The first part of this myth is easy to understand. In most professions, it's common to buy people lunch or dinner. To wine and dine potential clients, business partners and sources.
Politicians do the cocktail circuit and dinner fundraisers. Over in Hollywood, "doing lunch" is so standard that it's a cliche.
Public relations isn't like that.
Reporters and editors try hard to be objective. They pay for their own meals. If you have coffee with a reporter, there's a good chance they might pay the $1.50 themselves, because reporters are used to drinking regular coffee instead of $5 mocha-whatevers, and they don't make tons of money.
In fact, the opposite situation is more likely. A dedicated reporter, digging into a story, is more likely to buy a source coffee or lunch, trying to get them to open up and be quoted.
There was a reporter who covered the U.S. Supreme Court who wouldn't even socialize with justices at events. He didn't want to develop any friendships or personal feelings, good or bad, about the justices. That might color his reporting, which he thought had to be completely objective and based on the law, not personality.
Do reporters socialize? Sure. They'll chat up a room. Talking to people is what they're good at and a key part of their job.
Where this myth is wrong is in implying that public relations pros spend a lot of time wining and dining journalists. Reporters and editors are schmooze-resistant. Incredibly so. They've seen it all. Regular charm doesn't work on them. Spin doesn't work.
The other part of this myth is that public relations can somehow control the press.
Here's a common scenario: a client or boss sees a bad story in the newspaper, or knows a reporter is digging around. So the boss tells the public relations pro, "Fix it."
Right. They'll just pick up the phone and tell the reporter to stop digging, or go back in time to unpublish the morning paper. Sure. No sweat.
The worst thing you can do is tell a reporter to NOT cover a story, or to stop digging. That's a flashing neon sign that says, "There is journalistic gold buried here! They're hiding something really juicy -- dig dig DIG!"
You can't control the press. I don't care how smart, charming or talented you are.
The press isn't not a monolithic institution anyway. Maybe you know the publisher of the newspaper. Pretend for a moment that you can pick up the phone and can kill any story you want. That doesn't stop the four television stations in your city from running the story, the three weekly newspapers, the seven radio stations or the 46 blogs written by citizen-journalists.
Public relations is about communicating with the press and public in a smart, effective way.