In posh public relations “boutiques”, I suspect that media relations is work at the bottom of staff preferences. It is too reminiscent of PR as just “publicity work” and thus a barrier for entry into the management tent. But this flight from media relations is wrong for two reasons: most PR practice is media-related and work with journalists is important because it touches on democracy.
This book does not shy away from media relations and rightly puts it centre stage. The author makes the interrelationship between journalism/PR his heartland because 50-80 per cent of media published content comes from PR sources with no or little independent checking. No wonder we talk about a love/hate relationship with journalists and problems for democracy.
Macnamara warns us with a rich database and commentary. His collection of pejorative and positive views about PR/journalism into a table is illuminating. He stands his analysis on “the key concepts and theories of what journalism is” (p. 22) and on PR’s concepts and theories. He has a chapter of case studies, and others summarising 100 years of media research; international experiences, and social media. He warns that we have tremendous challenges to overcome in “media-saturated, mediatized, and PR-ized societies” (p. 214), one of which would be the convergence of “journalism, PR and promotion” (p. 214).
He is right to warn that this “[…] would be counter-productive and even catastrophic for democracies and civil societies” (p. 214).
