Analysis of "This is PR..." (part 18)

PR Ethics and Responsibilities (part 3)

by:

Charles Lamson

Reciprocal Trust

 An area of major importance in PR involves keeping confidences with the media and with other publics. For example, a reporter on the trail of some story deserves the exclusive he or she is ingenious enough to identify and develop. A PR practitioner should not pull the rug out by offering a general release before the reporter has had an opportunity to. Also, a news medium has the right to expect a practitioner to be entirely above board in offering information. Feature ideas, suggestions and pictures should be offered on an "exclusive use" basis. Magazine editors expect stories and pictures submitted to be exclusives. A magazine editor who finds the same or similar story in another magazine will never trust you again (This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations 9th Ed. by Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Kruckeberg; pg. 168). 

A story issued in printed form for general release notifies an editor that other news media have the story. However, a story marked "Special to the Des Moines Register" should be just that. No other news medium in that circulation area should receive the story. The quickest way to destroy your welcome in the newsroom is to plant the same story all over the place. Even if the same story is given to the morning and evening editions of the same newspaper, you are in trouble. Each deserves different stories with different approaches. The best way to do this is to take separate stories to one person at each newspaper. Decide where each story would most appropriately appear, or who on the paper would most likely be interviewed. If it is a column item and more than one newspaper is involved, you determine which columnist would be more likely to use the piece and "plant" it there, and only there (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg; pg. 169).

News media should also be able to trust you to have cleared publicity pictures submitted to them by securing a release from all those that posed. They should also be able to trust you will protect them from copyright troubles, not to mention libel (Newsom, Turk, Kruckeberg; pg. 169).

In Sum

When you supply news to the media you are bound ethically and morally, just as they are, by the codes to which their members subscribe. By the same token, the news media owe public relations practitioners a responsibility to honor agreed upon release dates and times. 

End