2008 Woodie Awards
Journalists must adapt to web
David McRaney
Issue date: 5/1/07 Section: Opinion
In this, the next to last issue, I thought I might turn inward and write a little about journalism.
Journalism, the press, the media - whatever you label the world of information merchants - is quaking in its boots. I've been to a number of conventions and helmed a newspaper, so I have spoken with a number of the people behind the scenes. All the old timers are hugging themselves in the corner wondering what is going on. We newcomers aren't frightened at all.
Journalism, public relations and advertising share a strange relationship. The tie that binds them all together is psychology, which both informs and is informed by the three groups who pump information out to the public.
What we used to call propaganda, we now call PR. Psychology and public relations sort of grew up together and played in the same neighborhoods. One went off to medical school; the other was educated by the streets. Now, when the public hears about wars, taxes and bake sales, the information often first springs from a PR office with one goal in mind - pushing someone's agenda.
Public Relations is an evil beast. It is mind control, plain and simple. Politicians no longer run as people, they run as public relations metamonsters designed to cater specifically to an audience based on polling data.
Reporters often get redirected from an important interview to a PR representative - a person who is hired to tell reporters what their masters want the public to hear.
Universities, hospitals, toothpaste manufacturers - everyone with an agenda has a PR office now, and every PR office is a fountain of video and text designed to be absorbed into news organizations.
Psychologists dutifully catalog how they succeed and fail, and then both advertisers and PR firms, who in turn deliver content to newspapers, dutifully absorb their research. The fruit of this cycle is the America we see every day.
So, in the end, journalists man the check valves of the endless pipelines of bullshit coursing across this great nation. As George Carlin once said, the media is at the hub of all the obfuscation in our modern word. Advertising, politics, public relations and corporate interests - they all meet here. Journalists must decide how to proceed. Some are decent, ethical people who have lofty goals and aspirations; others just want to make money.
Journalism, the press, the media - whatever you label the world of information merchants - is quaking in its boots. I've been to a number of conventions and helmed a newspaper, so I have spoken with a number of the people behind the scenes. All the old timers are hugging themselves in the corner wondering what is going on. We newcomers aren't frightened at all.
Journalism, public relations and advertising share a strange relationship. The tie that binds them all together is psychology, which both informs and is informed by the three groups who pump information out to the public.
What we used to call propaganda, we now call PR. Psychology and public relations sort of grew up together and played in the same neighborhoods. One went off to medical school; the other was educated by the streets. Now, when the public hears about wars, taxes and bake sales, the information often first springs from a PR office with one goal in mind - pushing someone's agenda.
Public Relations is an evil beast. It is mind control, plain and simple. Politicians no longer run as people, they run as public relations metamonsters designed to cater specifically to an audience based on polling data.
Reporters often get redirected from an important interview to a PR representative - a person who is hired to tell reporters what their masters want the public to hear.
Universities, hospitals, toothpaste manufacturers - everyone with an agenda has a PR office now, and every PR office is a fountain of video and text designed to be absorbed into news organizations.
Psychologists dutifully catalog how they succeed and fail, and then both advertisers and PR firms, who in turn deliver content to newspapers, dutifully absorb their research. The fruit of this cycle is the America we see every day.
So, in the end, journalists man the check valves of the endless pipelines of bullshit coursing across this great nation. As George Carlin once said, the media is at the hub of all the obfuscation in our modern word. Advertising, politics, public relations and corporate interests - they all meet here. Journalists must decide how to proceed. Some are decent, ethical people who have lofty goals and aspirations; others just want to make money.
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