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Journalism Studies
ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20
MEASURING THE IMPACT OF PR ON PUBLISHED
NEWS IN INCREASINGLY FRAGMENTED NEWS
ENVIRONMENTS
Zvi Reich
To cite this article: Zvi Reich (2010) MEASURING THE IMPACT OF PR ON PUBLISHED NEWS IN
INCREASINGLY FRAGMENTED NEWS ENVIRONMENTS , Journalism Studies, 11:6, 799-816, DOI:
10.1080/14616701003760550
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616701003760550
Published online: 05 Nov 2010.
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MEASURING THE IMPACT OF PR ON
PUBLISHED NEWS IN INCREASINGLY
FRAGMENTED NEWS ENVIRONMENTS1
A multifaceted approach
Zvi Reich
As news environments become more fragmented, public relations grows more sophisticated and
editorial systems weaken, the impact of PR on news becomes greater and more diverse. Its scope
and intensity, however, can hardly be grasped by traditional newsroom-oriented and press
release-centered approaches that try to reduce PR impact to a single bottom line. The present
study proposes a multifaceted approach to studying PR impact on the news. It examines textual
and oral PRÁmedia exchanges flowing inside and outside newsrooms that reach reporters
personally or through their respective newsrooms and affect published news both directly and
indirectly. The study adopts an innovative method: a series of face-to-face reconstruction
interviews in which reporters representing nine leading Israeli news organizations detailed,
contact by contact, any type of PR involvement or contribution to a random sample of their
freshly published items. PR impact was found to be richer, more complex and broader than
suggested by former studies. Although reporters rarely allow practitioners to serve as single
sources for their items, they often let them serve as dominant sources, constituting at least 50
percent of their contacts for specific items. Furthermore, practitioners lead agenda building for
every other item and involve themselves in no less than 75 percent of items by supplying
information, story leads and even dubiously ‘‘technical’’ services. PR is more involved in business
and domestic affairs than in politics, especially in non-exclusive and less prominent items and
in stories whose sources stay anonymous. Apparently both parties’ interest in disguising their
exchanges overrules the public’s interest in proper disclosure to enable assessment of the
information and its source credibility.
KEYWORDS agenda building; media relations; news subsidies; public relations;
spokespersons
Introduction
The extent to which the news media rely on public relations materials has attracted
considerable research attention (cf. Curtin and Rhodenbaugh, 2001; Lewis et al., 2008;
Reich, 2009). Studies have attempted to establish a bottom line for PR-originated input,
ranging between 25 and 80 percent of news content according to the literature (Cameron
et al., 1997). These theoretically and practically worthwhile research efforts proceed in four
principal directions, to be discussed in detail below: (1) exposing PR use of the media to
access and impact public opinion; (2) delineating the borderline between two ‘‘converging’’
and interdependent occupations, journalism and PR, that collaborate and compete
over the social role of public news supplier; (3) redefining news believability, as different
Journalism Studies, Vol. 11, No 6, 2010, 799Á816
ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online
– 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14616701003760550
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sources may be ascribed different levels of perceived credibility; and (4) raising questions
of political equality, as PR’s advantageous position indirectly blocks access to nonprofessional
sources.
Portraying the impact of PR on the news has always been an empirical challenge, as
both parties prefer to keep their exchanges covert, as discussed below. We may assume
that the actual impact is greater than journalists are willing to admit, but not necessarily as
great as practitioners claim in an effort to promote their services. Over the past few
decades, the challenge grew even more complex, following a series of technological and
professional changes (Davis, 2003; Heath and Coombs, 2006). Some of these changes
fragmented the PR input flow among different people, loci, communications channels, and
old and new avenues of access to news content, eroding the effectiveness of certain
traditional approaches and research methods. While most previous studies were press
release centered and attempted to follow the traffic of such classical PR input (cf. Bollinger,
2001; Hong, 2008; Morton, 1988; Walters and Walters, 1992), the growing sophistication of
contemporary PR gave rise to new strategies and tactics, some involving less tangible and
less traceable oral exchanges (Callison, 2003; Davis, 2003; Duke, 2002; Lee and Solomon,
1991). Other traditional studies focused on the newsroom, seeking to observe newswork
patterns and PR input gatekeeping processes and yielding significant insights regarding
sourcing practices (Berkowitz, 1991; Domingo and Paterson, 2008; Gans, 1979; Tuchman,
1978). The newsroom itself underwent change over the years (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003;
Zelizer, 2009), however, losing its position as the dominant transaction point between
both industries.
Several studies tried to establish a single bottom line for PR impact on the news (as
detailed below), but the current media environment and the numerous news-influencing
opportunities available to media experts now require a multifaceted set of bottom lines.
The present study attempts to address the challenge of covering the increasingly elusive
and fragmented streams of textual and oral PR input reaching the journalists inside and
outside newsrooms. The material analyzed may contribute entire or partial items and
kickoff stories in which sources may be subsequently identified or kept anonymous.
Data were obtained in a series of face-to-face reconstruction interviews (Bustos, 2008;
Reich, 2005, 2006), in which a sample of reporters from nine leading Israeli national news
organization detailed, contact by contact, any contribution made by PR to a sample of their
freshly published items (N0841). To contextualize the data and minimize over- or
underestimation, the study encompasses all types of sources contributing to that sample
of items, including non-PR sources. It covers both PR practitioners and spokespersons,
considering their similar journalistic function (both terms will be used here interchangeably).
The Israeli case and its representativeness, to be discussed in the conclusion, appear
highly relevant at least to other Western democracies with highly competitive press and PR
systems. The contribution of this paper, however, extends beyond its national context and
specific figures (that I expect to be benchmarked by further studies). It conceptualizes PR
impact as a macro-level, multifaceted phenomenon, demonstrating how this may be
practically established according to robust, comprehensive micro-level data.
PR Impact and the News
As indicated, there are at least four major reasons for studying the impact of PR on
the news:
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The Impact of PR on Public Opinion
The primary justification for studying PR is clarification of the extent and ways it uses
the media to impact public opinion. Critical approaches claim that impact is achieved
manipulatively and invisibly (Davis, 2003; Lewis et al., 2008; Dinan and Miller, 2009). As one
PR founding father put it: ‘‘[Those] who pull the wires that control the public mind’’
embody an ‘‘invisible government which is the true ruling power’’ (Bernays, 1928, p. 47).
The Professional-autonomous Aspect
The impact of PR, that triggered the rise of objectivity in journalism (Schudson,
2008), may help illustrate the borderline, power balance and levels of independence and
interdependence between two converging occupations that*unlike conventional
professions (Abbott, 1988)*agree to share jurisdiction over the public information diet.
It may determine the extent to which the fourth estate*or the ‘‘fifth estate’’, namely
public relations (Baistow, 1985, cited by Lewis et al., 2008, p. 2)*is standing behind the
news and whether news is a product of journalists or ‘‘parajournalists’’ (Schudson, 2003,
p. 3), journalism or ‘‘churnalism’’ output (Davies, 2008, p. 59). More reliance on PR generally
means less journalistic independence, less initiative and less rigorous newswork (Lewis
et al., 2008; Reich, 2009).
Credibility
As the identity of speakers and writers shapes their ethos or believability (Gaziano
and McGrath, 1986; Rouner, 2008), substantial PR impact may call for reassessment of
perceived press credibility, reflecting on broader questions of whether news embodies
information or propaganda, facts or spin, truth or only a ‘‘patina’’ thereof (Dinan and Miller,
2009, p. 254).
Accessibility
Even non-hegemonic scholars agree that every inch captured by PR shrinks the
remaining news hole and forces alternative sources to compete more fiercely over less
space. This results in fewer opportunities to win fair news access, especially if these
sources choose not to use PR or cannot afford their services (Cottle, 2000; Davis, 2003;
Gitlin, 1980; Goldenberg, 1975; Lewis et al., 2008).
These arguments gain significance with the growing impact of PR, coupled with a
series of mutually escalating factors: erosion of advertising cost effectiveness (Koc, 2006;
Ries and Ries, 2004), dwindling journalistic resources and increasing production quotas
(Davis, 2003; Harmon and White, 2001) and an increasingly deskbound journalistic work
style (Davies, 2008; Lewis et al., 2008; Manning, 2001).
The literature suggests a variety of bottom lines for PR impact on the news, ranging
between 25 and 80 percent of news items (Cameron et al., 1996). Behind that puzzling
range is an extensive assortment of contexts*news cultures, PR agencies, news
organizations, newsbeats and research designs. This last context is particularly crucial in
today’s news environment, as traditional methods find it more and more difficult to
address the fragmented, multifaceted and sophisticated flow of PR input.
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Although this array of bottom lines is a challenge for meta-analysis, with some
caution, one may detect three general levels of PR impact in terms of percentage of items
involving PR contributions. According to the most prevalent and recurring figures, around
half of the published items (40Á55 percent) contain at least some PR input (Aronoff, 1976;
Cutlip, 1976; Lee and Solomon, 1991; Lewis et al., 2008; Sachsman, 1976; Sallot and
Johnson, 2006; Schabacker, 1963; Wilcox et al., 2000). Journalists estimate that these
figures were valid even during the initial years of American PR (Schudson, 2008).
The lower-level items (10Á35 percent) are not only less prevalent but also appear
typically in older studies and were attributed to specific contexts such as radio and
television news (Cutlip, 1976; Schabacker, 1963). Contemporary studies, however, such as
the research conducted by Lewis et al. (2008), found higher levels of PR impact even in
these channels. Extremely high impact (up to 94 percent) was noted in soft news,
consumer affairs and science, environment and health news, for which reporters are
especially dependent on expert sources (Brown et al., 1987; Cho, 2006; Covasniano, 1998;
Schwitzer, 1992).
Except in rare cases, such as Lewis et al. (2008), most studies primarily address the
‘‘breadth’’ of PR impact, i.e. the percentage of items including PR input. They tend to
ignore other aspects of PR contributions, such as their essentiality to each item. By
contrast, the current study considers these aspects and proposes a multifaceted approach
towards PR involvement in the news.
Research Question
This study focuses on one principal research question: To what extent do
spokespersons and PR practitioners affect published news?
To respond to this question comprehensively, the following five variables concerning
PR input to published items will be analyzed:
Total Involvement
This all-inclusive measure, presented as the percentage of items that attracted any
type of PR involvement, tries to encompass the full breadth of PR contribution to news
processes and products. It includes among others indirect and non-informational
contributions, such as coordinating interviews with third parties. Several major derivatives
of this variable follow:
Agenda-building Capacity
Measured as the percentage of published news items initiated by news discovery
information or story leads supplied by spokespersons and PR. It indicates the extent to
which PR, as suggested by McCombs (2005, p. 164) is indeed prominent in setting the
press agenda. Along with the previous variable, it may be considered part of the ‘‘breadth’’
of PR involvement in the news, as kicking off an item does not necessarily entail supplying
actual information beyond the initial lead.
The following measures address the depth of PR impact, i.e. its influence within
items, from three different angles:
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News-gathering Contacts
While the previous variable addresses the initial contact that kicks off an item, this
one primarily concerns subsequent contacts supplying the building blocks for a story. As
each item may include numerous news-gathering sources, the share of each source type
was calculated first within each item and then averaged across items.
News-gathering Domination (50 Percent)
This is a subset of the previous variable, referring to the percentage of items to
which PR contributed at least half (and up to 100 percent) of the gathering contacts. It
reflects PR practitioners’ capacity to supply news to reporters in a manner that obviates
their reliance on others.
Final Contribution
Percentage of final space allocated to the contribution of PR practitioners, as
estimated by the reporter.
These variables will be studied across five major news categories to test the
following hypotheses:
Newsbeat Cluster
Business reporters will rely on PR copy considerably more than their political and
domestic affairs counterparts, considering the characteristics of their newsbeat, the
relative closed nature and limited transparency of private-sector institutions, the
complexity of business issues and the general public’s low level of interest in business
affairs (Henriquez, 2000; McShane, 1995; Tunstall, 1971).
Type of Event
PR practitioners and other institutional sources tend to lose control over events for
which they are not the routine ‘‘effectors.’’ As such, they may be accorded less prominence
than usual, whereas alternative sources will be offered a greater opportunity to express
themselves during those events (Lawrence, 2000; Molotch and Lester, 1974).
Exclusiveness
Public relations materials are less exclusive than other materials, as practitioners
tend to adopt a ‘‘shotgun approach to news dissemination’’ (Berkowitz and Adams, 1990,
p. 730) to maximize exposure of their messages and enhance their chances for adoption
at least by some journalistic gatekeepers.
Prominence
PR input is expected to be accorded less prominent news placement than other
sources (according to each medium’s respective hierarchy), as the value of news
information is directly proportional to its exclusivity (Gandy, 1982, p. 29). Furthermore,
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journalists tend to display some antagonism towards PR (Aronoff, 1975; DeLorme and
Fedler, 2003; Jeffers, 1977; Kopenhaver, 1985).
Transparency
PR input would leave less clear and attributable traces in the final items than non-PR
sources (Davis, 2003; Lee and Solomon, 1991), as PR practitioners want their messages to
gain the aura of ordinary journalistic content serving the public interest. Journalists, in
turn, try to avoid being perceived as lazy people who outsource their public duties to
a third, biased party.
Methodology
An innovative methodology was required to uncover these data and overcome the
source confidentiality hurdle.
The study uses a series of reconstruction interviews. Reporters from 10 different beats
in nine leading Israeli national news organizations2
were asked to detail, source by source,
each contribution of PR to a sample of 841 news items shortly after they had been published.
Interviews were conducted face-to-face: the reporter (with a pile of sampled stories)
and interviewer (with a pile of questionnaires) sat on opposite sides of a table with a
screen between them to avoid infringement of source confidentiality. Each time, the
reporter was asked to pick one item (the interviewer could not see which) and detail how
it was obtained answering a series of questions regarding every contribution made by
every type of source, textually and orally, inside the newsroom or outside, etc. Data were
created by assigning interviewees’ oral replies to categories in a closed quantitative
questionnaire. Source types in the questionnaire were outlined as general categories (such
as senior source or PR practitioner) to avoid exposure of identifying details (for a more
detailed discussion of the methodology and full version of the questionnaire, with minor
modifications, see Reich, 2009, pp. 19Á34, 195Á200).
Interviews were conducted by research assistants carefully trained and instructed by
the author who participated at least in one pilot interview with each assistant. They were
instructed to identify problematic answers, such as inconsistencies between number of
sources and number of communication channels, or reporters’ claims of having received
leads at news scenes. In such cases, the reporters were asked about the information that
brought them to those news scenes in the first place.
The basic idea behind reconstruction interviews may be found in post hoc analysis of
different processes, such as reverse engineering for purposes of emulation. Another
example is retrospective think-aloud protocols, established by cognitive psychologists,
used in investigation of assignments such as reading, writing, designing and problemsolving
(Flower and Hayes, 1981; van den Haak et al., 2003).
The interviews, which took place during December 2006 and January 2007, were
preceded by three steps:
Random Selection of Beats and Reporters
Ten parallel printed press, online and radio newsbeats were chosen randomly
from the three major beat clusters*politics and security, domestic affairs and business
affairs*in proportion to their overall share of reporting personnel. The final selection
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comprised 80 reporters, as in one case (Haaretz), the same reporters work for the paper
and the website. Fourteen reporters were replaced with others from their beat cluster after
refusing to participate or having published less than the minimum items.
Identification of All Published Items
The sampling period extended over four weeks, reflecting an attempt to achieve a
fair balance between variety among stories and use of material still fresh in reporters’
memories. News websites were visited four times a day (Project for Excellence in
Journalism, 2006).
Random Sampling of News Items
Ten items per reporter were selected randomly, providing a sample large enough to
allay reporters’ concerns that their ethical demand for source confidentiality could be
infringed by matching their descriptions with the respective stories, but not so large as to
tax reporters’ focus and patience.
This method offers a perspective that could not be supplied by traditional methods.
Observations, for example, that yielded some of the deepest insights regarding news work
(Berkowitz, 1990; Colleen, 2010, Domingo and Patterson, 2008; Ericson et al., 1989; Gans,
1979; Tuchman, 1978) may supply a holistic view of the phenomena, free of the
underestimations of journalists’ self-reports. However, in the specific context of sourcing
and PR, they become problematic. First, observation of sourcing practices infringes source
confidentiality. Second, substantial exchanges between parties are transmitted through
channels such as telephone interviews and are thus unobservable. Third, observations
cannot measure frequencies of phenomena as the current study sought to do. Finally,
observations raise dilemmas regarding who is to be observed. Editors and producers
inhabit the newsroom but are often unaware of the vast PR materials sent directly to their
reporters. Reporters, in turn, know about almost every bit of PR-originated input that has
been assigned to them by their superiors but also receive information outside the
newsroom.
Reconstruction interviews are less speculative than sourcing studies relying on
content analysis, as news products are often unclear and equivocal regarding the
processes in which they were obtained (Brown et al., 1987; Hallin et al., 1993; Manning,
2001). Reconstruction is also free of many of the doubts arising during arduous,
impressive, detective-like content analysis, in which scholars dig for the press releases
behind the published news (Ambrosio, 1980; Lewis et al., 2008; Sachsman, 1976; Sweetser
and Brown, 2008) but always remain with an unknown number of stories whose PR
contributions were neither identified nor located. Unlike content analysis and gatekeeping
studies (Berkowitz, 1987, 1991; Brown et al., 1987), that are limited to textual input
(classically, press releases), reconstruction interviews also cover oral input.
Reconstruction interviews leave less room than interviews and surveys for journalists’
bias and free-floating self-evaluation regarding their PR feeds (Sallot and Johnson,
2006; Sinaga and Wu, 2007; Tanner, 2004). They cover a rich variety of items, topics,
organizations and circumstances. In this respect, they differ from acceptance studies that
focused on a few PR agencies or even one agency only (Bollinger, 2001; Morton, 1988;
Morton and Warren, 1992; Walters and Walters, 1992; Walters et al., 1994). They are also
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unlike gatekeeping studies that concentrated on a particular news organization or on
specific topics and newsbeats (Cho, 2006; Len- Rı´os et al., 2009; Sweetser and Brown, 2008;
Yao, 2009).
Finally, unlike most of the traditional studies cited that focus exclusively on public
relations, reconstruction interviews enable contextual study of PR and its comparison with
other types of sources. They may thus highlight the unique characteristics of PR and its
impact on the news and minimize room for over- or underestimations, partly because the
total contributions of all source types add up straightforwardly to 100 percent.
Accordingly, the present study represents hybrid research of PR and more general
sourcing*a genre that tends to focus on the affiliation and regularity of source use and
ignores the specific functions held by people inside the respective institutions (Berkowitz,
1987; Brown et al., 1987; Dimitrova and Stro¨mba¨ck, 2009; Sigal, 1973).
Obviously, reconstruction interviews are not entirely free of shortcomings. Although
they channel the reporters’ testimony into specific accounts of specific measures behind
specific items, they are still highly dependent on journalists’ self-reports and consequently
cannot rule out some underestimation. Furthermore, these findings enable us to
determine with high confidence that the actual impact of PR on the news is not lower
than the reported levels but not necessarily substantially higher, unless specific evidence
or logic suggests otherwise. As reconstruction interviews are highly dependent on
reporters’ recollections, research focused on freshly-published materials, thereby minimizing
possible memory gaps.
Another undeniable methodological weakness is the percentage of item space
dedicated to PR input, which ideally should have been based on objective word count,
rather than reporters’ estimations. However, independent counts were unthinkable given
the study’s design and source confidentiality preservation arrangements, requiring strict
separation between the published items and the deciphering of the processes by which
they were obtained. Nevertheless, the reporters’ estimations may be considered fairly
reliable, for three reasons: (1) Journalists are used to estimating word counts regularly; (2)
calculations were conducted while the respective items were in front of their eyes; and (3)
even straightforward counts cannot be totally precise here, as coders find it difficult to
decide where the contribution of a specific source begins and ends (Hallin et al., 1993).
Findings
The findings present a multifaceted outlook of PR impact on published news.
I obtained detailed accounts of 2032 contacts between the reporters and different news
sources, comprising 95 percent of all contacts (the remainder were contacts with sources
exceeding four per item, the particulars of which were not detailed in the interviews
because of time constraints). PR was involved in 765 (38 percent) of these contacts and in
656 (36 percent) of the 1812 news-gathering contacts that contributed directly to
published content. PR practitioners contributed varying amounts of material for 73
percent of news items but succeeded in supplying 100 percent of the information for only
22 percent.
Initial analysis of the results confirms that the multifaceted approach covers the
input of PR rather comprehensively, incorporating 64 percent of non-textual contacts and
at least 55 percent of unobservable contacts, carried out either outside the newsroom or
via oral channels*cellular and landline telephones. For 5 percent of them, the PR
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contribution was non-informational, consisting of technical assistance such as coordination
of interviews in which a third party served as the up-front source.
Instead of using significance tests, which are not valid if rows are interdependent,
the maximal standard error (Max SE) was calculated for each column. As shown in Tables 1
and 2, in a vast majority of cases, the Max SE is much smaller than the differences between
values in the table.
Table 1 displays the extent to which spokespersons and public relations
practitioners*compared with other types of sources*contributed to the published
sample of items (variables and their measurements were introduced in the Research
Question section).
Findings show that the major source types are public relations and senior sources.
Their combined contribution amounts to 70 percent of both total contacts and their
estimated share in the final items. Although their representation in final items is similar, PR
and senior sources contribute to news items in remarkably different ways.
The contribution of spokespersons to the news declines systematically and more
dramatically than that of any other source as we proceed rightward through the table. Their
share starts with an overwhelming total involvement, reaching 76 percent of the items and
then declining steadily to only 36 percent of the final items, as estimated by the reporters. This
declining pattern goes beyond the first column, that is higher by definition, as it comprises all
other columns. On the other hand, the second most prominent source, senior sources,
displays a slight rise, except for the initial stage, that is higher by definition, as indicated.
The other source types will be addressed only briefly: non-seniors, the subordinates
of seniors, have far more limited news access, probably in accordance with the
TABLE 1
Involvement of different source types in the news (%)
Total
involvement
Agenda
building
Gathering stage
contacts
% of final
content*
Mean Domination
(50%)
N 841 841 841 841 838
Spokespersons
and PR
76 50 41 38 36
Senior sources$ 48 20 29 20 32
Non-senior
sources%
33 15 18 12 19
Ordinary
citizens
9 3 4 3 4
Other§ 20 12 7 3 7
Total Á 100 99 Á 98
Max SE 2 2 1 2 1
Max SE: maximal standard error. Á, Column does not add up to 100%.
*As estimated by reporters.
$Heads of agencies and corporations such as chairs, CEOs, presidents and vice presidents;
government ministers and their deputies; heads of parliamentary committees; party and faction
leaders; high-ranking officers (army: colonel and above, police: deputy commander and higher);
mayors and their deputies.
%Sources subordinate to senior sources.
§Documents, mass media, newsroom messages, archives and news scene attendance, reporters’
deductions.
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‘‘hierarchy of credibility’’ (Becker, 1970, p. 103), that grants precedence to ‘‘chiefs’’ over
‘‘Indians’’, even if the latter have more newsworthy information (Cohen, 1963, p. 155).
Ordinary citizens, as could be expected, constitute the smallest source, as noted in
previous studies in the United States and Sweden (Dimitrova and Stro¨mba¨ck, 2009;
Gans, 1979).
We proceed to break down total PR involvement into key news variables, thus
testing hypotheses regarding susceptibility to PR input, as shown in Table 2.
Findings will be discussed separately for each key variable.
Newsbeat Cluster
Although business news resembles domestic affairs beats (such as police, local,
health, environment etc.) regarding most aspects of PR impact, it does contain more PR
subsequently, as expected. This is primarily the result of PR’s domination in the
gathering stage, in which it accounts for at least 50 percent of contacts. Coverage
of the politics and security beat cluster (encompassing beats such as politics,
diplomatic, parliamentary and military affairs), is more independent of PR in every
possible respect.
TABLE 2
PR involvement according to newsbeat, event, exclusiveness and prominence (%)
Category Variable Total
involvement
Agenda
building
Gathering stage
contacts
% of final
content*
Mean Domination
(50%)
Newsbeat
cluster
Politics and
security
67 39 35 29 30
Domestic
affairs
78 52 41 35 36
Business 77 54 43 45 40
Max SE 4 4 3 4 3
N 841 841 841 841 838
Type of event Scheduled 79 59 39 38 35
Non-scheduled 77 47 44 40 39
Proceedings 69 44 39 39 37
Other 69 37 36 28 31
Max SE 5 5 4 5 4
N 841 841 841 841 838
Exclusiveness Non-exclusive 81 61 45 45 43
Exclusive 59 20 27 18 17
Max SE 3 3 2 3 2
N 835 835 835 835 832
Item
prominence$
Most
prominent
71 40 32 25 26
Regular 76 53 43 41 39
Max SE 4 4 3 3 3
N 835 835 835 835 832
*As estimated by reporters.
$Prominent: in print*front-page items; radio*opening headline; online*main headline in news
section or homepage.
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Exclusiveness
Exclusive items predictably contain substantially and systematically less PR involvement
throughout. The dramatic difference between exclusive items and others begins in
the discovery phase and is also evident in dominance over news and in the estimated
proportion of PR materials in the final content.
Prominence
As anticipated, PR practitioners are more involved in regular items than in prominent
ones (print*front page items; radio*opening headline; online*main headline in the
news section or homepage). Although this difference is hardly perceptible in total
involvement, it is becoming clearer in other aspects.
Type of Event
According to expectations and accepted wisdom, promoters control routine events
more than scandals and accidents. By contrast, the type of event makes only a marginal
difference in the impact of PR on the news. Several nuances should be taken into account,
however: the substantially greater PR involvement in the discovery stage of scheduled
events conforms with common wisdom, whereas the slightly greater involvement in the
gathering stage and the estimated share of non-scheduled events among the final items
appears to contradict it.
Anonymity
Table 3 presents the extent to which spokespersons’ impact is marked transparently
in the final items by clear attribution, compared to other types of sources.
Spokespersons and PR practitioners rarely leave clear impressions on published
content. Only 11 percent of PR contacts are identified clearly, as compared with 36Á52
percent among non-PR sources. By contrast, ordinary citizens constitute the most clearly
identified sources. The KruskalÁWallis test shows that differences in anonymity rates
among the source types are substantial and significant.
TABLE 3
Anonymity of different source types (%)
Anonymous Hinted Identified
Spokespersons and PR practitioners 76 14 11
Senior sources 45 14 41
Non-seniors 53 12 36
Ordinary citizens 37 11 52
Others 57 4 40
N01684. KruskalÁWallis x2
40159.49; p00.00.
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Discussion
Although journalists exert greater efforts to limit PR presence in the news than they
do regarding any other source type, PR receives the lion’s share of the news menu.
The relatively lower presence of PR in political coverage may be explained by the
nature of political reporters, who tend to possess seniority and use more sophisticated
sourcing practices (Ericson et al., 1989; Reich, 2009). Alternatively, it may be due to the less
mediated nature of politics (as compared with business, for example), in which reporters
and politicians communicate directly, bypassing spokespersons and assistants.
The journalistic desire for exclusives apparently reaches its limits where PR
practitioners are concerned. The findings suggest that the PR industry is still in its Fordist
stage, employing one-size-fits-all strategies more than specifically tailored messages for
each addressee (Berkowitz and Adams, 1990).
According to current findings, the advantage of established sources during routine
events is limited to the initial stage of news discovery. Nevertheless, there are no signs of any
disadvantage and loss of control during non-scheduled events that would favor alternative
sources. This surprising finding may reflect the sophistication of practitioners, who learned
to restore control quickly using crisis communication strategies and tactics (Seeger et al.,
2001; Ulmer et al., 2007). Alternatively, it could be indicative of the special conformism
journalists exhibit during times of crisis and disasters, restraining their adversarial coverage
as part of a bias towards ‘‘normalization’’ (Bennett, 2003; Vincent et al., 1989).
The high percentage of unattributed items invites a more critical approach towards
PR and challenges the validity of content analysis that may be too speculative a method
for studying sourcing in general and PR in particular.
The composite contribution of PR and non-PR suggests that journalists prefer formal
sources*either heads of organizations or their ‘‘source professionals’’: the top or the tap.
Ordinary citizens score low on these credibility and accessibility hierarchies, as is evident in
their low presence and extensive identification. In rare cases, people may find themselves
in the right place at the wrong time (Allan, 2006, p. 152) and serve as eyewitnesses, heroes
or victims. Even in such cases, however, journalists tend to identify them more than any
other source, either because citizens are not strategic enough to negotiate their
anonymity or because reporters perceive their names as crucial for authentication of
the relevant stories.
Conclusion
News is a co-production of the fourth and fifth (PR) estates, to which the latter’s
contribution appears to be broader, richer and more complex than suggested by former
studies. A multifaceted examination of their impact on the news shows that items totally
free of PR involvement are an exceptionally rare phenomenon: only 40 percent of the
items involve no direct input of information and no more than quarter of them are totally
free of any kind of PR involvement, as far as reporters can tell.
Journalists are willing to outsource substantial parts of their role as suppliers of the
public news diet and share it*on a daily basis*with another occupation whose
commitment to the public interest is questionable, to say the least. The price they
pay*losing exclusive jurisdiction over their domain (Abbott, 1988)*is far too high for
most professions to bear. Obviously, attempts at setting normative thresholds of
intolerability for PR involvement in the news can only be arbitrary. Nevertheless, if PR
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involvement in 40Á50 percent of items is perceived as damaging to the press, democracy
and equal news access (Brown et al., 1987; Lewis et al., 2008), the complex picture
suggested by this study only increases such concerns.
The journalistic logic enabling this mass collaboration, as reflected in practical
treatment of PR sources, incorporates two measures of defense. First, the smokescreen of
anonymity, in which the great majority of PR contributions remain unattributed, addresses
the interests of both professions, although aggravating the public’s already limited
capacity to evaluate news information and reassess its source credibility (McManus, 1992;
Rouner et al., 1999). The second and more practical measure taken by journalists is
constant restraint of PR contributions, primarily by relying on additional news sources. At
least one additional source was involved in more than 75 percent of the items. While
journalists would probably perceive this situation as an appropriate counterbalance to
heavy reliance on PR, critics would suspect the effectiveness of this arrangement that still
allows PR to set the agenda for every other item and serve all too often as a dominant or
even exclusive news source. Furthermore, they may presume that actual PR involvement is
even greater than journalists admit, including behind the scenes string pulling of which
journalists may not necessarily be aware.
In any case, the current findings suffice to suggest that (1) PR and journalism are
highly interdependent occupations; (2) PR’s constant advantageous access renders it a key
player in blocking alternative sources indirectly; and (3) PR gains excessive access to public
opinion in non-transparent ways that hamper public evaluation of the information and
reassessment of source credibility. By allowing PR sources, unlike others, to remain
anonymous, journalists compromise their ethical principles of due disclosure (Kovatch and
Rosenstiel, 2001). Moreover, they validate Marshall McLuhan’s brilliant and grotesque
metaphor, according to which the PR practitioner is the ventriloquist who produces texts
covertly, while the journalistic dummy moves its lips to distract the audience’s attention
from the text’s true originator (1964, p. 213).
Further studies using this multifaceted approach to benchmark the findings in other
countries will undoubtedly uncover more extensive results than those obtained in former
studies. They may well incorporate entire new areas of PR activity such as oral exchanges,
out-of-newsroom exchanges and PR involvement in agenda building. Lacking comparative
data, it would be too speculative to forecast whether their findings would be exactly
the same as those of the current study. Nevertheless, the Israeli case study was found to be
highly similar*at least in terms of perceived impact of PR on journalists’ work*to those
obtained in 16 other Western and non-Western countries, according to unpublished data
derived from a Worlds of Journalism research project.3
While the average impact of PR
across countries was rated by journalists as 2.25 (on a scale ranging from 10extremely
influential to 50not influential at all), the average among Israeli journalists was 2.13, very
close to that of Austria (2.15), a little higher than for the United States (2.27), Spain (2.24), and
Australia (2.55) and somewhat lower than those of Switzerland (2.04) and Germany (1.97).
The current findings are even more representative according to the claim that the
‘‘promotional impulse and agents’’ operate similarly around the world (Dinan and Miller, 2009,
pp. 250, 257), or at least in Western democracies, characterized by a competitive national
media system and a booming and professionalizing PR industry, as in Israel (Seletzky, 2007;
Toledano, 2005; Tsafrir, 2000). The Israeli PR industry does have some peculiarities, such as its
young age, geographical concentration, small scale (employing some 2000 practitioners
according to conventional estimates*see Tsafrir, 2000) and its tendency to emphasize media
IMPACT OF PR ON PUBLISHED NEWS 811
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relations over other PR activities (Toledano, 2005; Tsafrir, 2000). The extent to which these
features affect the impact of PR on the news remains unclear, however.
Israeli PR history, like that of the United States, is rooted in and inspired by a revolution,
although the Israeli legacy was more propagandistic and less democratic*at least during the
first decades of statehood (Toledano, 2005). The turning point, as in the United Kingdom,
occurred during the 1980s, when both PR industries were released from their public-sector
orientation, modernized, liberalized and professionalized, partly as a result of extensive
privatization (Miller and Dinan, 2000; Toledano and McKie, 2007; Tsafrir, 2000).
Today, Israel finds itself in a vicious circle similar to that of other Western countries,
as news organizations lay off editorial staffs and expect the remaining employees to meet
the same production levels inviting more and more reliance on PR (Davis, 2003), This, in
turn, accelerates the circle, eroding the profit model of journalism and rendering
parajournalism more promising than ever.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Research was supported by a grant from the Israel Foundations Trustees (2006Á2008).
The author thanks Sharon Ben-David, Oz Carmel, Alex Nirenburg and Dror Walter for their
help in compiling the data, and Tali Avishay-Arbel for her statistical advice.
NOTES
1. An earlier version of this paper was voted one of the top three faculty papers of the
journalism division at the International Communication Association.
2. The criteria for choosing organizations were as follows: (1) national news organizations;
(2) market leaders; (3) employers of dedicated reporting staffs. Beats were selected from
reporters’ full lists, prepared by following the reporters’ bylines over a three-month
period according to the following criteria: (1) mainstream beats in each of the nine news
organizations; (2) output published primarily in news and business sections; (3) covered
by full-time reporters; (4) reporters who publish at least 12 items per month. The fourth
medium, television, was omitted to avoid overextending the scope of an already amply
broad study and to eliminate the production and visual biases that television embodies
(Bantz et al., 1980; Hemingway, 2008).
3. See http://www.worldsofjournalisms.org/public.htm, accessed 25 October 2009.
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