Why Media Coverage Still Matters in the Age of AI Search
Written by Jordan Baker, PR Agency Founder
Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations, a journalist-led PR agency supporting founders, experts and growing businesses. A former UK national journalist, he has more than a decade of experience in PR, media relations and earned media strategy.
As artificial intelligence (AI) changes the way people research businesses, it is also making it easier than ever to look authoritative online. I think that makes the evidence behind a reputation more important, not less, and independent media coverage can be one part of that wider picture.
I've spent quite a lot of time recently thinking about what AI search actually means for public relations (PR), partly because businesses are increasingly asking us about it.
Can media coverage help a company appear in ChatGPT? Does being featured by credible publications help Google understand what somebody is known for? Should businesses be doing PR differently now that people are starting to use AI tools to research companies, products, and professional services?
They're reasonable questions, and I think there is something interesting happening. But I also think we are in danger of jumping too quickly to the technical side of the conversation.
Before asking how to persuade an AI system that you are credible, I would ask a much simpler question: If somebody went looking for evidence that you are who you say you are, what would they actually find?
It has never been easier to describe yourself as an expert. You can say it on your website, put it in your LinkedIn biography, publish articles on your specialist subject, and create a steady stream of content around your expertise. AI has made doing all of that considerably easier too.
There is nothing wrong with businesses talking about themselves. They need to explain what they do and why somebody should work with them. But saying you are credible and having evidence of that credibility beyond the channels you control are still two different things.
That distinction has always mattered in PR. I suspect it may matter even more as the way people discover and research businesses continues to change.
Your website has limits
A company website is naturally written from the company's point of view. I run a PR agency, so of course our website explains what we believe we are good at, how we work, and why a potential client might choose us.
Every business does the same thing. You decide which achievements to highlight, how to describe your expertise, and what you want people to associate with your company. The same is broadly true of your LinkedIn profile, your company blog, and most of the content you publish yourself.
Earned media is different because somebody else gets a say in whether the information appears at all. A journalist can decide you are not the right person for the article. They can question what you've told them, ask for evidence, use only one part of what you have said, or decide that the story simply isn't strong enough. An editor can make the same judgement further down the line.
That lack of control can occasionally be frustrating when you work in PR, but it is also part of what gives earned coverage its value.
I certainly wouldn't argue that being mentioned by a newspaper means the publication has officially endorsed you or your business. Journalism doesn't work like that, and media coverage should not be treated as a certification scheme. What has happened, though, is that somebody independent of your business has made an editorial judgement that your story, experience, or expertise was useful enough to include. You cannot quite replicate that by publishing another page about yourself.
Expertise must also be useful
When I worked as a journalist, I regularly needed experts to help explain subjects I was writing about. Their credentials obviously mattered because I needed to know that there was a legitimate reason for them to be speaking about the subject.
But that was only the starting point. Once I knew somebody was credible, I still needed them to be useful. Could they explain something in a way that an ordinary reader would understand? Did they have experience that added something to the story? Could they move the conversation beyond the obvious information anybody could find online?
Somebody could have a very impressive curriculum vitae (CV) and still give you a comment that was almost impossible to use because it didn't really say anything. Someone less well known, but with genuine experience and a clear point of view, could sometimes give you exactly what the article needed.
I still think about experts in much the same way now that I work in PR. Good expert commentary PR should not simply involve finding somebody with a relevant job title and attaching their name to a generic quote. It should start with what that person actually knows and whether their knowledge can contribute something meaningful to the journalist's story. There is an important difference between being qualified to comment and having something worth saying.
AI is changing discovery
Where things become more interesting is in the way people now find information. A prospective client might still go directly to a company's website, but they could just as easily search Google, read reviews, look up the founder on LinkedIn, or ask ChatGPT to compare several businesses before ever visiting one of their websites.
Google is also integrating generative AI more deeply into Search through features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Its own guidance on AI features says businesses do not need a special new set of optimisation techniques to appear in them. The same underlying search principles still apply.
I think that is worth remembering because a whole industry is developing around AI visibility, and some of the claims being made are much more confident than I would be comfortable making.
I'm a former journalist and PR professional. I'm not an AI engineer, and I wouldn't tell a client that I've discovered the formula that makes ChatGPT recommend one company over another. There are too many variables, the systems change quickly, and much of what happens inside them is not publicly visible.
I certainly cannot promise that getting a national newspaper article on Tuesday will make ChatGPT recommend somebody on Wednesday.
What I can say is that the article now exists. There is another publicly available source connecting that individual or business with a particular area of expertise, story, or achievement, and that can have value regardless of whether an AI system ever cites it.
Build a public record
For me, this is probably the most useful way of thinking about the relationship between PR and AI search. Imagine two therapists who both specialise in relationships. The first has a professional website that explains their expertise clearly and perhaps publishes useful articles about relationships themselves. The second has all of that too, but when you search their name, you can also find interviews about relationship issues, articles where journalists have used their commentary, and other independent references to their work.
That doesn't mean the second therapist must be better at their job. There would be no sensible basis for making that judgement from press coverage alone.
What it does mean is that there is a broader public record around their expertise. A potential client researching them has more information from which to form an opinion. A journalist looking for an expert in the future can see that somebody else has already used them on the subject. Search engines can find those references, and potentially, AI systems have more publicly available information from which to understand what that person does.
I don't think we need to pretend we know exactly how much weight an algorithm gives an individual article to recognise the value of that. The information exists independently of the person's own marketing.
More isn't always better
There is a danger, though, that this argument turns into 'get as many media mentions as possible', which isn't what I mean at all. I've always thought positioning matters more than simply collecting press coverage.
If our relationship therapist is quoted about marriage one week, cryptocurrency the next, skincare the week after that, and then property prices because those happen to be the media opportunities available, they might accumulate plenty of links without becoming any clearer to the outside world.
At Fair PR, one of the things we think about when positioning experts is what they genuinely want to become known for. Over time, their public profile should make that answer clearer rather than more confusing.
That doesn't mean every article needs to be about precisely the same subject, and nobody should become so rigid about positioning that they turn down every interesting opportunity outside a tiny niche. But there should be some logic behind the overall picture.
One substantial interview in the right publication may communicate far more about somebody's expertise than several superficial mentions. A specialist trade publication can sometimes be more useful than a huge national outlet if it places that person in exactly the right professional context.
I wrote in my first Brainz article about the tendency businesses have to think about what they want to promote rather than what journalists and their audiences actually need. The same principle applies here. Coverage needs to make sense, not simply exist.
AI can manufacture authority
There is another reason I think all of this matters. AI has made it extraordinarily easy to produce content that looks authoritative.
Give a tool somebody's job title and a subject, and it can produce a perfectly respectable-looking article or expert comment within seconds. With relatively little effort, somebody could publish dozens of pieces around a subject they don't really understand.
I don't have an anti-AI position. I use AI myself, and I think it can be extremely useful for research, organising ideas, questioning assumptions, and improving the way we work. The problem comes when the technology starts substituting for the expertise rather than helping to communicate it.
If somebody doesn't understand a subject, asking AI to write 50 articles under their name doesn't make them an expert. If an individual has never expressed a particular view, generating an authoritative-sounding quote and putting their name underneath it doesn't suddenly turn it into their professional opinion.
For PR in particular, I think there has to be a line between helping somebody communicate genuine expertise and manufacturing expertise on their behalf. Journalists need to know that the person they're quoting actually understands the subject and stands behind what they're saying. Potential customers deserve much the same thing.
As the amount of content online increases, I suspect the evidence around genuine expertise becomes more important rather than less.
Start with real expertise
If I were advising a founder or expert who was worried about AI search today, I wouldn't start with an algorithm. I'd start with their expertise and positioning.
What do you genuinely know? What have you actually done? What do clients regularly ask you about? Which subjects do you have enough experience in to offer something beyond information that could be found in a basic search?
Then I would look at whether the things you control reflect that properly. Does your website clearly explain what you do? Does your biography make sense? Are the subjects you claim expertise in supported by your experience? If you have qualifications, research, case studies, or other evidence, is it easy for somebody to understand?
After that, you can think about the wider public picture. Are there relevant conversations you could contribute to? Could journalists use your knowledge? Do you have useful data, an interesting story, practical experience, or an informed opinion that adds something?
That's where PR can help. Not because every article will generate a customer, not because every publication will provide a valuable backlink, and certainly not because anybody can guarantee that an individual piece of media coverage will cause an AI system to recommend you.
The value is cumulative. Over time, you're creating a body of independent evidence around what you know, what you've done, and what you want to be known for.
PR was already valuable
This is probably the point I come back to most. Good media coverage was useful long before anybody was talking about AI search.
If a credible publication interviewed you about your specialist subject, that could help a prospective customer trust you. It could give you something useful to point to during a sales conversation, lead another journalist to discover you, or simply introduce your name to an audience that had never heard of you before.
Those benefits haven't suddenly disappeared. What AI potentially adds is another way in which publicly available information about a person or business can be found, combined, and understood.
I think businesses should absolutely pay attention to that, but without pretending that we already understand every part of it.
I'd much rather see somebody build genuine expertise, communicate it clearly, and develop a credible public record around their work than publish thousands of pieces of content because they hope they can persuade an AI system that they're important.
If AI systems eventually understand that person or business better as a result, that's useful. But even if they don't, the business has still built something valuable: a reputation that isn't based entirely on what it says about itself.
If you'd like help turning genuine expertise into useful media opportunities, you can find out more about Fair Public Relations.
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Read more from Jordan Baker
Jordan Baker, PR Agency Founder
Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations, a founder-led, journalist-led PR agency working with founders, experts, professional services firms and growing businesses across the UK, US and Canada. A former UK national journalist, Jordan has more than a decade of experience in public relations, media relations and earned media. He founded the agency in London in 2015 and remains directly involved in client strategy, positioning and campaign direction. His work focuses on helping credible people and businesses turn their expertise, stories and ideas into meaningful media opportunities.
