As the number of investigative journalists and the resources to work on such projects reportedly dwindles, Tim Cavanaugh asks if this work can be supplemented by public relations professionals.
“[T]hough it’s considered wise to believe the contrary, these communications types are not constructing all these news items entirely (or even mostly) by lying. Flackery requires putting together credible narratives from pools of verifiable data. This activity is not categorically different from journalism. Nor is the teaching value that flackery provides entirely different from that of journalism: Most of the content you hear senators and congressmen reading on C-SPAN is stuff flacks provided to staffers,” writes Cavanaugh.