What are advantages and disadvantages of press conference?

Answer 1

Advantages

The main advantage of a press conference to the person calling it is that they do not have to repeat themselves to several different reporters at separate interviews. It also means that their announcement will have maximum impact by being in all the media at the same time (assuming that all the reporters think it is newsworthy).

The main advantage to the journalist is that it reduces the chance of individual newspapers or broadcast stations missing the story. It also allows them to share the workload of questioning the interviewee. If one reporter forgets or overlooks something, another reporter will probably think of it.

Disadvantages

There are disadvantages to the media in press conference, the major of which is that it is more difficult to get an exclusive story from press conferences. When every reporter hears the same words from the interviewee, they cannot keep secrets from each other. There are ways of getting round this problem which we will discuss later.

Press conferences can also give false importance to the topic being promoted. Promoters try to convince journalists that by getting them all in the same place at the same time the topic is of great importance, when often it is nothing more than free publicity or advertising.

Answer 2

Advantages of a press conference include being able to control the information, not having to repeat the information to multiple interviewers, and getting the information to the public in a timely manner. Disadvantages generally only arise when the people attending the press conference aren't getting the answers they want.