Currently, there is a three-to-one ratio of public relations emplyees to journalists. These numbers are fairly concerning, considering that not only does the field of public relations heavily out-number the number of journalists, they are better finance, and better equipped.
A story from ProPublica.com revealed that in 1980, there were about .45 PR workers per 100,000 population compared with .36 journalists. In 2008, there were .90 PR people per 100,000 compared to .25 journalists. This is a staggering, and concerning trend.
John Sullivan wrote in the article, "As PR becomes ascendant, private and government interests become more able to generate, filter, distort, and dominate the public debate, and to do so without the public knowing it."
This is very concerning to the public, who are more and more frequently being fed PR rather than independent, unbiased news from journalists. In our handout on strategic communications, we red on the differences between PR and journalists. PR has a primary loyalty to serve its companies. If citizens are more freuqently obtaining information from PR stories, they are not getting information intended to the needs of the citizens.
This shows how important it is for journalists to filter through PR and provide accurate, unbiased information that serves the public good. Also, this means that when news of public concern breaks, journalist need to provide converage to avoid citizens being forced to rely on PR for news.
Concern of increase of PR related to decrease of journalists
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