Working with the Media

Lundgren and McMakin’s 16th chapter addresses the public relations field’s seemingly never-ending undertaking of working with the media. The first reaction I have toward a section of the chapter is under the “Media Contrasted with other Stakeholders” section. I was interested by the example of a 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling “that a Washington State newspaper could rightly take a reporter off news assignments because her outside-of-work activities—including activism on various social causes—could be perceived a biasing the new stories she wrote, thus risking the newspaper’s reputation of objectivity (Nelson v. McClatchy Newspapers, Inc., et al. 1997)” (p.275). To be honest, on my book’s margin I commented, “No sh**, Sherlock!” However, while preparing to write this blog entry I reflected on the concept.

Being an activist myself, I know that because I have strong convictions about the way that other sentient creatures should be treated, I would have a very hard time presenting a dispassionate opinion on something that I’ve already made my mind up about. That’s not to say that I don’t believe that every single news story should feature every side of the issue—because I wholeheartedly do. Now, that also does not mean that if it were my job to give equal representation to both sides of an issue, I would not be able to do so. Yet, as discussed in last semester’s mass communications and society course taught by Dr. Walsh-Childers (imagine my surprise to see her referenced on p. 292), a journalist is, after all, a human being (in most instances). Sure, journalists are ethically required to present a situation objectively. But does that mean that while investigating a story they don’t form their own opinions regarding the situation? Even further, does that mean that their own convictions regarding issues such as murder or child abuse cannot be omitted from a story on either of those topics?

The next section, titled “Productive Interaction, Not Polarization,” illustrated the power of the media in financially affecting entire industries with the examples of the Washington apple industry losing $130 million and manufacturers of silicon implants facing bankruptcy as a result of media coverage of the two issues. I agree that the media are powerful means to expose a problem, but I wonder, if it were not for the media coverage of the issues, how would the potentially affected parties have known about the risk? I don’t really have an answer.

In the “Certain Kinds of Risks Get More Coverage” section, the authors rightfully stated that “[r]isks are not covered in the mass media commensurate with their probability of occurrence. For example, airline crashes with fatalities are covered far more extensively than heart disease, though diseases take 16 times as many lives as accidents” (p. 277). When I initially read that section, I felt that although the concept is simply a reality that needs to be accepted, the authors almost considered it a downfall of the media’s many audience segments. Ideally, the risk that we are trying to communicate would be always welcome in our intended audience’s ears. However, I cannot say that I don’t understand the attraction to drama. I’m guessing that it is simply human nature to be more attracted to the more frightening of the two scenarios. For instance, as a member of America’s middle class, I can say that I believe that it is an individual’s responsibility to keep up with information related to whatever disease he or she has a predisposition or has been diagnosed with. That way, if the individual chose to not seek treatment, they were somewhat in control of their situations—and that’s not too scary. On the other hand, most people are not airplane pilots. So, if a plane were to crash, the victims were truly powerless in these unexpected and horrifically tragic situations—and these victims could have been members of the audience. Well, enough of the scary stuff.
In the section titled “Take Action When Inaccurate or Misleading Material is Published or Aired,” the authors suggested that communicators “alert reporters about factually inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading reporting after it has appeared,” but they warn that this option should be used “judiciously” (p. 286). The warnings in that section relate to not expecting the journalist (human being) to be eager to get criticism on his or her work. My interpretation: Make sure to suck up when you need to and suck it up a lot of the time. This reminds me that, when it comes to journalists and public relations specialists, although it is their job to write balanced stories, we are at their mercy.