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A large majority of journalists and public relations practitioners around the world say it is not professional for media to accept payments from news sources in return for coverage. Nevertheless, more than one in three practitioners and one in five journalists say it is generally considered okay in their countries for national media to accept such payments. Only 60 percent say that paid-for material is always or often identified as advertising in national daily newspapers.

These findings come from a global Internet survey conducted last year by Dr. Katerina Tsetsura, University of Oklahoma. The Miami presentation (summary version now available on the Institute for Public Relations website) provided an initial top-line review of the research results. Future papers and presentations will further explore the relationships among higher levels of professionalism (journalists and public relations people), higher salaries for journalists, and lower incidence of media bribery.

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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3 thoughts on “Payment for Coverage ‘Not Professional’

  1. Dear Dean,

    Thanks for the clarification above. While you insist the term “should be considered a neutral term” it seems to have taken on a lfe of its own—in a pejorative trajectory.

    If you “google” the term you will see what I mean.

    I do acknowledge the positive connotations of the term by referring to the dilemmas associated with it—positive subsidies.

    Unfortunately we may have to live with both the neutral and pejorative connotations of the term just as we have learned to live with the fact that “public relations” is not as noble as we in the profession would like to believe.

    Don

  2. Interesting research. Having began my journalistic career over thirty years ago in Kenya and thereafter studied, practised and lectured journalism in Europe, I can claim to have some perspective on the topic. In the early 70s when I started as a cub reporter, repporters used to get what were popularly known as “handouts.” The amount was inconsequential and there was no expection that the story would be printed or aired. It was rather an attempt by the news source to buy long term goodwill. I have later learned there was rampart direct bribing of leading journalists by the then regime in power in the 1990s.

    In Europe this influence (direct or indirect) is more subtle ans euphemistically called “information subsidies”—the news source covers the cost of covering the story—press tours or press junkets are called. The practice was rampant in the computer industry in the 1990s when computer companies “sponsored” tours to trade fairs for journalists—who were obliged to write something after having stayed at 5 star hotel during the trip.

    These “information subsidies” sometimes present a legitimate dilemma for editors who don’t have the resources to cover their own travel costs in connection with an important story. Should editorial management say no to a trip paid for by the WWF to remote location to cover an enviromental story? What about if the WWF provides a video press release with material that can be used in a TV sending?

    Invariably they’re the large influential media houses that have the resources to finance their own travels. The struggling small publications around the globe would never be able to cover the important stories if it were not for “information subsidies.”

    Do white house reporters pay for the “subsidy” of flying on Air Force One when covering the US president’s overseas travels?

  3. Dear Don,

    As a co-researcher in this continuing stream of scholarship (although not a co-researcher of Katerina’s sole-authored study reported above), I will note the following from the original research proposal that I had written in 2001, i.e., the term “information subsidies” was originally conceived by communication scholar O. H. Gandy Jr. to label editorial content that public relations practitioners provide free of charge to media (Hunt and Grunig, 1994, p. 46), i.e., “information subsidy” should be considered a neutral term, e.g., a “news release” that has intrinsic value to the consumers of news media in-and-of-itself.  The way that Katerina and I (and most public relations scholars) use the term is not intended to be pejorative in any way.  Neither does it refer to perquisites given to journalists, such as free trips, etc.

    Dean

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