Why PR companies treat journos as car companies treat suppliers

This article by Charles Arthur who is editor of the Guardian's trchnology supplement is worth a read.@(Ht-Adrian Monck)

The subject can be gleaned from the title of this blog post but it states the obvious in the relationship of the PR industry to that of journalism

So who does pay the PRs? The clients. The clients, the clients, the clients. It’s them who pays the PRs. So you should examine how PR works always in the light of that. (This isn’t going to be much news to many PR people, but some journalists might find it enlightening.)

and therefore

clients hire PRs to get the clients’ message out there. The PRs’ job is to get the journalists to manufacture that stuff (call it “coverage”) that the clients can be persuaded to believe is their message “out there”. That’s it.

And that is it-pure and simple.If journalists think otherwise then they are fooling themselves and their audience.