PR Week, 10th June, 2005
STUDY SAYS CEO's NEED PROTECTION FROM PRESS
by Alex Black

Media relations chiefs at FTSE 100 companies can expect to draw six-figure salaries but must ensure their CEOs are protected from ‘ill-informed’ and ‘aggressive’ financial journalists, according to a survey.
Media heads at 18 FTSE 100 firms were asked by recruitment firm Watson Helsby about the duties of corporate senior media personnel and the challenges posed by dealing with the press.

Their responses pointed to an increasingly ‘demanding and complex media environment’.
Watson Helsby chief executive Nick Helsby said the report, entitled ‘Managing the unmanageable?’, indicated that although CEOs were reported to be more willing to engage with the press, this was counteracted by a ‘new breed’ of hostile and aggressive business journalists.
‘For some years now there has been a sense that business is being challenged and scrutinised more and more,’ said Helsby.

‘Editors are under more pressure to keep costs down, so they have fewer staff, but they are also being asked to increase coverage’.

‘This has led to an increasing trend to write about generic, cross-sectoral topics to cover up for a lack of in-depth understanding of certain sectors.’

The report goes on to say that this behaviour has also led to ‘a growing number of more financial and business journalists’, who can become ‘angry and unpleasant’ when they don’t get what they want.
But conversely, media chiefs said this had produced an environment where CEOs prefer to be seen as accessible and media-friendly in the hope they will be treated more sympathetically by the press.
Over 70 per cent of media heads said their CEO readily engaged with the media as it was seen as ‘an important and unavoidable part of doing business’.

Helsby cited the example of Wm Morrison supermarket chairman Sir Ken Morrison, not particularly known for engaging the media, who came in for a barrage of unfavourable press recently ahead of the firm’s AGM.