3Media Relations
Introduction
President John F. Kennedy famously said about the media, “even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.” In a democracy, every public office has a duty to proactively engage with the so-called Fourth Estate – the news media – and to inform the public about how government is using taxpayers’ dollars to perform its mission. As we learned in Chapter 2, public relations is integral to public administration as it allows administrators to better implement the agency’s programs and fulfill its democratic responsibilities, ...
