Online Public Relations Thoughts

This critique of recent business reporting by The New York Times is on the mark but narrow. Business reporters are forever working on assumptions of what is there rather than looking for themselves. One of the hardest tasks in working with financial media is to get them to look objectively at a story. They tend to fall into whatever camp stock analysts are in because they call analysts for their opinions. Sometimes analysts are wrong. Actually, analysts are wrong frequently, as any investor relations practitioner will tell you.

There is a reason for reliance on the assumptions of others. The business reporter rarely has time to do an analysis of a company. Rather the reporter relies on the "he said-she said" approach to surface facts and opinions. When there isn't diversity of opinion, conventional wisdom sets in, and reporters examine company news through a single distorting lens. It's a continuing frustration of working in corporate PR.