Abstract
In times of unprecedented public distrust in corporations, the media, and the government, Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis: A Symbiotic Partnership represents a paramount book for theorists and practitioners of journalism, crisis management, and media relations. The book provides a novel and in-depth understanding of the contested relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists in the context of eight major crises analyzed in corporate, nonprofit, governmental, and health care settings. While past literature has focused predominantly on analyzing the journalist-PR practitioner relationship during a crisis, this book reveals the dynamics of the dyad pre-crisis, during crisis, and post-crisis, therefore offering deeper insights into crisis communication strategies and their impact on media coverage. Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis is authored by Anne Miller (Dean, University of North Texas) and Jinx C. Broussard (Professor, Louisiana State University), two award-winning academics whose contributions have significantly influenced both the theory and practice of journalism and public relations, respectively.
Readers will be surprised to find information about the selected crises that had not been readily accessible before and that helped the authors to analyze these unprecedented events in a much larger context than expected. The topics cover recent crises that range from product safety and public health to race relations, gun violence, and police brutality. For example, the authors analyzed the crises faced by Blue Bell, Planned Parenthood, and University of Missouri, along with crisis communication strategies during Hurricane Katrina and the Sandy Hook massacre. In addition, racial tensions in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting are studied in a chapter that highlights the importance of a local relationship between journalists and crisis managers—a relationship that previous work hardly focuses on. Each of the eight chapters covers a particular crisis and provides a meticulous analysis of the specific situation (preventable versus natural disaster), the organization’s response, the media coverage, and the dynamics between journalists and public relations practitioners. After that, the book draws out detailed lessons for the practice of crisis communication and journalism, including ways to improve this partnership to benefit all those affected by a crisis.
The variety of cases analyzed enabled the authors to shed light on the differences in crisis communication and media coverage between the public and the private sectors. While public institutions tend to value transparency and provide a full response to a crisis, corporations resort primarily to defensive strategies and avoid apologetic discourse. This revelation allowed the authors to successfully ascertain the precursors to an improved collaboration between PR practitioners and journalists, which they discuss in the Conclusion section in terms of both the public and the private sectors.
The book makes significant theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it confirms Timothy Coombs’s findings related to the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), namely that responsibility attribution is higher for preventable crises, especially for organizations that have gained a negative reputation prior to a crisis. In addition, the findings establish new trajectories for future research, the most intriguing of which is the study of PR-media partnerships in relation to crises that reveal brand loyalty by proximity. Specifically, the analysis of Blue Bell’s 2015 listeria recall revealed that, despite a history of crises, the company enjoyed unprecedented loyalty caused by the stakeholders’ attachment to a brand that was an inherent part of the local culture. Future research that analyzes crisis communication and media coverage in relation to corporate identification, brand loyalty, and geographical proximity is likely to change our understanding of responsibility attribution and reshape the SCCT.
Furthermore, the book makes a major contribution by analyzing both the fluctuant relationships between journalists and PR practitioners throughout the stages of a crisis and the influence of such fluctuations on the media coverage. If there is any critique to be made about Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis, it is the fact that crises may be too idiosyncratic to allow for an understanding of the relationship between PR practitioners and journalism that goes beyond the very context in which the dyad has been scrutinized. Yet, the rigorous research employed in the book exceeds the high standards imposed by the case study methodology and enables the reader to confidently draw generalizations.
Theorists and practitioners will greatly benefit from this eye-opening book. As the authors rightly argue, our society is facing a shift toward an increased number of crises related to morality, and the need for transparent communication and civic-minded journalism has never been higher.