A CEO Told Me My Public Relations Career Was Dead. Then a War Started.

A few years ago, I was at a conference and struck up a conversation with a young CEO of a consumer goods company. When she learned I worked in public relations, she told me, with complete confidence, that I was in a dead end career. Social media, Facebook in particular, drove the majority of her sales. She did not need journalists or editors or column inches. She had an algorithm.

Her certainty gave me pause, partly because the conference itself was clearly oriented toward younger, digitally native brands, and partly because I use Threads myself and know firsthand that it often surfaces news faster than the traditional outlets I rely on. Was she right? Was traditional media not just declining but already irrelevant?

I have thought about that conversation often since then. My answer, every time, is the same: traditional media is more necessary than ever. And so are the professionals who support it.

In my day to day work I live inside the business media world. I read and scan the WSJ, the FT, CNBC and the BBC each morning to understand what is shaping the markets and conversations that matter to my clients. But my relationship with journalism changed earlier this year when a crisis erupted in the region where my family lives. My family is based in Dubai, and as the situation around them grew increasingly tense, I found myself checking Gulf News, the BBC, and Al Jazeera with the same urgency I usually reserve for earnings season.

And what I noticed was a clear difference in quality. The social feeds were full of speculation, rumor and content engineered to provoke a reaction. The established outlets, staffed by reporters on the ground and editors with standards, were doing something different. They were verifying. They were sourcing. They were telling me what was actually known versus what was being assumed.

That distinction matters in normal times. When your family is in the middle of a geopolitical flashpoint, it matters enormously.

This is the core of what professional journalism offers that no algorithm can replicate: accountability. A reporter whose name appears on a story has staked their reputation on its accuracy. An editor who approves it has done the same. The entire structure of a newsroom is organized around the question of whether something is true before it is published. That infrastructure is slow, expensive, and imperfect, but it is the only system we have built that treats truth as the primary output rather than engagement.

For the businesses and executives I work with, this is not an abstract point. Coverage in the WSJ or Bloomberg or the FT carries weight precisely because readers trust those outlets to have done the work. A post on a brand's own social channel, no matter how polished, cannot buy that credibility. It has to be earned. The third party validation that comes from a rigorous journalist choosing to cover your story is worth more than any paid campaign, because readers understand the difference.

The young CEO I met at that conference was not wrong that social media can drive sales for a consumer brand. But she was measuring the wrong thing. Social can move product. What it cannot do is provide the authoritative record of events that shapes how institutions, investors and regulators understand the world. For companies operating in that sphere, traditional media is not optional. It is the playing field.

When the truth really matters, and sometimes it matters urgently and personally, you go to people whose entire professional identity is built around getting it right. Not for likes. Not for reach. Because it is their job.