From Fourth Estate to ‘Just Journalism’–An Opportunity for Public Relations

I have a healthy respect for journalism. It was my undergraduate major and I worked as a journalist for my first professional jobs before moving to public relations practice and ultimately teaching public relations.

As part of my PR career, I focused for a season on a specific aspect of public relations called media relations, also called earned media, which of course means handling requests from reporters and pitching stories and sending news releases to targeted media. It was largely an enjoyable job with productive relationships and mutual respect.

I have also watched as many journalists, like myself, made the switch from journalism into public relations. They now bring writing skills to roles such as public information officer, content producer, corporate communications director and others of the myriad forms of public relations, even in some cases exhibiting the management function PR can play for organizations.

But as I look at journalism today, I have significant concerns for a noble profession that has been called the ‘fourth estate” of American democracy. Bad public relations practice has often been called “just PR.” This is of course unfair to many legitimate professionals who practice public relations with ethics, strategy and understanding, as attested to in the book It’s Not Just PR.

Journalism should also be seen as a collection of both good and bad professionals, and some who engage in journalism who are not professionals. But, looking at the institution of journalism as a whole lately, I’d have to say the determination of what is news and what is not, and how to cover it, leads me to consider much of what I see in the media today as “just journalism.”

I am not alone in my estimation of modern journalism. Consider some other credible reports in recent months that are critical of the profession:

• Columbia University in its report “Ghosting the News” speaks of the lack of local reporting holding government accountable;
• Walter Hussman Jr. in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed points out the paradox of declining public trust in newspapers but editors insisting that objectivity is somehow old-fashioned as a standard for reporting. He notes only 16% of people in 2022 had a “lot of trust” in newspapers, and also cites an Arizona State University survey of journalists called “Beyond Objectivity” in which many of today’s journalists do not regard simply reporting the facts as a standard for the profession.
• A lengthy series in the journalism trade publication Columbia Journalism Reviewlooks at the ‘Trump-Russia collusion’ allegations as an example of partisan coverage of a president, really political advertising in the name of journalism;
• Several prominent journalists (liberals, mind you) have left the ranks of mainstream media because of the bias they experienced daily. They have taken to writing on Substack and other outlets as independent journalists. Two recently gave Congressional testimony to Congress about not just the media but the government and social media companies working together to censor free speech. Their testimonies were based on their reporting in what has become known as the “Twitter files”. You can read the full congressional testimonies of Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi.

The notion that journalists who want to actually do journalism have to leave mainstream media to do so is discussed at length by James O’Keefe in his book “American Muckraker: Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century”. O’Keefe is known for independent investigative journalism with the organization Project Veritas. He was ousted from that organization by its board in February, and has announced he will launch the O’Keefe Media Group in July.

O’Keefe made a name for himself through surreptitious audio and video recordings in his reporting. He justifies this by noting it is the only way, working against big tech and big media, to be believed. Essentially, the news media has become a corporate conglomerate and the independent function of journalism as a watchdog on truth has been left for a new era of muckrakers.

He takes a historical look at the problem of journalism as propaganda. He cites Orwell’s 1984 and Chris Hedges in “Wages of Rebellion” to note that the object of censorship and persecution of viewpoints is to break the will. He refers to Upton Sinclair’s 1908 “The Jungle” about corrupt journalism and the 1919 expose “The Brass Check.” He quotes Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “By what law has the press been elected and to whom is it responsible?” O’Keefe also reminds readers that Karl Marx was a journalist, likening the famed socialist to the American media today in both ideology and impact.

O’Keefe also takes on the communication technology, i.e. big tech, establishment. He notes that “tech platforms freely contribute falsehoods while banning truthful videos of the muckraker” (e.g. his own). He concludes that “almost as soon as the internet established liberating influences, forces centralized to counter that liberation.”

Most interesting to public relations professionals and educators is O’Keefe’s citation of Edward Bernays from his 1927 book “Propaganda.” Bernays called propaganda a tool of the elite to manipulate masses and the investigative journalist the natural enemy of the propagandist.

While many blame Bernays for associating public relations with propaganda in this book and for working with the government on propaganda during the world wars, O’Keefe points out that Bernays equated many journalists with propaganda. O’Keefe concludes of mainstream media like the New York Times and Washington Post that “the business they are in caters to an increasingly narrow audience of affluent ideologues.”

My question is, who is the muckraker today? Who works to ensure the public is served, and is served by unfettered full information of all perspectives?

John Stuart Mill famously said “let truth and falsehood grapple and the truth will out.” Now we are seeing countless examples of that which was censored as “misinformation” emerging as true. So we are left to grapple with how we should think about journalism today. What should we call a profession that puts on the mantle of democracy but eschews objectivity and determines arrogantly what people should and should not see? If we have to question if we are getting the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth from our media, then we have to look at what they give us as “just journalism.”

I would say the antidote to “just journalism” is traditional public relations. By that I mean open, transparent and honest practice. Seeing publics in relationship, not as a target to manipulate. PR “professionals” (i.e. not mere practitioners) have always been upfront about advocacy, corporate social responsibility, honestly promoting a particular point of view ethically in the “marketplace of ideas.” If the New York Times has gone from “all the news that’s fit to print” to activism, and the Washington Post motto of “Democracy Dies in Darkness” has gone from warning to promise, then it will be left to public relations to counter the wolf in sheep’s clothing, to combat with honest civil discourse the surreptitious propaganda of “just journalism” posing as an institution of free democracy.

Freedom of the “press” was never for just journalists—it was for anyone with the means to produce and distribute information. Public relations needs to claim its constitutional right, and moral responsibility and noble professional purpose to do so.