Handling the Media-What you say is what they will Publish

One of the PR practitioner's duties is to implement a good or healthy relationship with the media. The media are the same people who can damage or make a company's image.

During my first three weeks of  internship, i had only dealt with matters which never reached the media because we made sure that the customers complaints were dealt with amicably. Everything was handled internally.

With that being said, on my fourth week, i got to my office early just to have a cup of coffee before the offices were opened to the customers. They made better coffee at work which always made me skip coffee at home just to have it at work.

On that particular day, i never got the chance to have that coffee, as i arrived, there was a gentlemen waiting by the information desk, this gentlemen was from one of the local newspaper called 'The voice'. The paper is well known for dramatizing its news. As this gentlemen introduced himself to me, i knew my first response was vital, they say "first impression counts the most",so i had to make sure my first response was worthy a smile for this journalist before i could usher him into the office. The journalist goes by the name Mothusi Jowawa.

On this day, my supervisor was on an off day,so i had to handle the journalist on my own. We sat down and i offered him a cup of coffee, i started off by just talking about football with him. I did that in order to create a feeling of friendship and trust between us because this was the first time we met. After sometime he told me why he was here.

Apparently during the night, an inmate from prison was admitted in our hospital after his private parts were sliced up. The prison wardens told us that he did it to himself but after the hospital ran a few tests to see if the men was mentally challenged, the results came out showing that the men was not mentally challenged, that only meant there was foul play at the prison.

I had to gather all the necessary information from all the doctors who had dealt with the patient. With all that information, i gave the reporter nothing but the truth. We did not want it to look as if we were covering anything up because it had looked like the prison wardens who had brought the inmate in were actually covering something up. So the hospital did not want to be associated with that.