Don’t let media ‘bias’ keep your clients out of the press

Dustin Siggins is founder of Proven Media Solutions. 

Media bias can stop your clients from getting in the press.

No, this isn’t about politics. It’s about media standards and norms that PR pros must navigate every day, such as:

• The client drafts a 2,000-word essay for an outlet that wants 800 words.
• National media outlets prefer well-known voices like Mark Cuban over a little-known small business owner.
• The local news outlet doesn’t want to cover a national voice.
• Podcasts may not want an awkward speaker who easily gets flustered.

Our industry accepts these challenges as just part of the job. But to clients who don’t fully grasp nuances of the public relations business, it’s the equivalent of watching the Kansas City Chiefs get “all” the calls in a playoff game. 

Of course, if securing coverage in top-tier outlets were easy, we’d all be ex-public relations professionals. That’s why we have to help clients understand the bias, and how to get around it.

Some media ‘biases’

As PR pros, we often treat clients like the opinionated uncle at the Thanksgiving table. But we also help clients see why The New York Times is absolutely not going to cover an unknown brand’s unproven piece of technology. 

Industry insiders shared some other “biases” they have to help clients understand:

•         Ellie Krasne-Cohen, Krasne Strategies – Getting media coverage isn’t like being in the mob. Communications professionals can’t just set up a meeting with the boss and get our clients coverage. The media bias is in favor of a great story – not their friends or ‘connections.’
•         Robert Kuykendall, Proven Media Solutions – The media primarily engage in eyeball discrimination over thought discrimination. It’s the digital version of putting butts in the seats because these outlets must be profitable, whether they use subscribers or advertisers. There’s a lot of bias stemming from the need to draw profitable audiences.
•         Jasper Hamill, Machine. – The media definitely discriminate against hyper-positive advertising posing as “thought leadership” and “news.” As Taylor Lorenz said years ago: “Your success is not a story.” The good news is that the media are biased towards stories that make an impact on their consumers.
•         Jesse Harris, C&EN BrandLab – Editors don’t like nerds because their audiences don’t speak Ph.D. Your language will go a lot further not by dumbing it down for jocks – but by making it approachable and understandable.
•         Chase C., StreamElements – Reporters are ageist. If you send them a release on the same day the news is announced instead of under embargo the day before, it will be considered too old to cover.

How to help clients understand the bias

The first step to getting past media bias is to show clients that journalists are just like the rest of us: they need to earn a paycheck, which comes from running a great story. And the best stories are easily understood and well-laid out, with all of the information they need. 

“Journalists are beholden to the priorities and interests of their producers, editors and audiences, which may or may not align with what’s being pitched to them at any given time,” said Sarah Kissko Hersh, Founder of Type A Consultancy. “PR is on the media’s timetable, not the brand’s stopwatch – so sometimes you just have to wait it out. Then, when beats change – or the world at large experiences a seismic shift – the media interest changes. And just like that, your emails are getting returned.”

Next, remember what Rene Mack of Rene Mack Public Relations told me: that the media is “prejudiced against suits with message points.” 

“I was working with the Bahamas in 1999 to draw attention to the then-burgeoning trend of destination weddings,” he said. “The suits wanted to get in front of the camera. I asked them who worked directly with couples – and once we had her identity, I told them to change her title to ‘director of romance’ the next day. And the day after that, she became the face of the campaign, because the media is biased towards intriguing personalities and job descriptions.”

It worked because a director of romance connects with human emotions a lot more than a suit spouting spreadsheets and boring factoids like an AI bot.

The PR pro’s job: Get past the biases

Which brings us back to PR pros. Yes, we can pull out our hair bemoaning client ignorance, but it’s also our job to get clients past these “biases” and land them media coverage that drives value and makes an impact.

So, step three to getting clients past media prejudice is to game the system by creating what Strategic Global Media’s Scott Merritt calls “positive bias.”

“You create positive bias by operating with unwavering integrity with clients and with the press,” said Merritt. “Second, you must understand how news works and the ways client stories fit into the big picture. Lastly, you need to be able to communicate with clients to set expectations, get the right info, and secure involvement throughout a campaign.” 

PR firms control two of the positive biases – our own integrity and knowledge of the news cycles. However, we can’t control a client’s willingness to invest time, information, and other resources into public relations – and that may be the biggest pain point to getting past media discrimination. 

That’s why client communication should be an upfront priority for any engagement. Public relations leads need to have clear, headache-free processes so that clients understand:

• Likely campaign outcomes.
• The data, facts, and other information needed to create the outcomes.
• Involvement from POCs, spokespeople, and the rest of the communications team.

Otherwise, yes – the media will always be prejudiced against the client’s narrative.

Create the client’s best narrative battlefield

It’s impossible to overcome every media bias. TV stations will never publish op-eds. And even outlets that accept thought leadership essays have conflicting standards. 

“Outlets with word counts discriminate against well-developed ideas in favor of artificial ceilings,” said Storyblok’s Brandon Watts. “In the digital era, media outlets don’t have page inches – especially when they say they want ‘quality’ thought leadership.”

So, yes, be upfront when a client with a stutter wants national TV, and when a national voice really wants that local outlet to cover his or her opinion. But also come with a plan to create a new battlefield for the client – one where the game is fixed in their favor.