2017职称英语理工类B级阅读理解练习题（七）[1]

Characteristics of Publicity
　　?Publicity offers several benefits. There are not costs for message time or space. An ad in prime-time television may cost $250,000 to $5000,000 or more per minute, whereas a five-minute report on a network newscast would not cost anything. However, there are costs for news releases, a publicity department, and other items. As with advertising, publicity reaches a mass audience. Within a short time, new products or company policies are widely known.
　　Credibility about messages is high, because they are reported in independent media. A newspaper review of a movie has more believability than an ad in the same paper, because the reader associates independence with objectivity. Similarly, people are more likely to pay attention to news reports than to ads. For example, Women’s Wear Daily has both fashion reports and advertisements. Readers spend time reading the stories, but they flip through the ads. Furthermore, there may be 10 commercials during a half-hour television program or hundreds of ads in a magazine. Feature stories are much fewer in number and stand out clearly.
　　Publicity also has some significant limitations. A firm has little control over messages, their timing, their placement, or their coverage by a given medium. It may issue detailed news releases and find only portions cited by the media, and media have the ability to be much more critical than a company would like.
　　For example, in 1982, Procter & Gamble faced a substantial publicity problem over the meaning of its 123-year-old company logo. A few ministers and other private citizens believed resulted in the firm receiving 15,000 phone calls about the rumor in June alone. To combat this negative publicity, the firm issued news releases featuring prominent clergy that refuted the rumors, threatened to sue those people spreading the stories, and had a spokesperson appear on Good Morning America. The media cooperated with the company and the false rumors we职称英语考试