Journalism and public relations

PR interferes with different professions of communication, it borrows from them its force or it uses them in order to achieve their targets. One of the main instruments of public relations is the relationship with the press. Mass-media is actually the most important partner of practitioners, because they offer useful information to the population. A great part of the practitioner's work consists in preparing documents and events to be released by the media. Thus, it is to be known that the social, cultural, political, economical actors are the ones who create information. Prince Charles, prime-minister Tony Blair, singer Celine Dion are all actors who, by their acts and gestures feed the media. PR practitioners are the ones who develop the information surrounding these actors. The declarations and events are retained and used according to the attraction they have on the news ‘consumer. But the spectacular sometimes has the precedence to the detriment of profoundness and this is what it is called media logic. In consequence, the practitioner has to learn the functioning of journalism in order to be able to present the information that he wishes to be broadcasted according to this logic. For this purpose a piece of information must be a piece of news, and a piece of news is an exception to the rule. So if everything is fine, this is normality; and people don't talk about normality.

To sum up, journalism does not create events, even if it covers them; it does not create cultural activities, even if it criticizes them. To some extent, it has the role of an actor who counts on the communication strategy, animating reality. But no event, organization or person exists unless they are known and this leads us to the complementarity between public relations and journalism . (Dagenais 2002:68)

If the journalist and the practitioner profession are opposed in terms of mission and interests, they complement each other through their interdependence.

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