Journalism and Public Relations: Friends or Enemies?

By Nathan J. Lee and Venus L. Elumbre

LIKE oil and water, public relations and journalism are traditionally regarded as two distinct professions that cannot mix. One side sells products; the other purveys truth as best as one possibly could. Because of the basic difference in functions, one stresses the positive qualities of one’s product; the other presents the good and the bad in every situation.

Yet, the two practitioners work in the same environment: the mass media. And it was not long before one side would cross over into the other. Today, the presence of public relations—or PR—in journalism is a reality that has come to characterize certain parts of Philippine media.

Thus when journalists leave media to go into PR, they are not coming into an entirely new world. Also, career shifts that involve leaving journalism and going over to work for those offices they used to write about are not new in the country. Journalists have been known to move over to government information agencies. For example, when the Marcos government formed the Department of Public Information in 1973, he tapped a young journalist named Francisco Tatad to head that office. In the 1960s, Tatad was a reporter and columnist of the Manila Daily Bulletin. Tatad would not be alone in making that career move.

Years later, the late journalist Teodoro Benigno, who served as Manila bureau chief of the wire agency Agence France Presse, became press secretary for President Corazon C. Aquino, as did Horacio “Ducky” Paredes. Newsman Rod Reyes assumed the same position in the Estrada administration. After their stint in government, Benigno and Paredes returned to journalism as columnists. In all three instances, the former newsmen stopped practicing their professions when they were serving in government.

But journalists go to the private sector as well to serve as PRs. In some instances, they continue to be journalists or at least have some forays in journalism. And there the question arises: is this the way it should be?

Crossing over
Five years after getting a journalism degree from the University of the Philippines (UP) Institute of Mass Com-munication (now College of Mass Communication), Tessa Jazmines pursued a childhood dream of writing about sports. In what she described as “one of the boldest steps I had taken in my life,” she went straight to the editor of the now-defunct sports magazine Sports World, to apply as a writer in 1973.

“I told the editor that they didn’t have to pay me. I just wanted to write,” recalls Jazmines, a self-confessed sports buff and Yco basketball team fanatic. “They probably thought I was crazy but they took me in,” she says.

Five years later, Jazmines had her first taste of a PR job when Ace Saatchi & Saatchi (then called Ace Compton) asked her to work on a special project for the Philippine Basketball Association.

“They were pitching for the account of the league then, and at that time I had been a regular sports writer for sports maga-zines that were very popular then (Sports World and eventually, Sports Weekly Magazine),” says Jazmines. She worked with the PR agency until 1983, when she put up Larc&Asset of which she is president.

After spending nearly 20 years in newspapers and magazines, Joel Lacsamana joined the Ayala-owned Manila Water Co. as corporate communications director in 1997. He had worked as a reporter for several newspapers, among them the defunct BusinessDay and Manila Chronicle.

His shift to PR was “purely by accident,” he says. He, however, admits that salary was a major consideration. By then, he had started a family. PR work left him with more time in his hands, as opposed to the daily coverage demanded by newspaper reporting.

“It’s only when I joined Ayala Corp. that I saw that I liked working on the other side of the fence and also that I was very good at it,” Lacsamana adds.

Straddling between worlds
Today, Jazmines continues to practice PR and teach journalism, advertising, and public relations in UP. Her situation is “a matter of personal choice,” she says.

While in public relations, Jazmines continued writing sports features and columns for magazines, most recently for The Philippine Star (1992-1998). Explaining her decision to straddle two worlds, she says she did not really consider herself a mainstream journalist even before she became involved in PR.

“I was writing sports stories, and later sports columns, more as a hobby than as a job,” she says, adding “I didn’t really quit it because it was just a hobby.”

Still, Jazmines admits that her passion for sports serves as a stepping stone for an eventual wealth of clients, such as the Yco basketball team and most recently, the NBA Madness held last July.

These days, Jazmines writes for a Singapore-based magazine that specializes on the advertising industry. “There’s a lot inside of me that I want to express, and they are all fulfilled by teaching, writing, and working with media,” she says.

Like Jazmines, Lacsamana is a sports enthusiast. He was sports columnist for Business Day Magazine (a publication of BusinessWorld newspaper) until last June.

“I think it’s okay for me to write about golf or Manny Pacquiao or basketball. But I don’t believe I should be writing about privatization, the stock market, or whether (President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) is fit for office or not. I don’t think that should be my role,” he says.

Lacsamana writes about topics not related to his work and is aware that his employer (the Ayala family which owns Manila Water Co.) is very much involved in both business and political issues in the country.

A vow
While PR practitioners like Jazmines and Lacsamana have defined their boundaries, there are journalists who believe that these boundaries have not been clear enough.

Commenting on journalists who move to PR even after leaving their jobs in media, Isagani Yambot, publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, says, “Ethically, that should be frowned upon.”  He believes that journalism should be a “lifelong commitment.”

“When you enter the profession of journalism, you are virtually taking a vow to be a journalist forever,” he adds.

Journalists continue to exercise some clout even after they have left the profession, Yambot points out. With good reason, they believe that they could influence former colleagues or other journalists into publishing press releases that would favor their clients—a situation that helped them in getting their PR jobs in the first place.

BusinessWorld publisher-editor Ronald Romero views journalists turning into PR practitioners as something of a natural progression. As journa-lists become older, have families and begin looking for changes, PR becomes an attractive option.

Yambot says he understands the need of some journalists to leave the profession and seek greener pastures. That is why in the Inquirer, persuasive moves—such as informal talks to dissuade those leaving the paper—are undertaken by the management to encourage their staff to stay.

If ex-journalists who become PRs still pose a question to certain media members, how about PR practitioners who make occasional forays into jour-nalism?

Personal policies
Such is the case of Joan Orendain, principal of the PR firm Orendain & Associates (Oasis).

“The rule really is if you’re getting paid by a client, then you can’t write about that story as a journalist. You write about it as a PR practitioner, which means you don’t get a byline,” Orendain says.

She cites one instance in the early 1990s when the Sunday Inquirer Magazine asked her to write about her crusade against a reclamation project in Manila Bay. She initially declined because she was doing public relations work for it. But she wrote the story anyway, saying she was not accepting payment for the article anyway.

A PR practitioner for almost three decades, Orendain considers herself a “PR consultant from 8 (a.m.) to 5 (p.m.) and a journalist outside of those hours and on weekends.” She says it has been her policy to turn down journalistic assignments that entail writing about a person or a company that happens to be her client, so as to avoid conflicts of interest getting in her way.

She occasionally contributes feature stories and commentaries to the Inquirer and BusinessWorld, which shows that the two newspapers apparently accept her circumstances.

Still, PR practitioners side-lining as journalists get a luke-warm reception from Yambot.

“Personally, I don’t like it,” Yambot told PJR Reports.

It is an unwritten rule in the Inquirer that PR people are not supposed to write for the paper. There are exceptions, though. Yambot himself says that if a story is legitimate and nobody is able to write about it except the PR person, then the story gets published. In those cases, PR persons doing journalistic work become “relatively harmless,” he says.

In BusinessWorld, on the other hand, contributions from PR practitioners are all subjected to the editors’ scrutiny.

“If the editors determine that the material is an out-and-out PR piece, it will never see print. If, on the other hand, the contribution involves a current issue and presents a side of the story, then it will be considered for publication, subject to editorial standards,” according to Romero.

Drawing the line
If the rules are rather fuzzy in situations involving PRs who write occasional articles, the line is clearly drawn with regard to journalists who are in the regular employ of newspapers or other media organizations.

BusinessWorld’s Romero stresses that working simulta-neously as a journalist and PR “is a clear case of conflict of interest which should not be tolerated by either industry—media or PR—ever.”

In his newspaper, “I don’t allow my reporters to moonlight as PR men,” says Romero. “In BusinessWorld, mere suspicion about a reporter doing PR work is considered ground for termination, and all our reporters know this.”

Inquirer’s Yambot says, “Either you choose to be a journalist or choose to be PR practitioner. You cannot be both.”

There, the conflict of interest is clear because “if you are a PR practitioner at the same time, you will not be as objective and as fair as you should be when you are a journalist.”

There is, again, an exception.

Doing PR is allowed in the Inquirer but only for “worthy causes” like charities, or in the case of columnist Rina Jimenez-David, the women’s group Abanse Pinay. However, according to Yambot, columnists need to disclose their affiliations with advocacy groups so that readers will know where a writer is coming from.

In the Inquirer’s Manual of Editorial Policies, columnists are prohibited from being propa-gandists or publicists but they are free to endorse candidates or political parties.

In the real world, confusion and complications are par for the course. That is why journalists and PR practitioners need to do two things: define their boundaries and inform the readers who they are.

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