Factors that affect the level of coorientation that exists between public relations and journalism educators

A complex relationship exists between journalists and public relations practitioners. Indeed, the literature indicates that despite differences in perceptions, both professions are mutually dependent and share co-operative, albeit conditional relationships. Despite practitioners' efforts to improve their industry and the quality of material they release, some journalists continue to harbor suspicions about them. A number of researchers claim that this supports the view that prejudice against public relations is not simply due to negative personal experiences with practitioners themselves, but rather it is rooted in journalism culture. In light of this claim and given that public relations curricula often operate in conjunction with journalism schools in higher education, this study explores public relations and journalism educators' attitudes towards public relations in more detail.;A web-based, self-administered survey was circulated to both journalism and public relations educators. The research explored respondents' attitudes toward public relations in both a professional and educational setting, and whether a significant difference in the levels of coorientation (congruency, agreement and accuracy) exists between the two groups. Attribution and coorientation theories were combined to explore whether coorientational discrepancies exist between these two groups, and if so, why. It was hypothesized that the three causal dimensions of attribution would affect respondents' levels of coorientation and their subsequent attitude towards one another in predictable ways.;Ultimately, this study found that journalism educators provided stronger evidence of coorientational accuracy than their public relations counterparts. When asked to project themselves as the opposite group, journalism educators were more successful at predicting public relations educators' responses. Conversely, public relations educators were unexpectedly poor at estimating their counterparts' responses.;In relation to the two research hypotheses, it appears that if the action/event is stable, external control is low, and the locus is strongly internal, attribution can affect the level of coorientation that exists between these two groups. However, if the action/event is perceived as unstable, with strong external control and weak internal locus, attribution is not as effective at predicting the level of coorientation that exists between public relations and journalism educators.