The PR business is full of unethical people advocating for unethical companies/organizations. Fortunately I have not done anything that goes against my personal code of conduct. But I’ve been asked a few times to make suggestions to journalists (trade journalists are always easier targets than local general market reporters … just saying) about how we think stories should go. I’ve offered tickets to special events to writers at trade shows and those writers later wrote good reviews of the product I was representing. I think it was a good product on its own, but still. 

And, I have had people in my own company suggest that I call a radio station assignment desk and demand a story based on how much advertising we had placed for the client. Really! Imagine! 

I politely said no and then found another job. Not that day, but soon after I was on my way to a new workplace every day.

The flip side is that I find TV news in particular among the most challenged of all news media. The power of TV is unmatched in its ability to evoke emotion, manipulate perceptions and influence public opinion. Even in this day of social media and total distraction, it is the evening news that I fear the most as a media relations professional. This amazingly powerful medium is aimed at the lowest of denominators, whatever pushes up the ratings. This is a recipe for disaster if one values public discourse. I think TV news fosters outrage and cries for justice, but not public discourse. 

In the age of shrinking newsroom budgets, the checks and balances that once existed in newsrooms - print and radio, too - are just gone. With the focus on the bottom line, it is so tempting for a reporter to cut a corner and push a story even when he or she knows it is not exactly right. 

In print, I shrug and move on. Some of my friends still work at newspapers but truly print reporters do not have the same power they once had. I’m not sure they have the credibility they think they do, either.

In radio, I tell myself that a bad story takes care of itself. Radio is a temporary medium that exists only in that moment. Its power is limited to right now.

But TV hurts badly, mostly because it is so persuasive. Right or wrong, it makes a powerful indictment of the guilty. No need to wait for the jury, the TV newsman took care of that for us. People still watch TV news because we still watch NASCAR, and stupid home videos. We love to see the crashes.

That’s why TV news still matters. And, ethics, whether we are PR pros or journalists, should matter too, right?