Is ‘blame the press’ a good PR strategy?
It can be effective, but the long-term fallout may be damaging. Here are some alternative approaches.
I’ve always bristled at the “blame the press” public relations strategy.
Plenty of politicians and public figures have used it, sometimes with great success (here’s President Obama, Bill Cosby, and Chris Christie). It’s also probably fair to say my dislike for the strategy is largely due to my own bias as a former reporter.
Frank Bruni’s column in The New York Times last month addressing the successes and failures in political reporting—including so-called “gotcha” questions—was spot-on. In it, he admitted reporters have some significant faults in covering politics, but that politicians still have a lot of responsibility for the coverage they receive. His last line perfectly summed up the issue:
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