PR’s and marketing’s goals

An interesting conversation I had with a retired writer who worked in PR and marketing.

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I trained as a journalist but worked mostly in PR and marketing. It’s true that PR’s and marketing’s goals are to manage the company’s or person’s reputation, which means encouraging positive news coverage and downplaying/minimizing negative news. 

However, outright falsehoods is not part of the job. Still, with some industries, it can become a slippery slope, which is why I refused to work for cigarette makers or oil companies. 

When a PR company sends a press release to a newspaper or news organization, it is up to that news organization to ensure that its contents are factual. But that also depends on the validity of that so-called news organization. 

Thanks to social media and the internet, there are a lot of sites/people claiming to be journalists but have no training or legitimate credentials. For instance, Julian Assange is not a journalist and Wikileaks was never a bonafide journalistic news source. 

Unfortunately, even though this person may have committed wrongdoing, she is associated with a celebrity, making the story ripe for paparazzi (so-called journalists out for a story to make a name for themselves) and vulnerable to the swampy side of social media, where truth can more easily be manipulated.