— Carly Smith contributed with this report
Editor’s note: This article is a reply to some reader’s concerns over another piece reporting the event the same night. We are offering a double take on this, from a Public Relations student, Carly Smith.
The night of February 22nd had finally arrived. The big debate: “Is PR killing real journalism?”. The event was organised jointly by the University’s Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations department and the Lincoln School of Journalism. It was kindly sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
Anita Raghavan, a journalist for “Forbes” magazine and Marc Wadsworth, a lecturer at City University and founder and editor of thelatest.com formed the journalist’s side. Andy Green, author, partner in Green PR and creativity entrepreneur and Peter Smith, a lecturer at Lincoln University with significant PR experience, formed the PR team. The stage was set.
Both sides put forward some great points. Anita claimed that PR practitioners were there to pull “the wool over people’s eyes” and to deliberately shade the truth, and even lie.
Andy Green didn’t feel the need to stay behind the lectern and read from notes. He was calm, collected and engaged with the audience. Using a glass of water to represent his point, he argued there is no definitive truth, people are always biased and when things are placed in a large context their meanings can be changed. He wanted to work together with journalists to create better consumers of media and claimed they had a collective interest. This is a point contested by Anita, saying she didn’t see any middle ground that they could meet on.
Marc described PR professionals and journalists as being in a “sickly embrace” and claimed PR practitioners needed journalists more than they needed them. He wanted journalists to “return the spin” instead of letting journalism become “churnalism” – mere printing of press releases with no investigation.
Peter Smith said “To be a good PR professional one had to think like a journalist”, and that journalism isn’t dying, it’s just changing. He emphasised we must “survive together or die separately.”
Questions flooded in from the floor with students and lecturers alike asking probing questions.
The debate posed a further question for many people: Journalists attack PR for being biased, but surely the only different between PR professionals and journalists is that PR professionals are transparent in their intentions? Everyone understands that they work for a particular company so their intentions are clear. It has been claimed that “Any story that you look at will select some facts over others, highlight some opinions over others” – Is that not classed as spin because it was a journalist who said it?
The Big Result
11 for and 34 against the notion that PR is killing journalism. Even PR practitioners wouldn’t claim this is a definitive result, to suggest however that it carries ‘next to no information at all’ defeats the object of having the debate. This is a debate that is unlikely to be settled and is undoubtedly space to watch. If journalists think that real journalism is in decline, maybe they should look elsewhere for the cause.
Love it Carli! Love how concise the second to last paragraph is, thats getting in a nutshell to say the least :)
It’s a shame there had to be a part two due to demand. Why couldn’t The Linc provide a balanced article to start with? The reason journalism is in decline is due to the style of writing.
I absolutely agree with the comment about Carli’s second to last to paragraph. Carli is absolutely right – and very well put. I have been both a journalist and a PRO – currently chair of the regional CIPR group. When I left journalism friends in the newsroom thought I’d sold my soul to the devil! However, it was in the newsroom and not in the PR department that I was told “never let the facts get in the way of a good story”.