Campaign backed by industry urges PRs to cut irrelevant press releases

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A campaign has been launched, with the backing of leading PR professionals, asking for a new charter to protect journalists and bloggers from irrelevant PR campaigns. 'An Inconvenient PR Truth' aims to reduce "the pollution of journalist, blogger and publisher inboxes" by cutting PR spam with a list of recommendations for the industry.

These suggestions, which are listed in a 'Bill of Rights' on the campaign's website , include obtaining permission from recipients before sending press releases and not making a follow-up call to a journalist after sending a release.

The campaign, which was launched with support from review site TrustedReviews , gadget site Pocket-lint.com and press release service the Press Dispensary , is based on a survey conducted by RealWire which suggests that 1.7 billion irrelevant press release emails are received each year by UK and US journalists.

There used to be something here that couldn't be migrated - please contact us at info@journalism.co.uk if you'd like to see this updated! A recent postgraduate study by Iain Fleming, former PR manager and national newspaper journalist , also reported problems with emailed press releases from PR officers. Almost 95 per cent of journalists who responded had suffered problems with emailed releases, and almost one quarter reported this to be an every day occurrence with half reporting problems several times a week or weekly.

The Inconvenient PR Truth campaign is backed by RealWire and other PR agencies and as such is not an attack on the PR industry, its website states.

"It is precisely because all those involved in the campaign are passionate about public relations and the benefits it can bring, that we have wanted to raise this issue," the campaign site says.

"Most of us rely on this industry to pay the mortgage and feed our kids, so biting the hand is not our intention. But squeezing it a bit in an attempt to attend to an issue that, if solved, could improve the impact and value of the industry as a whole, is a risk we are all prepared to take."

The campaign aims to encourage wider debate of its proposed charter and the issue of PR officers' communications with journalists and bloggers.