Journalism vs. Public Relations

What are the Differences and the Similarities between Journalism and Public Relations?

Since I have studied in media school, I have worked in the field of journalism and public relations. Sometimes, it sounds confusing when we talk about the contrast amongst journalism and public relations. In fact, I believe there are some similarities and differences between these major media professions.

However, first let’s answer the significant question, what are the definitions of journalism and public relations?

According to (PRSA) Public Relations Society of America:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

On the other side, American Press Institute defines that:

“Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information.”

From the definitions, we can agree that both journalism and public relations are sorts of mass communications. In journalism, they communicate with people to inform them. As well as in public relations, they communicate with people to build a relationship with their organization. Obviously, both mentioned types of mass communications have different strategies in the communication process.

The following is an example of a public relations news story: CVS stores stops selling tobacco on CNN. In that story, you can notice that CVS uses that kind of communication to enhance their customers’ awareness, and provide a social responsibility to the society. However, in the story, the writer, kind of, promotes the CVS pharmacy by adding some information, which is not related to that story, such as the year revenues.

Now, here is a journalism example from USA TODAY: U.S.-Russia military cooperation in Syria poses dangers. It is clear that the news story informs people about what is going on in that area. Moreover, it helps them to have the ability to interpret the facts and the events.

From these instances above, we can observe that both journalism and public relations use the same medium to reach different targets.

As a matter of fact, public relations can do functions journalism cannot do. Undoubtedly, public relations helps the organization to communicate with the public and its audience, the government, the news media, and its employees.

Another major job that public relations can do is building and improving the organization’s stereotypes by enhancing the organization’s reputation, creating a public campaign, and planning a press conference.

Public relations, too, is a part of crisis communications. When a company or an organization has a huge disaster like bankruptcy, public relations is involved to help and inform the organization and its community about the crisis. In many companies, they plan crisis communications before they happen.

In many democratic countries, public relations is responsible for political campaigns. They build the identity and the image of the campaigns, write the speeches, cover the events, and prepare the press conferences.

Finally, public relations and journalism are mass communication elements, so both of them support each other in the fields of mass media.