Traditionally PR has always been viewed with some suspicion. The image which a PR person carried until not very long ago, at least in India was that of a sort of a fixer, a member of the dirty tricks department-somebody you used to resort to subvert the media, and worse bribe them to toe your line or sing your tune. It is only recently especially in the last ten years so that PR professionals have been recognized for what they are- practitioners of the discipline of advocacy- that uses effective and calibrated communication to convey the best image of one’s clients through media and non-media vehicles.
The rise of the PR profession in India coincided with a tremendous media explosion. From a state run television broadcaster and a few legendary newspapers the country saw the entry of scores of round-the-clock TV channels, and hundreds of newspapers and magazines from across regions. While this definitely benefited the consumer of content, who witnessed a veritable information revolution they could not even have imagined, just a few years before, the quality of content was sometimes the casualty. This was because of the inevitable shake out in this fast growing industry. Bottom-lines began to dominate; paid news made its entry, and indeed became mainstream- thanks in no small measure to the respectability accorded to it by the nation’s premier newspaper house.
How does this augur for the PR industry? Ironically not very well at all, contrary to what one might imagine. PR builds its equity on the fact that it advocates and does not hard sell. It conveys news about something; does not advertise a message. By implication there is no exchange of money or consideration. All the money that gets paid is the retainer at the beginning of the month to the agency for its professional expertise. Now if all news could be bought and not pitched, no body would employ the services of a PR professional; they would all go to advertising agencies instead. And news itself would not remain news for very long. Everybody knows an advertorial when they see one. No matter how you dress up paid news, if you are going to name brands in the grossest possible way, and pay lip service to the industry under review, you are harming the brand equity of both the product and the newspaper.
This cannot go on indefinitely. There will be a time when highly respected newspapers would have turned into trade directories – who would like to read to read a sublime editorial in a trade directory? A bit alarmist perhaps. My point is that as much as the newspaper industry or the community of journalists, PR professionals too would like the news media to move away from gross commercialization.