A press secretary or press officer is a senior advisor who provides advice on how to deal with the news media and, using news management techniques, helps their employer to maintain a positive public image and avoid negative media coverage.
They often, but not always, act as the organization's senior spokesperson. Many governments also have press secretaries. A deputy press secretary is typically a mid-level political staffer who assists the press secretary and communications director with aspects of public outreach. They often write the press releases and media advisories for review by the press secretary and communications director. There are usually assistant press secretaries and press officers that support the press secretary.
Famous quotes containing the words press and/or secretary:
“We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator’s power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.”
—Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)