2010 - Public Relations Society of America

accepting information they receive through the news media. "They have a fundamental belief
that the news media is more objective, generally, and certainly more objective than advertising."
Having an educational and/or professional background in journalism was a factor for
some public relations professionals’ views that independent media channels are more credible
than controlled channels. One corporate media relations expert with a journalism education
background, Perry, said that “being trained that way, you want to believe that what you read and
see in the news media is relatively unbiased and well-researched."
Several public relations practitioners, while acknowledging the greater perceived
credibility of the news media, still expressed some skepticism. A PR professional with extensive
corporate and nonprofit experience, Ellen, said that coverage by independent media has greater
credibility because “there is the possibility that it has been vetted and screened, and the fact that
it is not paid for allows for some balance and for other voices in the story.” Nevertheless, she
said she had worked with reporters who “never let the facts get in the way of the story,”
selectively including or excluding information or failing to check facts.
While agreeing that independent sources, such as the news media, are more credible than
controlled sources, such as advertising, public relations professional Tim emphasized that
independent sources did not guarantee credibility. Information that is conveyed through
independent sources is not inherently credible, he said, but it is perceived as more credible than
information coming from a controlled source, giving an example: “If company X puts out a press
release, I am going to be more skeptical about that release versus a story about company X that
was published in the New York Times.” Despite this view, Tim raised a concern shared by
several practitioners about the declining credibility of the news media. “These days I’m going to
be much more suspicious about that newspaper article in the Times than I might have been 10 or
20 years ago," he said.
High-profile situations that call into question the veracity of certain mainstream media
also have influenced practitioners’ perceptions of credibility, such as circumstances of plagiarism
and inaccurate reporting, and retractions from lack of fact checking, have diminished the
perceived believability of media in general. "That said," agency practitioner Tim commented, "I
still think people will say, if you read it in the newspaper, there is some degree of credibility to it
versus the company or the organization saying it.”
PR Practitioners’ Views on Business People’s Perceptions of Credibility of Independent
and Controlled Media
Business people may have a slightly different perspective in viewing the credibility of
media versus companies as a source of information, observed several public relations
professionals. Agency practitioner Tim called it a "peer-to-peer type thing." He explained,
There might be a certain level of camaraderie in business, where everyone knows that the
media is going to interpret the way they want to interpret something. So it is sort of an
‘us’ and ‘them’ type of thing. If company A were to put out a press release, company B
would probably think that basically everything that company A has said is more likely on
the up-and-up only because they have been through that process themselves. Unless it is
just someone notorious such as the Enron situation, which is totally tainted, I think that
businesses are probably less suspect of each other because they know that the media can
take things and twist and turn it to get the story that they want.
"I think that business people would have a degree of cynicism about advertising or at
least understand that they are being marketed to,” observed Kirk, a public relations executive.
“Ironically, in my experience some of the most gullible tend to be marketers themselves because
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