Journalism, PR and Power: Contests over Public opinion formation

To illustrate the idea of Power related to Journalism and Public Relations I chose as a Specialist reading Setting the agenda – the mass media and public opinion (Mccombs, 2004, pp. 98-178) and the Set Reading ‘A COMPROMISED FOURTH ESTATE?’ (Lewis, Williams & Franklin, 2008, pp. 1-20). I focused my essay and interests in one of the most intrigued issue: the Journalists’ independence, following some aspects of the previous week’s topic.

The idea of PR helping journalists to make the news content has been drawn as a consequence of journalists’ lack of independence. The concern of the journalists’ integrity and quality has the roots in the idea of newsgathering. (Lewis, Williams & Franklin, 2008, pp. 1-3).

The notion of ‘subsidy information’[i] refers to the consumption of persuasive messages by PR practitioners to nation’s public media who ‘carry the desired message forward to the general public’ (Gandy, 1982, p. 74).

Through this concept, there can be depicted two categories of newspapers: the wealthy ones that afford to skip these PR initiatives and the poor ones, forced to get these stories because of the profit[ii]. However, journalists adopted the trend of denying the implication of Public Relations’ agencies; moreover, they are shooting as victims of the PR invasion (Lewis, Williams & Franklin, 2008, pp. 2-3). I do believe that this is an insulting position for journalists, as financial status goes beyond professionalism, yet I understand in some units their reaction as they want to protect themselves and their job integrity.

The research conducted by Lewis, Williams & Franklin (2008, pp. 4-17) evokes the implication of PR in newspapers’ articles. This observation is also drawn by Mccombs (2004, p. 117) by saying ‘public relations professionals are also significant contributors’. The number of articles generated by PR practitioners and collected by journalists is dramatically increasing and even the ‘agenda-setting’, concept presented at the Lecture by Dr. Ayo Oyeleye, is now PR custody: ‘The media agenda has been an independent variable’ (Mccombs, 2004, p. 98).[iii]

Summing up, the ‘agenda’ is purified by journalists’ filters[iv] but, unfortunately, the nowadays journalism consist a lot of articles that are recycled or even plagiarized and the sources are reduced at one. I do consider that PR and Journalism can work together as a team only if both of them make the compromise of facing the actual issues and they will limits they work in their specialist field. The nowadays market is clearly lead by PR, Journalism losing the battle of power.[v] For further research I would use focus groups formed by newspapers’ readers in order to see if they have any clue of PR implication.

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References:

Lewis, J. (2008) Journalism Studies, Vol. 9, issue 1, pp. 1-20

Long, P. and Wall, T. (2012) Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context, 2n dEdition, Essex: Pearson Education Limited

Mccombs, M. (2004) Setting the agenda: the mass media and public opinion, Malden: Polity Press

Bibliography:

Cottle, S. (2004) News, Public Relations and Power, London: SAGE Publication Ltd.

Lewis, J. (2008) Journalism Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 1, pp. 1-20

Long, P. and Wall, T. (2012) Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context, 2n dEdition, Essex: Pearson Education Limited

Mccombs, M. (2004) Setting the agenda: the mass media and public opinion, Malden: Polity Press

[i] Concept drawn by Oscar Gandy’s (1982)

[ii] (Lewis, Williams & Franklin, 2008, p. 2)

[iii] Statistics show that more than 70% of articles have a lot of PR content and a direct involvement from this departure especially in those that are based on health, business and environment topics (Lewis et al., 2006, p. 21).

[iv] (Mccombs, 2004, pp. 177-178)

[v] Power concept outlined in the Lecture by Dr. Ayo Oyeleye

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