JEAN-PIERRE MOSER, head of public relations and membership, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, replies:

The Society’s public relations unit has excellent working relationships with leading health and science journalists from across the print and broadcast media. During August the team dealt with 77 media enquires. We also run proactive campaigns to bring home key messages about medicines and pharmacists’ roles in their safe and effective use.

In fact, the Society did produce a media response on the issue of children’s medicines on the subject of the broadcast in question, and this was sent out to all national news desks. However, the decision on whether to call on an organisation to participate in an interview is entirely in the hands of individual editors.

Your correspondent will be pleased to learn that the Society achieves national coverage on pharmacy issues on a regular basis. Only last week (and as reported in the PJ) the Society held a session at the BA Festival of Science, which was featured in The Independent, Daily Mail and Daily Express. Other examples of national coverage achieved by the Society during 2004 include coverage on the subjects of internet medicines in The Sunday Times, the use of antibiotics on GMTV News, and a pharmacy careers supplement published with The Independent newspaper (a second is to be published later this month). When Which? magazine criticised pharmacy earlier this year, our spokespeople were able to put the Society’s position across on radio, television and in several national newspapers.

Although regional newspapers may seem a poor relation compared to the national press, their combined circulation totals over 68 million a week. The influence of regional papers and broadcast media should not be underestimated — and we work with our network of branch public relations officers to support their efforts with this important sector of the media.