The war between PR and biz journalists

MG Siegler of TechCrunch has a post about how public relations people, particularly those at Facebook, try to discount stories where the angle is not what they wanted by trying to get other business journalists to write a different story.

Siegler writes, “There’s currently something going on in the outskirts of the tech world that’s a bit sensitive, so no one really likes to talk about it: we (journalists, bloggers, etc) are at war with the PR industry.

“That sentence alone will throw the PR flacks into a tizzy. ‘Hyperbole!’ ‘Sexy statement, no substance!’ ‘Don’t believe everything you read!’ And all the other bullshit they typically spew to blunt interesting concepts into dull, gray PR-friendly dribble. We are at war.

“And no, this isn’t about dumbass embargoes (though that remains a huge problem that the PR industry doesn’t seem to have any real interest in solving). This goes deeper.

“The fact of the matter is that the entire PR industry is like a weed growing out of control. Current estimates have PR people now outnumbering journalists 3 to 1. Think about that for a second. And one of the industries in which this infectious growth is most apparent is the tech industry, where it’s boom time. My email inbox is a testament to this. As is my voicemail inbox. I’d bet that at least 75 percent of the messages I get in the day are from PR people. Their campaign strategy in this war is shock and awe.

“Now, I don’t mean to suggest that all PR people are evil or have the wrong intentions. Many are very nice people. And some are even very good at what they do. But increasingly what they do is nothing more than attempt to spin or grossly misrepresent what it is we do. For many of them, helping journalists/bloggers/writers get access to accurate information is secondary. It’s all about controlling a narrative — by any means necessary. And that has to stop.”

Read more here.