o a great extent, PR people have "worked to erode the autonomy of journalists at the micro level ". Other researchers follow this line:
What passes for news of politics is often an inextricable mixture of messages from different sources. Advertising, public relations, reports of opinion polls, and propaganda become mixed up in the news product along with facts and editorial opinions. It certainly tends to undermine any simple faith in the reliability and independence of news.
Media and PR in Society
The news media are the most prominent instrument for disseminating information in society. The media have become an increasingly important stage for organizations 'external communication. Editor of a business magazine:
В«Today, the media are the most important marketplace - all important deals are settled in the media sphere/... /. And as everyone is squeezed together on the same media scene, it becomes very loud, very crowded and very short of oxygen. That's where the PR business comes in В»(Editor, business magazine).
The media, however, do not constitute a platform with actors of equal importance to PR practitioners. Rather, the media sphere appears as a media hierarchy. Typically, the largest radio and television stations along with the large national newspapers constitute the most important targets for PR activities. Within television, news programmes are especially sought after, followed by talk shows and entertainment programmes. For PR activities directed at the print media, the editorial and debate pages of the daily morning newspapers are essential targets. When it comes to activities such as product promotions and launches, trade magazines and other types of specialized press increase in ranking and become a high priority. For opinion-generating campaigns, regional and local media are also of interest. However, the latter types of media organizations pick up PR-related information mostly through news agencies, and thus their journalists experience little direct connection with PR agents. p> The features of the relationship between PR agents and news journalists vary with the type of organization or consultancy they represent. Journalists often claim a skeptical approach to those representing commercial interests, as journalistic norms have long deemed textual product placement despicable. Representation in the interest of political organizations, on the other hand, sets a different tone because of these organizations 'position as being fundamental to a democratic society and therefore considered to be legitimate opinion leaders. Their actions thus become "in the interest of the public ". Public authorities are also by their nature obvious targets of media observation.
Between the corporate interest groups and the political groupings stands a middle-category - the non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations with a clear social ideology are often treated much like a party or public authority by the media. Furthermore, representatives of non-social ideology groupings often aim for publicity by trying to pass off their PR-activities as relevant to policy or community matters, regardless of whether this is actually the case. In other words, they attempt to move the characterization of a specific organization and its activities from the commercial sphere up to the societal/political one. However, one can say that the media's perceived understanding of the potential social impact of the organizations the PR-agents represent largely determines the conditions for the relation.
The Editorial Conditions
The impact potential of the news media is of course a crucial factor in why journalists are a prioritized target of actions taken by the PR industry. However, there are at least two additional reasons for why media publicity is considered the best way to reach the public - and thereby to achieve a desired image and swing public opinion or parts of it in a favorable direction.
First, publication in the media has a higher level of credibility than other communication channels do. Second, compared to advertising, media publicity is a cost-effective method.
It should be added that today's senders, whether they are professionals within an organization or hired consultants, find it fairly easy to get material published in newspapers. The prevailing conditions are the result of decreases in editorial staff in recent years and increasing demands for raised production goals for each journalist. "Today, we are so pressed by shrinking advertising revenue and diminishing circulation rates, that we try to save, we cut back wherever we can ", said one editor. The work climate has created an increasingly stressful situation and resulted in less time for journalistic fieldwork, especially with regard to investigative efforts. That, in turn, has created an increase...
