Strange relatives
Background If Kurt W. Zimmermann is to be believed, the "clash of cultures" between public relations and journalism is old news. A post-ideological analysis of two professional and self-images.
Background If Kurt W. Zimmermann is to be believed, the "clash of cultures" between public relations and journalism is old news. A post-ideological analysis of two professional and self-images.The joke about the difference between journalists and PR people may be getting old, but I'll bring it up again anyway. The PR boss of the big bank and the journalist meet the CEO in front of the bank building, with whom an interview appointment has been arranged. At this moment, on the other side of the street, a wild Rottweiler attacks a child. Without hesitation, the CEO pounces on the huge dog, and after a few bloody minutes, the Rottweiler lies dead on the ground. The bank's PR chief runs into his office and formulates his communiqué: "Banker risks his life to save a child". The journalist runs to his office and formulates his headline: "Bank boss strangles pet!
It is the different viewpoint that separates the two industries in the cliché: PR people are only obliged to their client, whom they try to put in the best possible light in public. Journalists, on the other hand, are not beholden to a client, but only to the public, to whom they convey the unvarnished truth.
Romanticized objectivityThe textbook would put it this way: PR is impact-oriented, it wants to make a certain opinion through information. Media products are content-oriented, their information performance is to make different opinions possible.
My present impression questions this doctrine. My thesis is a kind of convergence theory. I believe that the two fields have converged in their day-to-day work and in their professional image. The PR profession has become more journalistic in its claims, that is, more interested in objectivity and less interested in advocacy than before. Journalism has integrated PR models, it is less interested in objectivity and more interested in advocacy than before.
I grew up in Solothurn. Forty years ago, there were three newspapers there, "Das Volk" (Social Democratic), the "Solothurner Zeitung" (liberal) and the Catholic-conservative "Solothurner Nachrichten". All three looked at the world from a purely party-political point of view, all three were unrestrainedly tendentious, all three editorial offices engaged in prurient disinformation.
In retrospective romanticism, we call that diversity of opinion. I think that 40 years ago it simply didn't make much difference whether you worked as a PR man or as a political journalist. Either way, you were a lobbyist. Journalists in Solothurn and elsewhere were a kind of PR people for the parties, right, left or liberal.
Only when they began to form nationwide monopolies did the political line have to disappear from the newspapers. The forum model emerged. Responsibility to a political party was replaced by a new, somewhat diffuse mandate: responsibility to the public. Objectivity and factual accuracy were now the target concepts, and consequently, so-called investigative journalism became widespread from the 1970s onward.
The majority of the PR industry, however, continued to work in the style of the former direct representation of interests. It followed the mentality with which Rudolf Farner would have made a potato sack a federal councilor for a million francs. Now, in the public perception, there was suddenly a wide gap between the two industries: on the one hand, the noble search for the truth and incorruptibility, on the other hand, the disdainful manipulation and venality.
Relapses everywhereAs the third phase, the convergence of the two fields of communication has now begun. Information overload, especially in the press, is putting an end to the former model of the open information forum. Orientation is once again in demand; attitude and opinion are thus in demand, and inevitably also bias and prejudice. The claim to provide citizens with the material to form their own opinions seems increasingly passé to me. Today, opinion is once again being pushed into its market by the media themselves, and by no means only in the comment columns. A PR-related strategy, to say the least.
One consequence of this trend is the enormous moralization of the media landscape, which culminated in last summer's CEO bashing. Zurich sociology professor Kurt Imhof has brilliantly analyzed this trend in his text "The Revenge of Morality". Quote, "A new specter is haunting, it is the extraordinary pervasiveness of public communication with moral judgments." Earlier investigative journalism set in where a prejudice or opinion was measured against the facts. The journalism described by Imhof ends where the factual situation could endanger the prejudice or opinion.
Two or three examples: Whatever Christoph Blocher does or says, Blick attacks him. Almost the entire business elite is in the same position. They are always wrong, over the years - which is hardly possible objectively. Fact-oriented analysis has been stowed away in the mothballs of the eighties and nineties and replaced by bias or - less disrespectfully - attitude. It must be acknowledged that this is, after all, openly declared bias. Political and business journalists at Blick are in this sense related by marriage to PR journalists.
One could also mention the Tages-Anzeiger, which in recent years has once again developed into a social democratic platform. When city president Elmar Ledergerber presents an objectively rather thin paper on the asylum issue or Federal Councilor Moritz Leuenberger presents an objectively rather miserable negotiation result on the airport issue, they are nevertheless sure to receive applause. Critical journalists would castigate such an attitude as a PR syndrome on other occasions.
Lest I be accused of political one-eyedness, Weltwoche too, judging by the response, pushed its deregulatory antithesis all too deliberately in the early days of its relaunch. The impression that it had at times become a PR platform for the exponents of Helvetic neoliberalism was certainly not entirely wrong.
In short: Journalism is currently moving in the direction of subjectivism; the PR industry, on the other hand, is also moving in the direction of objectivism. Good PR has always conveyed factual information and avoided heavy-handed propaganda. This approach now seems to be becoming more and more typical of the industry. The professional code of conduct of the PR association now prominently features the sentence that "no false or misleading information" may be disseminated. This formulation could also have come from the Press Council.
From what I hear, much of the PR industry has moved in that direction. When I talk to the management of larger companies, for example, they tell me that today their own PR consultants often ask the more critical and competent questions than the media, which very often struggle to deal with complex problems due to a lack of time, staff or expertise.
So that public relations staff don't pat themselves on the back too hastily now, the caveat follows immediately. The PR industry had no choice but to adopt a more open, customer-critical style. All the communications failures - from Adtranz to Expo.02 and Holocaust funds to Swissair and Zurich - scratched the reputation of this profession and also caused it a credibility problem.
The convergence of the two industries described above is naturally also reflected in the personnel merry-go-round. Journalists, regardless of where they stand politically, have recently been happy to switch to PR jobs. In the recent past, a large number of major companies have had or have had former journalists in PR management positions: Migros, Swiss, Novartis, SRG, Vontobel, Sulzer, Centerpulse, Hotelplan, ETH, not to mention the PR forecourts of the federal administration, which are teeming with ex-colleagues.
But the reverse path now also seems to be accepted. Let's not forget: Before ex-journalist Peter Hartmeier became Editor-in-Chief of the Tages-Anzeiger, he was also Tamedia's Head of Communications, responsible for its public relations. A PR man.
No longer a problem in our time. Ten years ago, I'm sure, the Tagi editorial team would have immediately called a protest meeting in a similar case.
> Kurt W. Zimmermann was Editor-in-Chief of the SonntagsZeitung and Facts, among others, and then a member of the Executive Board at Tamedia until the end of 2001. Today he is the owner of the management consultancy Consist Consulting AG. This text is about ...
It is the different viewpoint that separates the two industries in the cliché: PR people are only obliged to their client, whom they try to put in the best possible light in public. Journalists, on the other hand, are not beholden to a client, but only to the public, to whom they convey the unvarnished truth.
Romanticized objectivityThe textbook would put it this way: PR is impact-oriented, it wants to make a certain opinion through information. Media products are content-oriented, their information performance is to make different opinions possible.
My present impression questions this doctrine. My thesis is a kind of convergence theory. I believe that the two fields have converged in their day-to-day work and in their professional image. The PR profession has become more journalistic in its claims, that is, more interested in objectivity and less interested in advocacy than before. Journalism has integrated PR models, it is less interested in objectivity and more interested in advocacy than before.
I grew up in Solothurn. Forty years ago, there were three newspapers there, "Das Volk" (Social Democratic), the "Solothurner Zeitung" (liberal) and the Catholic-conservative "Solothurner Nachrichten". All three looked at the world from a purely party-political point of view, all three were unrestrainedly tendentious, all three editorial offices engaged in prurient disinformation.
In retrospective romanticism, we call that diversity of opinion. I think that 40 years ago it simply didn't make much difference whether you worked as a PR man or as a political journalist. Either way, you were a lobbyist. Journalists in Solothurn and elsewhere were a kind of PR people for the parties, right, left or liberal.
Only when they began to form nationwide monopolies did the political line have to disappear from the newspapers. The forum model emerged. Responsibility to a political party was replaced by a new, somewhat diffuse mandate: responsibility to the public. Objectivity and factual accuracy were now the target concepts, and consequently, so-called investigative journalism became widespread from the 1970s onward.
The majority of the PR industry, however, continued to work in the style of the former direct representation of interests. It followed the mentality with which Rudolf Farner would have made a potato sack a federal councilor for a million francs. Now, in the public perception, there was suddenly a wide gap between the two industries: on the one hand, the noble search for the truth and incorruptibility, on the other hand, the disdainful manipulation and venality.
Relapses everywhereAs the third phase, the convergence of the two fields of communication has now begun. Information overload, especially in the press, is putting an end to the former model of the open information forum. Orientation is once again in demand; attitude and opinion are thus in demand, and inevitably also bias and prejudice. The claim to provide citizens with the material to form their own opinions seems increasingly passé to me. Today, opinion is once again being pushed into its market by the media themselves, and by no means only in the comment columns. A PR-related strategy, to say the least.
One consequence of this trend is the enormous moralization of the media landscape, which culminated in last summer's CEO bashing. Zurich sociology professor Kurt Imhof has brilliantly analyzed this trend in his text "The Revenge of Morality". Quote, "A new specter is haunting, it is the extraordinary pervasiveness of public communication with moral judgments." Earlier investigative journalism set in where a prejudice or opinion was measured against the facts. The journalism described by Imhof ends where the factual situation could endanger the prejudice or opinion.
Two or three examples: Whatever Christoph Blocher does or says, Blick attacks him. Almost the entire business elite is in the same position. They are always wrong, over the years - which is hardly possible objectively. Fact-oriented analysis has been stowed away in the mothballs of the eighties and nineties and replaced by bias or - less disrespectfully - attitude. It must be acknowledged that this is, after all, openly declared bias. Political and business journalists at Blick are in this sense related by marriage to PR journalists.
One could also mention the Tages-Anzeiger, which in recent years has once again developed into a social democratic platform. When city president Elmar Ledergerber presents an objectively rather thin paper on the asylum issue or Federal Councilor Moritz Leuenberger presents an objectively rather miserable negotiation result on the airport issue, they are nevertheless sure to receive applause. Critical journalists would castigate such an attitude as a PR syndrome on other occasions.
Lest I be accused of political one-eyedness, Weltwoche too, judging by the response, pushed its deregulatory antithesis all too deliberately in the early days of its relaunch. The impression that it had at times become a PR platform for the exponents of Helvetic neoliberalism was certainly not entirely wrong.
In short: Journalism is currently moving in the direction of subjectivism; the PR industry, on the other hand, is also moving in the direction of objectivism. Good PR has always conveyed factual information and avoided heavy-handed propaganda. This approach now seems to be becoming more and more typical of the industry. The professional code of conduct of the PR association now prominently features the sentence that "no false or misleading information" may be disseminated. This formulation could also have come from the Press Council.
From what I hear, much of the PR industry has moved in that direction. When I talk to the management of larger companies, for example, they tell me that today their own PR consultants often ask the more critical and competent questions than the media, which very often struggle to deal with complex problems due to a lack of time, staff or expertise.
So that public relations staff don't pat themselves on the back too hastily now, the caveat follows immediately. The PR industry had no choice but to adopt a more open, customer-critical style. All the communications failures - from Adtranz to Expo.02 and Holocaust funds to Swissair and Zurich - scratched the reputation of this profession and also caused it a credibility problem.
The convergence of the two industries described above is naturally also reflected in the personnel merry-go-round. Journalists, regardless of where they stand politically, have recently been happy to switch to PR jobs. In the recent past, a large number of major companies have had or have had former journalists in PR management positions: Migros, Swiss, Novartis, SRG, Vontobel, Sulzer, Centerpulse, Hotelplan, ETH, not to mention the PR forecourts of the federal administration, which are teeming with ex-colleagues.
But the reverse path now also seems to be accepted. Let's not forget: Before ex-journalist Peter Hartmeier became Editor-in-Chief of the Tages-Anzeiger, he was also Tamedia's Head of Communications, responsible for its public relations. A PR man.
No longer a problem in our time. Ten years ago, I'm sure, the Tagi editorial team would have immediately called a protest meeting in a similar case.
> Kurt W. Zimmermann was Editor-in-Chief of the SonntagsZeitung and Facts, among others, and then a member of the Executive Board at Tamedia until the end of 2001. Today he is the owner of the management consultancy Consist Consulting AG. This text is about ...
