Media vs. public relations -- watchdogs and adversaries.
Does the watchdog function of the media put them into an adversarial relationship with public relations professionals? What are the ethical values of each?
What does John Vivian say about this issue?
What do you say about it? Be prepared to post your answers as comments to this blogpost.
A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.
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About Me
- Pete
- Springfield (Ill.), United States
- I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.
4 comments:
Watchdog journalism is an investigative form of journalism. Its a form of active journalism that will hold certain public fugures accountable for their actions and can either hurt or help a campaign, business, company, ect. Adversaries in journalism are your opponents. Not your friends! Watchdog journalism is a companies adversary in many ways because they dig deep to find sometimes shady information on you as a company. Watchdogs don't hold back in there journalistic digging and can make or break a business. I think that watchdog journalism is sometimes fair, and sometimes not. As long as the journalist is truthful about their findings, I believe its fair to expose the business or company that is being 4researched. It is unfair when watchdog marketing uses information that is only half true, or if they skew their information to make it seem different of worse than it actually is. This happens way to often in tabloids to celebrities. Journalist of this type just want to make a quick buck...and a quick story that is shocking to the public.
Vivian says that "jounalist are expected to keep the goverment honest and responsive, and in doing their work, journalist sometimes indeed become facilitors of change-but as reporters, not advocates" I believe that there is a fine line in what is considered ethical and what is not. The values are very similar PR and journalist are working in different capacities, a journalist wants to get the story and the PR person only wants to get out what will make their client look great in the public eye. The PR person will be the person that will have the clients best interest at heart and may not have disclosed the entire story and the reporters job is to get the entire story which makes them adversaries. How do you keep people honest and responsive and still not tell the entire story.
Media definitly tries to uncover the whole truth and will often make the story more "news worthy" by upplaying event and misconstruing the real facts where as a PR person doesnt want to make the clients look bad so they will try to conceal as much as the truth as necessary to make their clients look better. This makes a Pr and anyone whos in media a direct rival.
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