Where Should We Look for the Truth?

Diana Wiebe
dw923311@ohio.edu

As a Public Relations major, I am faced with tough decisions everyday, and the fact is that they will only get tougher. The main job of someone in PR is to make whoever the client may be look good. Most of the time this duty will not pose too many ethical problems. However, the increase in online and television news sources has opened up a whole array of issues that both journalists and PR and advertising people must face.

ASTROTURFING
One of the biggest issues the journalists and PR people must navigate through today is what is known as astroturfing. Astroturfing involves making people believe that a large grassroots organization is for or against a certain policy when in reality, the content posted on websites is coming from a sponsored group (such as a PR or advertising agency). It tries to mask the origin and financial connections in order to seem more credible and believable to the public on internet forums.
George Monbiot of The Guardian wrote a piece entitled "The need to protect the internet from 'astroturfing' grows ever more urgent" and talks about how certain groups like the tobacco industry and the U.S. Air Force are abusing the trust of the internet audience to get across the messages they want. "This deception is most likely to occur where the interests of companies or governments come into conflict with the interests of the public," Monbiot said.

These companies and government groups have highly intelligent persona management software which creates various profiles and hides the trail along the way. These astroturfing organizations have led journalists and the public alike to ask if internet forums are even a real center of communication and debate or not.

VNRs
One of the other serious problems that journalists and PR people are facing is the use of VNRs, or video news releases. VNRs are made to look like any other news segment, but are in fact created by PR or advertising agencies with the intent to promote a certain message.
Stacey Woelfel wrote an article entitled "Full Disclosure" and it covers all the public needs to know about VNRs. She begins with a small quiz that asks you to find the sentence that a journalist wrote rather than a sponsored message and it is not easy. She says, "If you, as a news professional, have trouble telling the difference between a local news story and a VNR, imagine the difficulty a viewer might have."

The public clearly has a right to know if the messaged is sponsored, and there are guidelines for broadcasters and journalists. However, if the news is not really news anymore, but just sponsored VNRs, where is the public supposed to go to to find the truth?

SPONSORED JOURNALISTS
Lastly, perhaps the most appalling issue that has arisen in recent years is the fact that many journalists are signing contracts to get paid for promoting a special message. If someone offered you, a news professional, thousands of dollars to just say a few key words here and there, would you do it?
Commentator Armstrong Williams did. Gregg Toppo of USA Today wrote a piece that told how "the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law (No Child Left Behind) on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same." How can this be ethical?

Williams said he only did it because he believed in NCLB. However, aren't journalists supposed to keep their biases out of the picture when telling a news story anyway? This case and others shows why the public currently has such a low opinion of journalists. How can they be trusted?

This poll from the Pew Research Center shows how the public thinks journalists focus on unimportant and inaccurate stories and that they tend to favor one side and are often influenced by powerful people and organizations.

BUILD BACK TRUST
Though journalists face many outside pressures, it is their responsibility to tell the truth to the public and to remain unbiased in telling stories. PR and advertising professionals should also do the same in telling the truth, though they are forced to do so in the kindest way possible. No matter what your job is though, it is important to remember that you are what the public looks to for the facts of a major event. They aren't looking for sponsored content. They aren't looking for lies.