We
all know how important the media is for PR. We were all told we needed to build
good relationships with journalists. We even had a unit, Media Relations 250,
on how to maintain good relationship with the media. However, we also know it
is impossible to control the message; journalists publish or broadcast anything they want to.
Recently,
I came across a news article in a Mauritian newspaper about a crisis of an
organisation which is a client of the PR consultancy I am doing my internship
with. Several employees of the company were refusing to abide by some
regulations and were threatening to strike. The journalist who reported the
crisis took into consideration only the point of view of the employees. It was written in the article that some employees were threatened to be sacked for some invalid reasons and the reporter did not mention the reasons he or she considered as 'invalid'. How far
is that ethical? What was the aim behind it? I don’t know. I only know that
the content of the article portrayed a bad image of the company.
I
used that case study in a presentation last week and asked the other students
how they perceived the company. They all gave positive comments. I then showed
them the news article with emphasis on specific paragraphs and asked them again
how they perceived the company. I
received only negative comments. Some even told me that the company was
unethical.
A
single news article changed completely the students’ perception of the company.
Even if the whole truth was not reported in the article, the readers believed
what they read in the papers. This is normal because the media should normally
be trustworthy and reliable. No matter what good actions the company did before
and the good services it provides everyday, a single news article succeeded in
affecting negatively its image.
Coming
back to what really happened. The journalist did not mention anywhere in the
article why these regulations were implemented. Of course, there were relevant
reasons to that. The most important one: for the safety of the employees! And there were no threats of sacking, few employees were suspended for some days because they refused to abide by the rules.
How
did the PR agency react to that? A media release was issued with all the reasons
and benefits behind those new regulations. The release was sent to several
media outlets and it was even published later in the evening on the company’s facebook
account. The next day, several newspapers published articles on the reasons and
benefits.
The
media affected negatively the image of the company, the media itself helped in
bringing back the good reputation of the company.
