‘PR Matters’

It’s been a busier-than-usual past couple of days in newsrooms here, there and everywhere – from the heartbreaking war that erupted between Israel and Hamas that has already left over a hundred people dead and thousands injured; the higher-than-expected Philippine inflation in September at 6.1 percent from August’s 5.3 percent; protests in Guatemala to the unrelenting Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea and many more.

But did you know that almost always, behind every big story, are conflicting stakeholders who try to skew the narrative to their interest?

As journalists, we know how it works. In difficult times like this, stories can be distorted with several versions – this, that and the truth and nothing but.

Fake news abound and skewed narratives battle for headlines. Just look at the Israel-Hamas war; we are already hearing opposing sides’ conflicting versions of what really happened.

For sure, in this fast changing and dynamic world, there’s a lot of propaganda and “ops” – short for operations – which refer to deliberate but clandestine efforts to feed the public a certain line, story or narrative.

There are trolls out there who will not hesitate to call aggressors as victims and describe attacks as mere acts of retaliation and other kinds of propaganda.

Nearly every administration is also guilty of spinning narratives to make itself look good. The Duterte camp, for instance, had an army of trolls.

This is why our work as journalists has become more difficult now, more than ever.

It is therefore a pleasant surprise that seasoned public relations professionals in the Philippines came out with “PR Matters,” a guidebook of sorts on communications.

The relationship between public relations professionals and journalists is complex but I appreciate the professional practitioners out there who value the truth and who respect the journalism profession.

There are still many of them, and some are among the contributing authors of the book.

Launched last month, the book is a compendium of 70 articles on PR, communication, leadership, marketing, manners and ethics and other topics relevant to different fields and professions, written by 18 authors who are all