Working in PR as a Jewish Woman

When the churn of current events becomes overwhelming, taking time away from the news can be an important way to take care of yourself. This is especially true when frightening and upsetting events in the world affect us personally. But for those working in media, like PR professionals, stepping away from the news often isn’t an option—even when the latest horror stories hit close to home.

Brazen antisemitic rhetoric and behavior on the part of celebrities and politicians has been on the rise, emboldening many less visible people across the country to follow suit with hateful behavior of their own. I spoke with Quarter Horse Media Relations Director Katie Jacobs about what it’s like to be a Jewish woman whose job is reading the news when that means exposing herself to such hateful language and behavior.

Lindsay Lee Wallace: When they find themselves overwhelmed by the intensity and despair of the news, many people choose to disengage for self-preservation. As someone who must continually monitor the media as part of your work day, how does it affect you to often not have that choice?

Katie Jacobs: So much has happened over the past year that’s horrifying to everybody. Anyone who has to pay attention to social media and news for their job therefore has to pay attention to the school shootings, the violence against people of color, the misogyny, and yes, the antisemitism.

It’s been particularly difficult for me, over the past few months. “Judaism,” “Jews,” “Jewish,” “Rabbi,” and “Kanye” have been trending nearly every day—“Kanye” specifically in reference to the antisemitic stuff he’s been spewing. Kanye West denying that the Holocaust happened when he has double the number of Twitter followers that there are Jews in the world is hard for me to move past.

It’s necessary for me to pay attention to what reporters are talking about, and for me to be on Twitter. I don’t have time to get sucked into a social media hole every day, but it’s hard not to get sucked in when it’s so personally relevant to you. It requires you to separate yourself from issues that are relevant to you, and it can be hard. You watch Kanye say, “I like Hitler,” and then you have a meeting in five minutes.

LLW: Yeah, it’s whiplash. And one of our roles as a strategy agency is advising clients on how to respond to current events—like, for example, a major public figure making bigoted statements—and whether they should make any kind of statement, be it internal or external.

KJ: Right. And in today’s workplace culture, people expect to be acknowledged as human beings in the workplace—and rightfully so. So I would advise our clients that acknowledging what’s going on in the world, especially when it’s probably affecting your employees, is the right thing to do. You offer support in whatever form you can. The response will always vary depending on the situation, because there’s so much happening, and some things are more relevant to what a company does, and to what their customers and employees care about. I don’t always think making a public statement is necessary. But making a statement internally, saying, “We have no tolerance for hate speech or actions,” and offering resources, and following through, is always a good idea.

And of course, it is also relevant from a strategy perspective. If you want to hire the right people, you need to look at your organization from an employee perspective, and part of that is being supportive when there’s a global pandemic, and women’s rights are being attacked, and Black and LGBTQ+ folks are being shot in what should be safe spaces—and Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying the Jews control space lasers.

LLW: Working in PR, you have a more advanced and nuanced understanding than many as to what drives trending topics and news cycles—you know that outrageous behavior fuels headlines. At the same time, you’re human, and seeing hateful things written online about your community can be hard to ignore. Has your knowledge of how news cycles work helped or hurt you during this time?

KJ: There’s no question that because I’ve been clicking on articles about antisemitism, they’re popping up more for me on Twitter than for other people. The algorithm is savvy. But if you’re in media relations, you have to know what’s going on. Even when that means adding engagement to stories about trending topics that really suck.

Ideally, you can get the story from one article, from a source that you know, trust, and want to support. And I know many media organizations are struggling to stay afloat. So I try to support publications I care about by reading those stories from those sources.

And when an issue like this affects me, I also have to grapple with my identity as a white woman, and look at things from an intersectional perspective. For example, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, it was awful and distracting—and I also know the issue isn’t whether I’ll be able to access care, it’s whether the most vulnerable people, who are disproportionately impacted by the decision, will be able to.

There’s a very real sense of responsibility built into Judaism as a religion. Tikkun olam is the concept that the world is broken, and it’s our job to repair it. And I think that’s true. I think we as humans often cause more harm than good—to each other, to the world, and so on—but I like working at a place where we encourage our clients to do the right thing, partially because I feel that sense of responsibility. There’s only so far you can go with corporations, because they have to work within a capitalist system regardless. But making whatever impact I can to try and get companies to do the right thing is something that matters to me. I need to be doing work that makes some kind of impact on the world. I try to do that as much as I can in public relations, and that’s one of the reasons I work here.

LLW: Me, too. And we’ve been talking about hypothetical companies and hypothetical employees in response to antisemitism, but we’re real employees at a real company, and you’re a real person dealing with this. What do you think is something we can do to make it a little less awful to exist in this media landscape right now?

KJ: It’s hard. I feel lucky to work at a company where I feel supported, that’s also small enough that if I’m asked how I’m feeling as a Jewish woman, I don’t feel tokenized. I feel support from Nicole, and from you and all of our coworkers, and I like that. That’s the kind of culture we’re cultivating. And I hope we’re cultivating that for everyone.