come to consist of pseudo events(
1961, p.12)

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Images, Mediation & Reality
Boorstin discusses how society creates events
and people for the purposes of news, impact
and image
He says we wants to create illusions of reality
because we suffer from extravagant
expectations (1961, p.7)
News creates a synthetic novelty which he calls
the pseudo event (1961, p.11)
Television is a major part of the pseudo-event
because of the blurring it can produce : audience
becomes actor, unreal becomes real, created
becomes spontaneous-or so it can seem
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We have to take into consideration of the fact that
television as a medium is focused on pictures
accordingly understand the theories.
Ericson and colleagues (1987) believe that
journalists reproduce order and disorder through
vision.
As television is based on images and pictures, it
is suggested that its power as a medium is
pervasive because when we see things on
television we perceive these to be reality.

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In fact it is reality that is presented by the
journalists (or media worker)
As aptly put by Hartley part of the sham actually
has nothing to do with the stories as events, but
with the presentation of them as true (1992,
p.144)
Questions of truth, reality, fiction, and fact are
raised through the use of editing, packaging,
omission and interpretation.
A day or a year can be compacted into a one-
hour documentary, life can be summed up in a
two-minute news story. An image can represent
something quite different from what it is-or was.
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Once it was thought that television news
provided a window to the worldthen it was
realised that the window had a frame which
could manipulate our field and angle of vision
the news was a constructed reality of images
Putnis (1994,pg 1)
The idea of what is real and what is created is the
focus of much considered thought and debate
Questions of the real, the constructed and the
created are part of post modern discourse
Post modern thought considers reality and
images of reality as a simulacrum: the two exist
as a single concept
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This concept of simulacrum is as suggested by
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard : He says in
a world full of media (ted) images there is little
point in trying to separate what is real from what
is represented for they are essentially the same
(Deveraux, 2003 p.105) E.g. Disneyland and
American society
He further states that media feeds off themselves,
drawing ideas from each other with the end result
of not knowing what was real in the first place
This is reflected in reality shows and celebrity
magazines
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The theories of Boorstin, Hartley and Putnis
make us question images of reality as they are
presented to us and to think about whether
mediated images are real or whether they are
simply based on our experience and perceptions
of life
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News and Sources
While the strongest form of information gathering
for a journalist is usually through first hand
observation, the reality is that practical issues
such as time, money, and staffing levels require
journalists to use sources
Journalists need sources to link up with the
corporate, political and social and cultural world
around them
This use of sources underpins the role of the
media relations professionals
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Types of Sources
Early studies of how news is constructed identify
news sources as being central to the process
(Ericson et al., 1987; Fishman, 1980; Tuchman,
1978)
This, in turn, provides a way of viewing the role
of media relations in the communication mix
Sources have been called relevant knowers
(Fishman, 1980, p.51)
Thus when a journalist seeks to construct a story
based on tip-offs, hints or assumptions, the
automatic pathway to verify the story is through
sources in positions of authority
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Government officials and bureaucracy are
frequently used as sources. These people
become conventional or standard news sources
for the media
The other sources are middle and senior
management in the corporate and third sectors
These people are also aware that the media will
call them up for verification
Brown (2003) explains a trend for scientific
experts to be popular: Currently popular are
geneticists, forensic scientists, environmental
scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, crime
profilers and criminologists.

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To the media, never has the mantle of science
been sexier (2003, p.40)
These people have been called authorised
knowers (Ericson et al., 1987, p. 18) and primary
definers (Schlesinger and Tumber 1994: 17)
The media, in turn, become secondary definers
because they are one level removed from the
facts or the news
This theory suggests that the source is more in
control of defining the news than the media, but
of course many would argue that that is not the
case, media selects certain sources and is in
control over their news gathering

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In turn, when the media need expert
interpretation, sources can define the parameters
of a debate.
For media relations, this provides an opportunity
to become established as authorised knowers
and thus primary definers in particular areas of
knowledge
Fishman (1980) observes that it is necessary to
consider more than one version of facts because
facts can be ambiguous
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A sources version of facts depends on 3 things:-
The sources level of competence
Their positioning; and
Their interest
Fishman calls it facts by triangulation , and
points out that the practical issue for news
workers is how to treat the different versions of
events (1980, p. 116)
In media relations , we can work within this theory
to ensure we become the source the media trusts
and returns to as its preferred source of
information

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Lifeworld and Ideal Speech
The above theories come from critical philosopher
Jurgen Habermas and they offer some ideas
about connecting and working effectively with
sources
Habermas (1998) refers to a lifeworld that is
shared with or known to others
Lifeworlds provide shared understanding because
they are all about speaking the same language
When working with the media, the media relations
professional
When working with the media, the media relations
professional can draw from shared
undertsandings which result
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McCarthy (1981) confirms how the lifeworld must
be considered in the context of understanding
speech
He refers to a double structure of ordinary
language which represents a circle of
understanding
In it, if speaker and listener are to reach an
understanding, they must communicate
simultaneously at two levels:
The capacity to understand each other; and
The desire to understand each other.
In a source media relationship, such a double
structure must exist with both a mutual
understanding of a subject and a desire to want
to learn or impart information about it
If either of the steps break down it will result in
miscommunication leading to incorrect reportage
or misquoting a source

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Ideal speech is based on listening to the opinion
of others and being open to stronger or counter
arguments hence it is sometimes viewed as too
utopian to work effectively
Ideal speech can best describe the process of
discourse rather than the actual outcome (Cook,
cited in Habermas, 1998)
Habermass concept of ideal speech may be
compared with Grunig and Hunt (1984) two-way
symmetrical model of public relations
Thus both ideal speech and the two way
symmetrical model represent the exempler
between the media and the media relations
professional

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But factors such as:-time restrictions, deadlines,
space limitations, competition, commercial
pressures, and organisational expectations can
present so many other variables that they can
render the ideal useless

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Relationship Management
Based on the idea that public relations should
offer benefits to both an organisation and its
respective publics (and not just the organisation),
and that outcomes are more important than
outputs (that is, we should measure
achievements and not just activities), relationship
management suggests that it is important to
foster the media in an ongoing and productive
way rather than focusing on an approach based
simply on using the media as a means to an end
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Ledingham (2003) suggests that the major shift
which is occurring in public relations theory
involves recognition that the appropriate domain
of public relations is, in fact relationships. (2003,
p. 194)
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Setting the media agenda
There are two ways in which the media
professional can fulfill the role of an information
provider which ultimately becomes integral to the
news agenda. These are:-
Proactively without the media prompting; and
Reactively , following a media prompt
Both happen depending on circumstances

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Media as the new public sphere
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Thus we see that one key area of criticism of the
new public sphere lies with the focus on television
as the dominant medium
But as a media relations professional this is an
important revelation: whatever the criticism of
television and the media as the new public
sphere the focus of media relations must be on
accessing this force
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Working with the news media
News can be grouped into:-
Routine
Staged
Spontaneous (the above three are not always
separate occurrences all the time)
Routine news will usually require, at some point,
the management of information for the media.
Routine news comes from the police, courts,
government etc.
Staged or overtly managed , news or events
always require information management and
generally allow time to the media relations
practitioner to plan and orchestrate how events
will occur. E.g. media conference

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News Values
Impact
Conflict
Timeliness
Proximity
Prominence
Currency
Human Interest
The Unusual/Novelty and
Money

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news is more
news(Fishman,1980)
One of the reasons that news media rely on
sources and other media is because of the
construction of news themes
These allows events and issues to be
categorised, sorted and developed into a series
of stories
The challenge is to move from media attention
seeking , to a strategy that ensures that claims or
counter knowledge are circulated and accorded
legitimate status (sources being credible)

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Knowing the media: for better
media relations
It is useful to gain understanding of the social and
cultural elements of a profession-not to criticise,
but to gain insight into what makes them tick
(Tapshall and Varley, 2001) have focused on the
role of the journalist and journalist within society,
a dominant view is that journalists see the news
largely from a white, middle class perspective
Journalists view of the world determines not just
how they cover a story but what stories they
cover (in Duin, 2000, p.1)
Public relations professionals like journalists form
a part of a social and cultural elite
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Roles in the newsroom
Knowing who does what makes it easier for the
media relations practitioner to do two things:-
Maximise access to media channels
Establish positive working relationships and contact
with specific journalists
Editor (know hierarchies)
News Editor
Sub-Editor
Producer
Photo-Editor
Section Editor
Journalist/Reporter
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What is a media list?
Also called a Rolodex
Importance
Components
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Media List Template
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Knowing the Media
Importance of meeting deadlines
Developing Trust Banks : how do you begin
media relations?
Confidentiality and going off the record
Scoops
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Jane Johnston; Allen & Unwin, 2007.

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