Stanton (2007) mentioned that there are two factors to building a successful media relationship; information that the media would be interested in, and the ability of a media relations practitioner to provide the information. Therefore, media relations practitioners need to be able to find a news angle on events and issues of their clients to generate media interest. This however leads to the following questions.
- What is news and how is it perceived by different media?
- Is news the only element in a media relationship building process that interests a practitioner?
- Is news something that exists between the media and those issues or events from which it emanates?
- How is news imagined by the media? how is news imagined by practitioners? (Staton 2007)
Since we have been on the case of Apple, I shall elaborate on the same company's strategy in this case also. Apple's strategy in turning what was supposedly negative news for them into positive news as mentioned earlier in klara's entry is a sign of good a well developed media relationship. Apple managed to find yet another angle in all the negativity that was first reported and turned it around and made it beneficial for their company's image. It is also only thanks to having a good media relationship that allowed Apple to make clarifications and to maintain the image of the company.
We can thus conclude that it is indeed important to develop good media relationships because as much as the media can help to make an organisation rise above all, it can also cause the demise of it.
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Klara: I agree that both the media and sources are equally dependent on each other. The media need these sources to attract readers and on the other hand the sources need the media to bring readers' attention. In my opinion, both media and sources should work hand in hand (not sabotaging each other) to bring benefits or better opportunities to each other.
ReplyDeleteAida: I believe the media is a very strong tool for PR companies to leverage on in order to gain exposure. However, they can be vicious and unforgiving when relationships turn sour. Even then, any publicity is good publicity. There is no such thing as bad publicity. So unethical PR practices may even abuse this tool in order to bring their company's name in the limelight.
ReplyDeleteI feel that media relationship can also be affected by how important the company is to the public. A company as established as Apple will definitely generated news whenever it is sending out a media release. Journalists will instead flock to be the first or sole distributors of Apple's news. This can only be done after years of developing relations with the media and also depends on the popularity/notoriety of the company.
ReplyDeleteI feel that only interesting and appealing news is published, on the other hand news which is not appealing will be ignored. As a result in some countries news is generated in order for publicity and media is also paid off to not to publish "certain" news. This is where transparency of the media is comes into question and in turn also affect the image of the media house.
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