Practicing Public Relations for the government is burden on its own, it is fun to have realistic challenges come your way during your tenure as PR practitioner. Having served as in intern for the government i felt that the level at which PR is makes it boring as there are not many challenges that engage your special skills you acquired in the academics arena, it is not really that challenging all you do is more of become an advocate/ spokesperson leaving out other practices making it a total bore to keep on repeating the same thing with no new challenges coming your way.
Getting media coverage for the government is another notable challenge that i realise exists when practising PR for the government, the government is reluctant to spend on media coverage for there is state media which does not have the best coverage, they are always for the government creating a blindfold over issues not giving a clear picture of the real situation as it is.
To the bloggers out there, please share with me different techniques that you believe would spark the interest of private media to cover the governmental issues.
3 comments:
Hey, was doing my internship in government too at the Ministry of Finance and development Planning and I will disagree with you by say PR in government is boring. Actually during my internship I realized that government really needs PR. I had challenges during my internship and there were always new one coming up, I have experienced crisis and I learnt about crisis management during that period of time.
In fact government and PR work in hand since PR is communicating with the key publics. PR in government should be understood more within the context of government communications: “ensuring that government at all times communicates appropriate information to the public in a timely, authoritative, coherent, coordinated and proactive manner, while also promptly responding to public concerns, queries and criticism”.
I would say I have to agree with the last comment made by Tumelo. I have been working for the Department of Culture and the Arts and I have not found the PR level boring at all. Depending on what may be said by other Minister's or production companies, there are always challenges being thrown our way.
I also think that government departments need just as much PR as anyone else, as they consistently come under so much criticism. There always seem to be a problem with disgruntled people who did not get grant approval or cannot afford a brand new theatre space that perhaps, was not actually meant for bigger productions.
I think PR in government is essentail. There is not a day goes by that someone within the public arena has a problem with something a government department is doing.
That being said, I do know which government department you were in and I am sorry if it felt boring to you. I just do not want you to lose faith about working in any government department. I have found DCA to be an interesting and challenging work environment.
Once again along with what Tumelo said about ensuring government communication in an appropriate, coherent and proactive manner, while also responding to public concerns and criticism is highly fitting.
Jem
Hi everyone,
I would also like to add to the this comment thread as I was doing an internship with the UK Border Agency and found PR and Government to be inextricably linked.
The work of the communications teams, i found, was essential to the functioning of the organisation - smoothing out creases in both the internal and external publics.
I feel that because governments operate in such a public environment, effective PR management is essential in creating and then perpetuating a favourable image of the organisation.
i really enjoyed my placement with the UKBA, and although it was a lot of work, i would not say it was boring!
Jess
Post a Comment