Working with the news media should be part of the overall communication effort of most family planning and other health-care organizations. Many family planning communication campaigns reach audiences directly, with messages designed to enable and encourage healthful attitudes or behavior. In such campaigns, organizations ideally determine which audiences should be addressed, develop appropriate messages, and decide the channel, format, and timing of the communication (55).

In contrast, when working with the news media, organizations do not control the messages. Instead, journalists make these decisions based on criteria of newsworthiness and appeal to their audience. Nevertheless, adding a news media relations component to other communication activities is vital because it can increase their reach and credibility. Moreover, the cost to family planning programs can be modest because the news media pay the production and distribution costs (2, 21).