In this video I will show using university
research studies that the UK news is largely
not written by journalists but by PR releases
and then take a deeper look at the BBC sources
of news to show that the government has a
major role in setting the agenda of news debate.
The research papers and supporting material
are in the description box below.
The role of PR influence is huge in the UK
press.
A study carried out by Cardiff University
found that 49% of the articles sampled in
the UK quality press, for example the Guardian,
The Times, Independent, Daily Telegraph and
the mid-market Daily Mail were from PR companies,
where 30% of those were copied verbatim and
19% were largely copied from the PR release.
Moreover, direct replication is rarely attributed.
Many stories apparently written by a newspaper’s
reporter originated in other sources and seem
to have been largely cut and pasted.
Only 5 % of articles in newspapers were found
which did not make use of any agency copy.
In these instances, the story is often solely
or principally based around personal perspectives
or case studies that have been researched
by individual journalists.
The study verified that at least 41 per cent
of press articles and 52 per cent of broadcast
news items contain PR materials which play
an agenda-setting role or where PR material
makes up the bulk of the story.
This does not mean that the rest of the print
stories or broadcast stories in the sample
are "PR-free", simply that no verifiable evidence
of PR activity could be identified.
When it comes to governmental PR, there is
a striking difference between print and broadcast
news.
On TV and radio, use of government PR dominates,
with 39 percent of PR material coming from
this source.
The proportion for the press is just over
half this figure (21 per cent).
This may reflect the style of BBC journalism
(where most of the broadcast sample comes
from), which research suggests tends to favour
"official", often governmental sources, see
my video on ownership to see why that is.
I will look in more detail at the BBC later
on in this video.
In order to measure the overall degree of
independent journalism, the study looked at
the number of stories that did not replicate
either PR, agencies or other media.
The figures shown are especially striking:
60 percent of press stories rely wholly or
mainly on pre-packaged information, a further
20 per cent are reliant to varying degrees
on PR and agency materials.
Of the remaining 20 per cent only 12 per cent
are without any discernible prepackaged content
and in 8 percent of cases the presence of
PR content was unclear.
The reliance of journalists on sources such
as PR personnel and government officials is
referred to as ‘source journalism’.
By providing the news feedstock, they cause
reporters to react rather than initiate.
Journalists who are fed news stories are less
likely to go looking for their own stories,
which could bring negative publicity.
In this way source journalism displaces investigative
reporting.
By being the primary source of a journalist’s
information on a particular story, PR people
can influence the way the story is told and
who tells it.
Journalists who have access to highly placed
government and corporate sources have to keep
them on side by not reporting anything adverse
about them or their organisations.
Otherwise they risk losing them as sources
of information.
In return for this loyalty, their sources
occasionally give them good stories, leaks
and access to special interviews.
Unofficial information, or leaks, give the
impression of investigative journalism, but
are often strategic manoeuvres on the part
of those with position or power (Ricci 1993:
99).
‘It is a bitter irony of source journalism
… that the most esteemed journalists are
precisely the most servile.
For it is by making themselves useful to the
powerful that they gain access to the “best”
sources’.
Now let’s look deeper at the BBC and which
sources it uses.
For this I’m using a seperate 2017 study,
again by Cardiff University and I’m using
the BBC just because it is the UK’s most
trusted source of news and because it regularly
promotes itself as being impartial.
Ensuring impartiality, ideally entails the
provision of a broad view of the range
and weight of opinion on a particular topic.
It means that journalists play an active role
in constructing the narrative surrounding
the range of opinion on a particular topic,
as they seek to reflect the diversity of the
public(s) they represent, while at the same
time attempting to ‘bind the nation and
nurture a collective climate of rational opinion
formation’.
Reporters who aim to be impartial should ‘take
account of (i) a full
Range of views and opinions; (ii) the relative
weight of opinion...; and (iii) changes that
occur in the range and weight of opinion over
time’
The most striking finding of the study was
the dominance of political sources: they accounted
for almost half of all source appearances
in 2007 and more than half in 2012.
On the topic of Britain’s relationship to
Europe alone, political sources accounted
for 65% of source appearances in 2007, 79.2%
in 2012.
The pattern of political source dominance
indicates that far from adopting a paradigm
of impartiality the tendency towards an elite
and relatively narrow range of debate only
intensified between the 2 years, which the
study covered.
Nor is it unique to the BBC: In an additional
study carried out, where researchers examined
national programming across the BBC, Channel
4 and ITV, there was a general pattern of
dominance of party-political sources.
By contrast to politicians, members of the
public were used as sources a total of 133
times in 2007 or (11.4%), and 85 times in
2012 or (8.5%).
These often appeared late in a story, As such,
non-elite sources were not primarily setting
the agenda for debate, but reacting to unfolding
news events.
This is consistent with research on media
representations of citizens which demonstrates
that although ordinary people appear frequently
in the news, this does not mean that they
frame public debate or provide new perspectives
on political issues.
Political sources were much more likely than
other source types to be featured in the
opening sections of news reports.
This had the consequence of framing reports
from
party-political perspectives which other sources
then had to respond to, demonstrating the
power of political sources to serve as ‘primary
definers’.
If we look in detail at the most frequently
cited political source types, there is a clear
pattern: Westminster sources are by far the
most prominent voices heard in BBC coverage,
and the incumbent government outranks the
opposition, demonstrating the persistence
of the ‘Westminster bubble’ and the advantages
enjoyed by incumbents in broadcast coverage.
There might be several reasons for the entrenched
nature of this paradigm.
Manning in his book “News and News Sources”
argues that the ‘pressure of news deadlines
and the importance of obtaining information
rich in news values, encourages a dependency
upon official
sources’ (p. 55).
The main problem with all this is that the
media depend uncritically on elite information
sources and hence push forward elite interests.
This is the primary assertion of the “Propaganda
Model” proposed by Noam Chomsky and Edward
S. Herman.
The model explains how mass media is used
as a propaganda tool by the government and
large corporations to “manufacture the consent”
of the public towards certain policies or
decisions, whether economic, governmental,
or otherwise.
Due to the influence that these elite sectors
exert, the media self modulates, engages in
voluntary censorship, over or under reports
certain issues, and exercises purposeful bias
to present a distorted picture of the world
that is beneficial to the powerful, but offers
nothing substantial to the public at large.
The news is shaped by the choice of people
journalists interview for research, quotes
and on-air appearances.
The conventions of objectivity, depersonalisation
and balance tend to transform the news into
a series of quotes and comments from a remarkably
small number of sources.
Most journalists tend to use, as sources,
people from the mainstream establishment,
whom they believe have more credibility with
their audience.
Highly placed government and corporate spokespeople
are the safest and easiest sources in terms
of giving stories legitimacy.
When environmentalists are used as sources
they tend to be leaders of the ‘mainstream’
environmental groups that are seen as more
moderate.
Those without power, prestige and position
have difficulty establishing their credibility
as a source of news and tend to be marginalised.
Balance means getting opinions from all sides,
but not necessarily covering the spectrum
of opinion.
More radical opinions are generally left out.
Government environmental authorities can be
used as an environmental source in one story
and as an anti-environmentalist source in
another.
Nor are opposing opinions always treated equally
in terms of space, positioning and framing.
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