Bob Franklin, Justin Lewis and Andrew Williams
The manufacture of news, unlike other forms of production, relies on inputs from individuals and organisations located outside the formal news organisation in which production takes place (Franklin 1997, pp. 19–21). They are not paid in the usual sense of that word for their contribution and they are not subject to managerial authority. And yet they are vital to the news production process. Their cooperation and participation in the processes of news gathering and reporting is the outcome of negotiations and bargains struck implicitly or explicitly between them and journalists. They are the news sources on which all journalists rely for their livelihood. The relationship between the two groups is complex, shifts across time and particular settings and has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention (Ericson et al. 1989; Gans 1979; Larsson 2002). An understanding of the relationship between journalists and their sources sits at the heart of journalism studies.
In the UK, the expansive public relations sector has become an increasingly significant source of news-serving not only as an agenda setter but actually providing stories which inform journalists’ copy. Declining newspaper circulations and falling advertising revenues have prompted a crisis of profitability, job cuts within journalism and journalists’ growing reliance on public relations materials to fill newspapers’ editorial pages (Lewis, Williams and Franklin 2008a and 2008b). Davies describes PR as one of the two “primary conveyor belts” (the other being news agencies) feeding “the assembly line in the news factory” with the “raw materials” which journalists use to construct the national news (2008, p.74). This recent recognition of the resulting “Flat Earth News” has scholarly precedents. Thirty years ago Cutlip (1976) claimed 45% of newspaper stories originated in PR materials, while Golding and Elliot’s (1979) classic study identified broadcast news as little more than “a passive reflection of the information provided by the information producing strata” (1979, p.169). But the argument here is that the recent rapid growth in public relations across the 1990s, in tandem with the stasis in the number of journalists engaged in news production, has impacted on journalists’ news room practice, transforming them into mere processors rather than originators of news. This increasingly significant role for PR in shaping news agendas has triggered what has variously been described as ‘churnalism’ (Davies 2008), ‘McJournalism’ (Franklin 2005) and ‘newszak’ (Franklin 1997).
This chapter examines the shifting ‘editorial balance’ between journalism and public relations and the impact of the latter on journalists’ products and professional practices in both the national and local press. We begin by considering briefly how scholars have understood the relationships between journalists and public relations.
Two theoretical ‘take off’ points inform the subsequent analysis. The first acknowledges the importance of Gans’ influential dance metaphor in identifying the cooperative, but not necessarily equal, character of relationships between journalists and sources. “It takes two to tango” he suggests, but “sources usually lead” (Gans 1979). More recently, Reich has argued that which partner becomes dominant and ‘leads’ varies at different stages in the cycle of news gathering and reporting (2006, pp. 497–515), while White and Hobsbawm identify a “love-hate relationship” (2007, pp. 284–5) which acknowledges the potential conflict inherent in these relations, which is typically trumped by a requirement for “mutal reciprocity” and cooperative ways of working if both journalists and PR sources are to achieve their professional objectives (Blumler and Gurevitch 1995). Some observers believe that such mutual reciprocity means that any “distinct professional identities” or “boundaries” between journalists and PR professionals are blurring, if not “vanishing” (Deuze 2007, p. 141).
Journalists typically object to this characterisation, arguing that it implies a too dominant role for sources. “Getting too close” to sources offends a key professional principle, and risks blunting journalists’ critical edge transforming the journalistic watchdog into a public relations lapdog. This more conflictual account of the relationship is articulated in near caricature form by columnist Richard Littlejohn during his days at the Sun. “The job of someone like me”, he claims, “is to sit at the back and throw bottles.” Politicians and their PR advisers are among his favourite targets. “Politicians employ an entire industry,” he suggests, “often using public money, to present themselves as favourably as possible and I certainly don’t see it as my job to inflate the egos of little men” (Franklin, 1994, 15).
But the belief that public relations is influential in shaping news and editorial contents in newspapers has become increasingly commonplace among academics (Maloney 2006), journalists (Marr 2004) and public relations professionals (White and Hobsbawm 2007).
Financial Times journalist John Lloyd makes this dependence explicit.
The normal journalistic approach to PRs … is grossly self serving … It glosses over, ignores or even denies the fact that much of current journalism … is public relations in the sense that stories, ideas, features and interviews are either suggested, or in the extreme actually written by public relations people. Until that becomes open and debated … we will continue to have this artificially wide gulf where journalists pose as fearless seekers of truth and PRs are slimy creatures trying to put one over on us. It is not remotely like that (Guardian 10 April 2006, p. 3).
A second theoretical starting point is provided by Oscar Gandy’s notion of an information subsidy, understood as “efforts by policy actors to increase the consumption of persuasive messages by reducing their costs” (1982). Gandy argues that PR practitioners offer a form of subsidy to news organisations via press releases, press conferences, VNRs (Video News Release), press briefings and lobbying. This enables them to reduce the costs of newsgathering and hence to maintain profitability in the context of declining circulations and advertising revenues for newspapers. News subsidies offer the prospect of not merely “cheap news” but “free news”. They allow news organisations opportunities to “square the circle” between cost cutting (by reducing journalists’ wages and the numbers of journalists employed) and sustaining, if not substantially increasing, news output (which has occurred in the context of UK newspapers), in order to maintain profitability in the highly competitive market in which news media are obliged to operate. But these subsidies exact their own demanding price. As news gathering and news reporting is increasingly “outsourced” to public relations professionals, journalists assume the role of desk-bound, office-based recipients and processors of the news gathering activities of those “outside the newsroom”: the growing army of “journalism literate PR professionals” (Franklin 1997, Ch 1).
A recent study of trends in the employment of newspaper journalists in the UK offers empirical endorsement of Gandy’s claims and signals the potential for PR practitioners to colonise the editorial ground “vacated” by journalists (Lewis et al. 2006). Detailed scrutiny of the annual reports and accounts of nine leading UK newspaper groups between 1985–2004 suggested that “throughout the 1990s, the total number of employees in these groups remained at a fairly stable average of 1000 employees per group with average editorial employees also being fairly constant at around 500 employees per group”1 (Lewis et al. 2006, p. 7). The average number of editorial staff employed in each group in 1985 was 786, falling to a low of 427 in 1987 following News International’s move to Wapping, but rising again through the 1990s to an average 741 in 2005, a figure very close to the number of journalist employed twenty years earlier. The study identified considerable variations between newspaper groups with Express Newspapers reducing journalist numbers from 968 to 532 between 1996 and 2004, while the total number of Guardian employees (editorial and other staffs) effectively doubled from 725 to 1429 between 1991 and 2000, reflecting commitments to online publication (ibid, pp. 7–8).
But significantly, while the number of working journalists has remained fairly static, the study identified “a very substantial increase in the overall size of … national daily newspapers” with the average number of pages devoted to news and other editorial increasing virtually threefold from “a 14.6 page average in 1985 to 41 pages by 2006” (ibid. pp. 10–11). This expansion in newspapers’ news sections, moreover, occurred alongside a marked growth in the number and pagination of supplements and the development of online editions. The study concludes that journalists’ productivity increased significantly across the period signalling a “relative decline” in staffing compared with the 1980s up to the mid-1990s.
Across the same period, but in striking contrast, UK public relations has experienced explosive growth in the corporate private sector measured by the number of consultancies, their employees, revenues and profitability. During the 1980s and 1990s, for example, “growth rates for the medium and large British consultancies typically reached 20-40 per cent per annum” (Miller and Dinan 2000, p. 5). The public sector of PR has also enjoyed rapid expansion reflecting the tendency of central and local government information services – along with voluntary organisations and charities – to appoint increasing numbers of press and information officers, special advisers (spin doctors) and marketing specialists to meet politicians’ growing commitments to public information campaigns and management of news agendas (Davis 2008, p. 274; Franklin 2004, pp. 103–106). Summarising this growth in agencies, practitioners, income and profits in UK public relations, Davis argued that “there are 2,500 agencies and 47,800 people working in the public relations profession in the UK. This figure excludes the 125,000 people working in the associated advertising and marketing industries, those working in PR support industries (e.g., press cutting, media evaluation, news distribution services), and the many professionals who have had media training. The estimated total turnover of the industry in 2005, consultancy and in-house, was £6.6 billion” (Davis 2008, p. 273). When estimates of the numbers of journalists across all media platforms oscillate between 40,000 (Franklin 1997, p. 51–53) and “between 60,000 and 70,000” (Journalism Training Forum 2002, p. 17), it is easy to appreciate the increasing potential for PR practitioners to influence and shape news agendas. We now assess whether this potential has been achieved in the UK.
A study of 2207 domestic news reports in a structured sample of UK ‘quality’ (Guardian, The Times, Independent and the Telegraph) and mid-market (Daily Mail) newspapers, during March and April 2005, generated unequivocal evidence confirming journalists’ extensive use of information subsidies from public relations sources (Lewis et al. 2006). Researchers analysed each news story to establish and quantify any element of public relations material employed. Internet searches were conducted to trace relevant press releases which were then compared directly with published newspaper text to establish the extent of journalists’ reliance on PR sources. This procedure necessarily delivered conservative estimates since news stories were coded as deriving from PR materials only when conclusive evidence, resulting from direct textual comparison of a press release with a published story, could be established.
The great majority of the 2207 newspaper stories analysed comprised main page articles of variable length (1564 – 71% of sample), with 561 (25.5%) shorter news in brief items (nibs), while the remainder were ‘picture only’ stories (0.5%) or opinion pieces (3%). These news items focused on eight key subject areas. The most popular was ‘Crime’ (20%), followed by ‘Domestic issues’ (15%) which included the NHS, education, the environment and immigration. Other editorial foci embraced ‘Politics’ (15%), ‘Business/Consumer’ news (12%), ‘Health/natural world’ (10%), ‘Entertainment and Sport’ (10%), ‘Accidents/disasters’ (5%), ‘Defence/Foreign policy’ (2%) and ‘Other (11%) (Lewis et al. 2006, pp. 13–14).
The great majority of articles were attributed to a by-lined reporter (72%), with only 1% of stories attributed to the Press Association (PA ) or another wire service, as well as a small proportion (2%) to a generalised identity such as an ‘Independent Reporter’; approximately a quarter (24.5%) carried no by-line but these were typically the shorter nibs. By identifying journalists in this way newspapers suggested that articles represented the work of independent in-house reporters. But the appropriateness of such attribution is perhaps questionable when analysis revealed that almost a fifth (19%) of the sample stories derived ‘wholly’ (10%) or ‘mainly’ (9%) from PR sources. A further quarter (22%) were either a ‘mix of PR with other materials’ (11%) or ‘PR but mainly other information’ (11%) while a further 13% of stories strongly suggested a PR source which could not be identified and were therefore discounted; there was no identifiable PR source in only 46% of reports. Stories which offered near verbatim replication of source materials were found. The Times report, for example, “George Cross for Iraq War Hero” on 24 March 2006, which carried Michael Evans’ by-line, reproduces almost exactly a Ministry of Defence press release. Similarly, a story about a new hay fever vaccine published in the Daily Mail reproduced a press release from the drug company Cytos without reporting any additional information reflecting independent journalistic inquiry (ibid., p. 17).
This reliance on public relations is not wholly negative, however, since public relations professionals may generate factually well informed and newsworthy stories which potentially enhance the plurality of sources of news from which journalists and editors can select and construct stories. But examination of the origins of PR materials reveals a fairly limited range of established and powerful elite groups and communities as sources. The corporate sector dominates with 38% of PR materials referenced in press coverage deriving from the ‘business/corporate’ world. Other contributors to press reports via pubic relations include ‘public bodies’ (the police, NHS, universities – 23%), ‘Government and politicians’ (21%), NGO/Charities (11%) and ‘professional associations’ (5%). The voice of ordinary citizens, however, remains almost mute; the opinions of ordinary men and women informed only 2% of stories (ibid. pp. 21–23). One consequence of journalists’ increased reliance on public relations subsidies is that corporate and governmental voices enjoy extensive and unrepresentative access to the public debating chamber which newspapers provide. Press articulations of the public interest, which journalists so frequently claim to champion, amount to little more than a barely perceptible pip squeak above the deafening din of corporate and governmental interests.
The same sample of news items was also analysed to establish the extent of journalists’ reliance on pre-packaged stories from news agencies, especially the PA; the same research protocols generated even more striking outcomes. Approximately half (49%) the news stories published in the quality press were wholly (30%) or mainly (19%) dependent on materials produced and distributed by wire services with a further fifth (21%) of stories containing some element of agency copy (ibid., p. 15). Again, newspapers make little acknowledgement of this reliance on agency copy even when it is published virtually verbatim. On 24 March 2006, for example, the Daily Mail attributed its front-page story about the health risks of eating oily fish (“Why oily fish might not be so good for your health after all”) to a Daily Mail reporter, even though it directly replicates quotations and factual materials from PA and Mercury news wire stories (ibid., pp. 35–38).
When quality press uses of both public relations and agency copy are examined, only 12% of published stories are without pre-packaged news content sourced from outside the newsroom; 60% of published stories rely wholly or mainly on external news sources (See Table 19.1).
The significance of these high levels of journalistic dependency on both PR and news agency materials is that they exercise a mutually reinforcing effect on newspapers’ editorial contents. Our study revealed that journalists use PR subsidies directly, but PR text is also encoded in the agency copy which journalists use so routinely in news production. Forty-seven per cent of press stories which were based ‘wholly’ around PR materials closely replicated agency copy, suggesting the existence of a “multi-staged” process of news sourcing in which PR materials initially generate agency stories which in turn promote coverage in newspapers. Consequently, news agency copy serves as a Trojan horse for PR materials and must be analysed carefully if the full impact of PR on editorial agendas is to be established.
The opinions of 42 journalists working on national newspapers, the PA and PR companies were canvassed via (emailed) qualitative survey and follow-up interviews. Respondents confirmed this covert editorial role for public relations subsidies but, significantly, journalists also suggest it is increasing – and as a result of their increasing workload. The majority (28 of 42) of survey respondents claimed that PR informs their stories “sometimes” with the remainder suggesting they use it “often”. The
substantive majority (38 of 42) suggested that the use of PR for editorial purpose had increased over the last decade (ibid., p. 47). The Times’ Health Editor suggested:
There is much more PR these days. I get hundreds of press releases in my mailbox every day … It’s become a lot easier to use PR because of the technology. It’s very easy and convenient, and as we’re producing so many more stories, we use it … if you’re not feeling too energetic it’s almost as if you could surf this great tidal wave of PR all the way in to the shore and not come up with any original material all day. (Personal interview cited in Lewis et al 2006, p. 48).
Two final points about journalists’ uses of PR for editorial. First, most of the stories analysed (87%) were based on a single source but only a half (50%) of these made an attempt to contextualise the published information; in less than a fifth of cases (19%) was this done meaningfully. Second, when stories were based on specific factual claims we discovered that on 70% of occasions these claims were entirely uncorroborated and in only 12% of cases were they corroborated completely. Two-thirds of surveyed journalists confirmed that the number of checks on source material had declined. A journalist on a national paper confided: “newspapers have turned into copy factories … The arrival of online has also increased demand for quick copy reducing the time available for checking the facts” (ibid., 47). The fundamental journalistic practices necessary to produce accurate, well informed and reliable journalism are being ignored in the newsrooms of the national quality press. Research studies suggest the same observation is relevant in the context of local journalism.
The impact of public relations on local journalists’ working practices, as well as news agendas in the local press, has enjoyed sustained scholarly attention since the mid-1980s (Davis 2002; Franklin 1986, Franklin and VanSlyke Turk 1988; Harrison 2006; O’Neill and O’Connor 2008). The consensual conclusion of these studies is that the influence of public relations has been extensive, longstanding and expansive, with Harrison arguing – with a liberal measure of irony – that journalists’ dependence on “the carefully prepared material provided by professional local government PROs” has become “so extensive” that “the town hall is becoming the last bastion of good municipal journalism” (Harrison 1998, p. 168).
A n early study of local government public relations influence on local newspapers in the county of Northumberland, in the north east of the UK, concluded that 96% of press releases issued by the local authority generated stories in the local press. Significantly, most releases triggered stories in three or four newspapers; one story was published in 11 newspapers. The local press appeared to be recycling the same news around the county. Editing the press releases, including any additional information beyond that contained within the release, or telephoning the contact person named at the bottom of the release, was rare. When there was evidence of ‘original’ journalism, it was minimal (Franklin 1986, pp. 25–33). The great majority of these news releases were swallowed wholesale by a news-hungry local press. In a subsequent national study of local government public relations, 82% of responding press officers confirmed that “more than three-quarters of press releases” generated stories in the local press (Franklin 1988, p. 81). This very high ‘strike rate’ was less noticeable in a comparative study of similar state public relations practices in Louisiana (Franklin and VanSlyke Turk 1988, pp. 29–42).
Local papers’ willingness to accept these public relations ‘subsidies’ related directly to the newspaper’s size and resources but especially to the number of journalists employed by the paper and their areas of professional specialism. At daily papers with larger editorial staffs including a specialist municipal correspondent, press releases were extensively edited, while at the weeklies with leaner editorial resources, press releases were typically reproduced verbatim or edited by removing complete paragraphs or changing their order; in weekly free papers, editing of releases was non-existent, (Franklin 1986). Consequently, newspapers’ variable journalism staffs constitute a hierarchy of dependence on PR subsidies in local communication networks, with 42% of press officers identifying free weekly papers as “most likely to use a press release”, compared to 30% for paid weeklies, 22% evening and 5% for daily newspapers (Franklin 1988, p. 82). Davis confirms the close tie between reliance on PR and the size of journalism staffs. The increasing influence for public relations on local agenda setting” he claims, “is not the “result of powerful spin doctor pressure … but because working news journalists have become increasingly stretched … [and] public relations professionals with their increased resources have thus been ideally placed to make good the short fall in news-producing industries” (Davis 2002, p. 17).
The value of the information subsidy which PR offers to local newspapers is substantial. One press officer calculated an illustrative exemplar. “I estimate at Westminster” he suggested, that “we spend at least 30% of our time, equivalent to one and a half press officers costing £50,000 on servicing the local media … Many of the requests from local papers are … pleas for letters and press releases to fill the gaps in pages. In this sense media officers are simply filling the gaps in the newsroom staff” (cited in Harrison 2006, p. 188). Newspapers’ reliance on these subsidies encourages local government PROs to view local newspapers as ready outlets, mere noticeboards for stories about local politics and government which are predictably uncritical and tend to stress the positive aspects of local government activities. The challenge to the independence and quality of local journalism is evident; not least to journalists. One journalist suggested that “If we are getting more copy for free from PR agencies, and we are, this raises lots of questions about journalistic independence and journalistic integrity” (Williams and Franklin 2007, p. 39).
Indeed, local journalists routinely complain about the pressure of time constraints, staff cuts, and lack of investment which obliges them increasingly to resort to using the convenient, cost effective, pre-packaged sources of news which PR delivers. They are also aware of the changes to their working practices which PR imposes: not least that journalism has increasingly become a desk-based job. “For most reporters,” a journalist claimed, “there’s not the time to go out as much as they should. The job is done more and more by cutting and pasting press releases because they’re under pressure and there’s space to be filled” (cited in Williams and Franklin 2007, p. 39). Recently this editorial dependence on PR has grown with 92% of journalists responding to an email survey claiming the use of PR had increased across the last decade, while only 6% suggested it had remained constant, with a further 2% claiming a reduction (Williams and Franklin 2007, p. 39).
The most recent study of local journalism and sources confirms this increasing influence for PR but, significantly, noted a growing tendency for journalists to rely on a single source for local news stories. Analysis of a sample of 2979 stories in four Yorkshire-based regional dailies, owned by three of the largest local and regional newspaper groups (Johnston Press, Newsquest Media Group and Trinity Mirror) and published during February 2007 revealed that 76% (2264 stories) cited only a single source (O’Neill and O’Connor 2008, pp. 487-500). Public relations materials, of course, seek to persuade more than inform, to win hearts and minds rather than hold the ring in a rational, pluralistic debate between competing voices; in press releases a loud harmonious chorus is preferred to the discordant voices which typify debate. Local journalists’ reliance on such editorially narrow press releases makes them accomplices in such closure of discussion. The study concludes that this new generation of “passive journalists” are becoming “mere processors of one-sided information or bland copy dictated by sources. These trends indicate poor journalistic standards and may be exacerbating declining local newspaper sales” (ibid.).
This reliance on public relations has also changed radically the processes of journalistic verification of stories. As in national newsrooms, local journalists find little time for checking stories, to be sure their claims “stand up”. A recent and extensive ethnographic study of 235 journalists’ working practices across newspaper, radio, television and online media platforms in Germany found that across each working shift journalists “only spend about eleven minutes per day checking sources and information in terms of plausibility or correctness” (Machill and Beiler 2009). In the newsrooms of the 1304 newspapers which constitute the local and regional press in the UK, the fundamental journalistic practices necessary to produce accurate, well informed and reliable journalism are being ignored. Journalists believe such revised professional practices corrode the integrity of local journalism. “I think it’s inevitable that the quality of the news has suffered” a journalist confided. “Sometimes we’re in a state of desperation just to fill the paper and that means the quality can’t possibly be the same as it would be if we spent the time doing the job and developing stories” (cited in Williams and Franklin 2007, pp. 39-40).
The current business strategy of national and local newspaper groups which stresses cost cutting, by reducing journalists’ employment while simultaneously increasing pagination, supplements and newspaper sections to attract more readers and advertisers, demands that fewer journalists with reduced resources produce bigger newspapers with more supplements and sections, in both print and online editions. To reconcile these conflicting ambitions and fill the increasingly gaping news hole requires that journalists accept news subsidies from public relations professionals as a substitute for their own independent journalistic enquiries. This process imposes changes on journalists’ working practices, revises editorial priorities and reduces markedly both the independence and the integrity of journalism. Newspaper groups believe they are seeking to resolve a “crisis of profitability” but in truth their strategy is creating a “crisis of journalistic integrity”. The fourth estate risks being overwhelmed, by the fifth estate of public relations.2
1 The study included the following newspaper groups: (1) Express Newspapers Ltd; (2) The Financial Times Ltd; (3) MGN Ltd; (4) News Group Newspapers Ltd; (5) Telegraph Group Ltd; (6) Guardian Newspapers Ltd; (7) Independent News and Media Ltd; (8) Times Newspapers Ltd; (9) Associated Newspapers Ltd.
2 This phrase was first coined by Tom Baistow in his classic study of Fleet Street titled Fourth Rate estate.
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