Public Relations Practitioners An Interview I Conducted...

Even though public relations practitioners have developed a poor reputation in journalistic circles due to the perceived bias for their clients, I believe that there are many good public relations personnel who are able to maintain a symbiotic relationship with media professionals. This is evident through an interview I conducted with the Senior Producer of the TODAY Show, Victoria Owens whose job relies heavily on contact with public relations practitioners her job is deciding which information from these sources to use in the show. Ms Owens shared her own opinions about the nature of her and her colleagues’ relationships with public relations practitioners, which in most cases contributes to the success of the show. Further more †¦ has a†¦show more content†¦In fact, even the journalism literature suggests that some 40-50 per cent or more of all the news that’s reported on any given day originated in PR departments† (Parsons, 2008). Hence, Parsonsà ¢â‚¬â„¢ goes on to further elaborate that even though the relationship between journalists and public relations personnel is indeed significant, there are also ethical problems that are naturally evident within that connection. Victoria Owens explained that the relationship between journalists and public relations personnel is extremely significant as news professionals obviously rely on them to give a heads up on stories or really important public information that they might not have heard yet. For example, if the Government MP’s have released a new policy, their public relations representative will forward that information to the producers in order to have their message spread to the public. The reality, in recent times is that a large number of cutbacks in ‘journalistic staff’ throughout the news media, this results in the reliance of third party news sources to provide information that cannot be completed by the journalists on their own (Macnamara, 2009). Jane Johnston, the author of the book Media Relations (2012), wrote, â€Å"These journalists desperately require sources to link up with the corporate, political, social and cultural