Public Figure and The Media
Minister of national education, Mr Muhammad Nuh, gives an explaination about the national final examination to the journalists after giving a speech on the “Emotional and Spiritual Achievement” program at Al Azhar University of Indonesia (Saturday, April 21st 2012).
From the picture above, we can see a relational aspect between a public figure and the media. A public figure needs the media to help him/her expressing the works, action, or even their controversies as their existence. On the other side, media needs the public figures for their source of contents.
Why media needs public figures than ordinary people in the daily reality as a regular source of news? Because public figures have a larger effect for their diffusion of information and people will aware more to the popular figures so that the media would prefer choose them as the headline. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in one of their “propaganda model” news filter said that the sourcing of the news media is derived from the official providers (government and public organization representatives) and public/popular figures whom are considered to have a profitable effect to the media (Laughey, 2007 : 132 and Willaims, 2003 : 78). In other word, you need a more popular people to cover to get more money, media would probably say.
While a public figure needs media to help increasing his/her popularity/image or as an accomplishment of the institutional task. Building a good media relation would be able to create a high level of public awareness, to provide a useful public information, or to increase the personal/institutional value (Theaker, 2004 : 157). Task and image building can be improved through a media publicity.
1. Laughey, Dan. (2007). Key Themes in Media Theory. Berkshire : Open University Press.
2. Theaker, Alison. (2004). The Public Relations Handbook, 2nd ed. London & New York : Routhledge.
3. Williams, Kevin. (2003). Understanding Media Theory. London : Arnold.