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PRactical rules

While the lay public may have been shocked by the revelation of an often cosy relationship between public relations (PR) professionals and the media, brought out by the Niira Radia telephone tapes, few in the media or in business would have been surprised. Few editors and reporters today can say they have not been approached for “friendly stories” or threatened with ad blackouts or block access for failure to publish Authorised Versions. The obverse — of reporters and editors demanding favours in return for friendly stories — has also grown so exponentially that it has now metamorphosed into formal corporate strategy for many media businesses. All of this does little to enhance the reputation of an industry that has grown insidiously for the past 15 years. But it is also true that the media has never appeared in so poor a light. The ad- or equity-for-stories deals (known euphemistically as “private treaties”) marked the first signs of deterioration, but few readers were actually aware of these practices. The Radia tapes have blown the cover off another equally harmful predilection. If this episode does anything, it provides both the media and the PR business an opportunity to do some hard introspection and set out some transparent rules of engagement.

This is a critical need because, much as politicians, journalists and social activists may complain, the PR business isn’t about to disappear, nor need it. PR professionals are, like most other professionals, meeting a felt need. Corporations have become bigger and more complex than ever before and they have many more stakeholders and constituencies to address. Outsourcing media relations, which made PR agencies gatekeepers of access to India Inc, is an inevitable outcome of this growing complexity. There is, of course, nothing wrong in this practice; it is standard operating procedure globally and for practical reasons. The PR interface has also gained traction because, over time, journalists have found accessing senior executives and promoters of companies for information difficult, if not virtually impossible.

With privately owned public relations companies and several of the world’s largest PR multinationals setting base in fast-growing India, the industry seemed to emerge from nowhere as this large, unregulated beast. Perhaps it is a reflection of the level of political control and corruption that persists in the Indian business climate, that an information-dissemination and image-building business has been often subverted with questionable means and for questionable ends. A lobbying law on the lines of the US will partly address the situation by forcing a degree of transparency — not that Radia’s contacts were unaware of her links to two of India’s largest business houses. But just as several media houses put in place codes of conduct that set out what journalists can and cannot do, it might do PR agencies a power of good to set out similar codes — and these should include not blacklisting journalists from meetings, not bribing them and so on. This would not only send out a clear message to the media business but also to companies that, all too often, importune their PR agencies to follow just the kind of practices that Ms Radia worked so admirably hard to establish. In the long run, practical self-regulation by the PR and the media businesses would do India’s vibrant, noisy democracy much more good than external controls.