• Journalist Survey Showed How News People Really Feel about PR

    by  • December 2, 2011 • On News Media and Media Relations

    We have long enjoyed the revealing results of an international survey of journalists conducted in the 1990s by Jericho Promotions, Inc., of New York. Almost 2,500 journalists responded to the survey that sought to determine journalists’ views of public relations people and their relationship to the news media. Among the findings:

    • When asked whether they trusted PR people, almost 70 percent said no.
    • Almost 40 percent said PR people were not influential at all in convincing them to do a story.
    • More than 70 percent described PR professionals as weasels when asked what animal is most like a PR person. Eleven percent said fox. Two percent said dog and one percent said worm.
    • When asked what word they would use to describe PR people the journalists most often offered pests, annoying, tunnel vision, desperate, enthusiastic, biased, persistent, human, diligent and flacks.
    • Asked if they needed PR people, more than 81 percent answered yes.

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