The President should consider a PR man for PCO Secretary

From the time of the first Aquino administration in 1986, to the current second Marcos administration, all the press secretaries and heads of the Presidential Communications Operations Office and Presidential Communications Office (PCO) had started their careers as journalists.

Now, there might be a first public relations (PR) practitioner to manage the government’s public information infrastructure if President Marcos replaces PCO head Jay Ruiz with Dave Gomez. Although the latter started his career as a journalist and then worked briefly with an advertising firm and a government agency, Gomez is more of a PR man, having been embedded in the corporate world as in-house PR counsel for almost a quarter of a century.

Let me quote Dubai-based Albert ”Abet” Alba, a former journalist with 20 years of experience and who has been practicing PR for the last 17 years in the United Arab Emirates, on the similarities and differences between the two professions:

“As both journalism and PR thrive on compelling narratives, there is further common ground in their mission: to communicate clearly, to build narratives based on truth, and to offer value to audiences. The difference is that in PR, communication is being delivered through the perspective of a brand or organization. In journalism, the responsibility is to the reader, in PR, the responsibility is to multiple stakeholders: the client, the target audience, the media, and internal teams.”

Let the President try a PR professional this time. PR professionals are trained and disciplined to craft and convey the core messages of a particular product, service, institution, personality, or cause. They are experienced in dealing with various internal and external stakeholders without losing their composure as professionals. They will also never get tired of promoting, enhancing and, sometimes, defending the reputation of their principals.