VIEWPOINT: What colour is the sky on your planet, good PR folk?

<p>There are people within the industry who are their own worst </p><p>enemies. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>These are the people who work for large, well-known communications </p><p>companies, who espouse high standards and ethics, and yet somehow manage </p><p>to smear egg on their own faces at every turn. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>The worst perpetrators are to be found, ironically enough, within the PR </p><p>industry. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>This industry is made up of companies whose job is to promote goodwill </p><p>and positive coverage for their clients - yet you wouldn't know it from </p><p>the day-to-day run-ins you have with PR practitioners. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>A classic case in point is the PR account handler who calls up the press </p><p>and begins the conversation with the fatal line, "My client has booked </p><p>an ad in a forthcoming edition of your magazine and we would like to </p><p>arrange editorial coverage in the same issue". </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Nothing gets a journalist's back up faster than this; and the PR person </p><p>has effectively destroyed any goodwill that might have existed prior to </p><p>that ill-conceived phone call. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>But is the PR company necessarily to blame? Could the fault really lie </p><p>with clients who fail to brief and prepare their PR reps to deal with </p><p>situations? </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Oddly enough, it is the PR companies with large media owners as their </p><p>clients which are the greatest offenders when it comes to downright </p><p>stupidity in dealing with the press. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>And you would think that as media owners, they themselves would have </p><p>stringent standards and ethics when it comes to dealing with other </p><p>media, simply because they should know what is and is not </p><p>acceptable. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Yet, time and time again, MEDIA is at the receiving end of telephone </p><p>calls from PR account handlers who clearly haven't the faintest clue </p><p>either about their client, or how to do their jobs properly ... and it </p><p>reflects badly on the client, too. </p><p><BR><BR> </p>