In-house corporate media specialists are in increasing demand as managers seek to protect their businesses' reputation and image, according to a survey of FTSE 100 companies.

Watson Helsby, the executive search consultancy , studied the role of corporate media relations (CMR) practitioners in 50 of the FTSE Top 100 companies and found that a growing number of chief executives wished to employ in-house corporate media specialists for everyday communications work, as well as retaining external financial PR agencies for important events such as financial results.

More specialist than conventional public relations personnel and frequently better paid than employee communications experts, the typical in-house corporate media head is responsible primarily for managing the company's relationships with business and City journalists and, where necessary, suppressing negative stories.

Earning up to £120,000 and often managing a team as large as seven, the CMR function is seen by many CEOs as providing a vital link between what may be a rather secretive board and a media specialism that is inexorably moving towards the front pages.

Ironically, though, the Watson Helsby survey suggests that for the average FTSE 100 CEO, the media relations function – which typically reports in to the corporate affairs director – is a “distress purchase”.

“With the UK business media, compared with its equivalents in other countries, almost uniquely hostile and unpredictable, a minority of top firms wish to minimise contact with the financial media, rather than encourage it,” says Quentin Cowdry, the report's author, who notes that companies such as Hays, Capita, Sage and GUS have no full-time in-house corporate media specialist.

Among the companies that choose to embrace the corporate media function, though, are British Telecommunications, which employs a seven-strong CMR team, Royal Bank of Scotland with six people and GlaxoSmithKline employing three.

Although CMR staff must clearly understand Stock Exchange rules and have a grasp of how the City works, the ability to read a balance sheet is less important than journalistic nous and City page contacts. One respondent says: “The kind of scams that have hit the headlines recently are designed to fox people with a much greater ability to read a company's books than we would ever want or need.”

The reports adds that while the pressure on in-house media specialists to justify their role is often “immense”, there are widely differing views on how the effectiveness of the function should be evaluated.

While some companies count the skill of their CMR team in terms of the number of “friendly” press cuttings they generate, Cowdry says this “takes no account of the time that is often spent containing or killing stories”.

The report adds: “The more high-profile the company, the greater the proportion of time that is devoted to story suppression; something that cannot necessarily be quantified.”

For most companies, it is the ability to coach the CEO and senior directors in the art of media handling that remains the most important skill of the in-house CMR specialist. “To counteract business people's general media wariness, practitioners must be able to read the personality of the CEO and devise confidence-building measures that allow him or her to learn without losing dignity,” says the report.