What's the Difference?

           

Our world revolves around news. In this generation technology makes news easy accessible. But the way we are exposed to news and how we chose to interpret it differs.

The fundamental difference between journalism and PR is whom they are working for, who their target audience is, and perspective. Journalism’s main goal is to provide their audience with accurate, unbiased, and reliable information backed up with evidence. Journalists ‘s audience is the general public, whom trust that they are being exposed to an unbiased truth-no matter what it is about.  Public relations’ is different. Their job is to be biased.  They serve the interests of their client or organization that they represent. Public relations professionals aim to influence public opinion, whereas journalists aim just to provide accurate information. 

            Journalism and public relations also focus on different areas of news. Journalists provide the public with all categories of news, while public relations focuses on publicity, press releases, crisis management, VNRs etc.  The way they generate news is also different. Public relations need to know the media and that specific media’s news formats. They need to be aware of the mission and goals of whom they are representing, and what publics they want to influence. Whereas, journalists are informed of what to write about, and need therefore need to research in order to provide information.

            Objectivity of PR and journalism differs. Objectivity is one of the most important principles of journalism. They need to have a completely unbiased and detached voice to report their news. PR differs; their principle is to have a favoring voice in order to promote their client.

            Although they differ in many ways, journalists and PR practitioners do have similarities. They need to work together; PR relies on journalists to use their press releases and promote them, while journalists are also relying on PR to produce news. Many believe PR and journalists to have an adversarial relationship. But I believe they compliment each other. In the end, they both provide the public with what they need-news.