Making the news

There's a discourse that the communications industry exerts a negative influence on the world's media, spoon-feeding overworked journalists with 'PR puff' that they lap up and spend twenty minutes shaping into their house-style before packing up and going to the pub for another long lunch.

If only it were that easy.

Running in some of today's media is a story of global significance that would arguably be of interest to the vast majority of people. The latest Amnesty International report, that state executions have risen across the globe during the last 12 months, is one of those stories that you'd think would demand coverage just due to the facts involved.

If you believe in the model of lazy journalism above, then all you'd need to do is write a press release, fire out a few e-mails, and wait for the following day's front pages and blanket coverage.

Amnesty's press office has indeed generated some excellent and widespread coverage and highlighted the issue well. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, there's no sign of it in some of our national newspapers, including the Daily Mail and The Mirror.

This demonstrates something fundamental about the role of the media and communications industry. Journalists are constantly making judgement calls as to what they think their readers, listeners and viewers will want to know about.

Good communications professionals are alive to this and can see openings for their messages developing all the time - very good ones take advantage of these openings and provide interesting copy to journalists at exactly the right time.

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