Public Relations and Journalists

As classes have continued I have become intrigued by how inter connected public relations and journalism is. Sometimes journalists get news stories from public relations people, either through a press release, an event happening, or a crisis occurs. At first I was curious how journalist and pr people coexist? I mean a journalist is taught to go for the story and to not take no for an answer. Where public relations people are taught to represent something and make the public believe in that something. So at first I thought that this was a tense relationship you had to deal with in the PR field. However my text book and teachers have pointed out that this is not the case. Some of the best friends that PR people have in the workplace is journalists. In the long one they are both trying to get the same thing done, which is representing their company by use of the media.