What is the difference between reputation management and media relations?

Media relations is the practice of earning coverage and managing the relationships that produce it. Reputation management is broader: it governs the full set of places where a stakeholder forms an impression, only some of which media relations touches. When a board member, a counterparty, or a reporter looks you up, they see a Google result page, a Wikipedia article, an AI-generated summary, and a Knowledge Panel long before they read the article your team placed. Those assets are shaped by structure, sourcing, and entity signals, not by pitching. The distinction matters because the tools and methodology differ. Earning a placement and getting an AI engine to cite it accurately are separate disciplines requiring separate work. Strong programs run both: media relations to create authoritative material, reputation management to make sure that material ranks, is cited, and holds up across the channels people actually check.