No, we don’t mean the bias at Fox, CNN, and The New York Times. That’s related to politics, and it’s the easiest kind of bias to recognize and circumvent. You just have to aim for an outlet with your political, cultural, or religious point of view.

A more challenging form of media bias comes in how outlets structure their processes and standards. For example, an outlet might prefer thought leadership writing no longer than 800 words – but you prefer to write 2,000-word essays. Or the news producer at a TV station might be sick and tired of covering inflation…just as you have a great angle to discuss.

Overcoming these biases takes more than just knowing how to write or speak. It requires a forward-thinking strategy and building long-term relationships with the right gatekeepers.

Below are some common biases which can stop your message from reaching and influencing your target audiences, and ways to overcome them.

From style to saturation

• You are an industry leader with deep knowledge about complex subjects. However, that makes it impossible to meet an outlet’s 800-word limit for thought leadership op-eds.

  An alternative to op-ed thought leadership is interviews. You may want to invite the news editor, a reporter, or a podcast host at the same outlet to sit down for a one-on-one interview. This will allow you the same deep-dive into your topic, and it may provide future opportunities to provide your expertise to the outlet.

• A pet store owner is opening a second location. The local business reporter has been assigned to cover the story – but he or she has adopted three dogs from a shelter, and thinks breeding and selling dogs is unethical.

  This type of bias is tough to get around because the reporter will write the story, but only grudgingly. That means the pet store’s narrative won’t come through as strongly.

  One way to circumvent the bias is to have a shelter partner for the event. This will probably defuse some of the reporter’s hesitations, shift his or her perspective on the store, and open the opportunity for a long-term relationship beyond the immediate event.

• A financial advisor has a truly unique and valuable take on the stock market decline. But the TV host is tired of covering the stock market.

  Timing is critical to getting media coverage. If you’ve missed it, you’re in trouble. One way to get around this is what we call bank-shot media coverage. Rather than address the direct topic at hand – the stock market’s decline – you can use a narrow focus on investments that will perform better or worse during the decline.

  Another option is to highlight how the stock decline will benefit or hurt the people in the region which the outlet covers.

• A national advocacy organization wants a Senator or Congressman to support new legislation. However, the top media outlet in the region only covers local and regional news like school board meetings.

  This is a great opportunity to localize the topic. Increasingly, local and regional media are ignoring national news because other outlets cover those topics. Take advantage of the opportunity to recruit local activists and community leaders who can act as spokespeople and thought leaders.

• You’re a great writer, but an awkward speaker. Unfortunately, the outlets most trusted by your target audiences are TV, radio, and podcasts.

  This is a hard one. You may want to hire a media trainer, or go to other outlets. It’s better to get into media that’s slightly less trusted than to fall flat on your face at a trusted outlet.

Media bias is complex

Each of these situations requires more than a black-and-white approach to navigating media bias. To earn the coverage, you must take into account personalities, tone, the best medium for your message, and much more.

That’s why we work closely with clients to determine which outlets and gatekeepers will give their unique message the best consideration. We recommend outlets which balance gettability (yes, we made it up) with reachability (we think that’s a word). Then, we determine how to best get into those outlets, and work with you to develop a message that resonates.

We can’t guarantee that you’ll get in the press. Another war, pandemic, or Supreme Court decision could upend the entire news cycle. But we do guarantee that we’ll eliminate every barrier and every bias we can which stands between you and your target markets.

Only a market leader could have this kind of impact. It’s the best PR in the world – and it’s the result of Musk investing years into building a personal brand on the back of another market leader – Tesla, which has spent years building a supply chain that has allowed it to navigate the unexpected nickel supply shortage.

Nickel is a key element in sheet metal and electric car battery manufacturing, and the Russia-Ukraine war has caused prices to skyrocket. Tesla’s impressive battery supply chains include partnerships in nickel mines, development of an in-house nickel-based battery, battery recycling, and cheaper iron-based batteries. The strategy is impressive, forward-looking, and definitely leads the industry at a time when electric car companies are struggling; and it earned it positive coverage at the business outlet Insider.

Here’s why market leaders get great – and often free – PR:

• Media outlets want to piggyback on your brand recognition by covering you more often than the competition. Just a few days after examining how many electric car manufacturers are navigating the nickel shortage, Insider’s exclusively covered Tesla’s approach. The first forced many companies to share the stage; the follow-up starred the market leader.
• People want to be associated with your success. This creates influencer marketing opportunities, where others validate your message in the press and in social media. It was easy to find auto, energy, and technology experts who wanted to connect their names with Tesla for the Insider article.
• You can have a greater impact than your competition. Tesla’s recycling strategy will create a more environmentally friendly industry in future decades; and its unusual use of iron-based batteries will make electric cars more affordable. Media coverage of your market leadership can change your industry, consumer behavior, and much more.

Being a market leader isn’t always clear sailing. Musk has his share of critics. However, most negative press has a short window of relevance, and many critics are irrelevant to your success. Tesla faced a slew of bad press after brief closures of its California and China plants earlier this year, but the company kept moving forward, and those headlines are now an afterthought.

Becoming a market leader takes years of planning, investment, and execution. You can’t fake it on the way to the top, but there are many benefits once you’re there. And just like Musk, you can change a news cycle, an industry…and maybe even a war.

At least, that’s what Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky told the world. The truth, as we found out after the story went viral, was that the 13 soldiers had been captured and were “alive and well,” according first to Russian sources and then Ukraine’s military.

Zelensky may not have known the Snake Island soldiers’ fate when he announced their deaths; such is the fog of war. But the story itself is emblematic of the wider propaganda war being fought by Russia and Ukraine. The two may be on the same battlefield, but they are not fighting the same war.

A few hours before the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an hour-long speech justifying the action. Addressing “citizens of Russia, friends” and “our compatriots in Ukraine,” Putin cited the Ukrainian civil war, historical ties between the two nations and a neo-Nazi presence in anti-Russia forces. Putin wasn’t trying to win over critics in the European Union, the United Nations or the United States, and since the invasion, Russian news and social media has primarily focused on telling Russians that their military is winning. None of this is going to go internationally viral. Then again, it’s not supposed to.

Contrast this with the messaging from Ukrainian defenders. Nobody expects the smaller, weaker nation to win on its own. Stories about Snake Island, old Ukrainians standing to arms and Miss Ukraine’s trading high heels for boots are part of a wider campaign publicizing emotional and inspirational stories to increase Western support for the embattled defenders. Videos of Russian tanks out of gas and destroyed planes are likewise intended to tell stories of an invasion gone awry.

Propaganda doesn’t begin when the first shots are fired. In the case of this war, both sides have been firing shots since 2014. The pro-Western uprising in Ukraine’s capital was countered by pro-Russia separatists in the Donbas region declaring independence, which led to a civil conflict that killed thousands of people.

The transition from proxy war to international conflict matches the propaganda that both sides have churned out. The Russian government has long justified its troops and weapons as defending historical Russian territory and peoples; Ukraine’s government has effectively used social media and other tools to appeal to the West.

So, who’s winning?

Ukraine’s propaganda battle has been undeniably effective. Compelling content has gone viral among Western influencers, uniting people across political lines against Russia’s invasion. Major corporations are divesting and distancing themselves from Russia; the United Nations, the U.S. and the EU are implementing sanctions; and Germany suspended certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which Russia spent years developing. Some 100 representatives of various nations walked out on the Russian ambassador’s pro-invasion speech at the UN, and Western nations are sending Ukraine billions of dollars in military equipment and other direct support.

Since the war started, promoting Ukrainian propaganda has become a mini-industry in America and elsewhere. Almost none of Russia’s propaganda has made it into Western media except when it gets smacked down, such as when a Russian journalist wrote in a New York Times op-ed that his countrymen and women know they have “suffered a crushing moral defeat.” And negative reports about Russia, such as its crashing ruble, have proliferated across Western media.

It would be easy to say that Ukraine is winning the propaganda war—except that Russia is fighting an entirely different messaging conflict, targeting an entirely different audience, with an entirely different approach. Russia is not combating Western support for Ukraine in the U.S. or the EU. Much like Putin’s initial speech, Russian propaganda has focused on convincing Russian and Ukrainian audiences that Moscow is winning the military conflict. Two examples of that are a recent propaganda video targeting Russian children, and the Russian government’s poll allegedly showing significant support for war among its population. And Russian news is full of articles about grateful Donbas citizens and the military’s advances on the way to victory.

They say history is written by the winners. That could be Russia, which will likely win the initial military conflict and has almost no competition for its intended audiences. It could be Ukraine, which appears to be on the verge of securing major political, economic and military support to fight a longer conflict, even as a million refugees flee.

Americans are predisposed to oppose Putin’s invasion of Ukraine given the geopolitics of the last three-quarters of a century. Since the war began, we’ve been fed a steady diet of pro-Ukraine messaging. However—as media consumers, social media participants, and taxpayers who will soon fund Ukraine’s defense—it is important to critically assess the content and information we are consuming. Furthermore, it’s important to be patient, as the war is less than three weeks old.

Dustin Siggins originally wrote this for Newsweek.