HARO, PR and taking things with a grain of salt

I work for a firm that, among other things, does PR. And those things that we claim aren't PR are really just stepchildren of PR. We are public relations, and we have multiple horns to toot.

This brings us to a website called Help A Reporter Out (HARO). HARO is a site where journalists post the things they need help with. Almost always, it's a call out for someone to come forth who's had some specific thing happen to them, or people who are experts at some category. For example, right now one of the big things journos are looking for is businesses that have been given bad deals by Groupon-like sites. Not exactly something that you can look up in the phonebook, but ask for it online and the replies come flooding in.

Here's the catch: PR-folk are tasked with getting their clients out there. Exposure is everything. It's easy to claim to be an 'expert' once you've been published more than a couple places, and perceived expertise is a claim that pays huge dividends. Getting an expert to weigh in on a topic basically writes the bulk of the argument.

And now the perfect storm begins brewing. I'm a journalist writing a piece about some social trend, let's say an addiction to the popular app Angry Birds. I can get a couple reports from people about their experiences, but I need that key ingredient: an expert who says that there is a serious problem with this addiction to Angry Birds. I submit a query out into the world, where the PR-people come upon it.

The PR folk have just the perfect hypothetical client who needs exposure: a psychologist with a book deal, working on book 2. The psychologist can say one of two things:
1. there is actually something newsworthy or significant about the Angry birds addiction
2. There really is no such thing, except for a few outliers.

If exposure is all that matters, you HAVE to say answer one. A journalist working under tight constraints who NEEDS to get a source isn't going to re-write an article just because one expert says it isn't so. Besides, other unscrupulous PR folk will get THEIR clients to say whatever it is that needs to be said. At this point, it's easy to get the psychologist to get on the record saying that Angry Birds is a 'secret addiction' that may affect hundreds of thousands. Statements like "the majority of cases go unreported" can get thrown out there... a statement which is not technically false, but is fundamentally untestable without going through a whole lot of trouble.

A story is born. A client gets more publicity. A reading public swallows the article and the experts opinion.

I'm new to the PR world. Everyone whom I've been exposed to has been a decent person, and they don't use misrepresentation just to get publicity. But if people are going to read newspapers, magazines and other websites, I think they need to know that a good number of articles have HARO behind them. I just thank god I don't work in politics.