Journalists' and Public Relations Practitioners' News Values: Perceptions and Cross-Perceptions

Abstract

Journalists and public relations practitioners in South Florida and metropolitan New York were surveyed regarding their perceptions and cross-perceptions of their own and each other's news values and influence of public relations on the news. The two groups report similar news values, although journalists report a greater lack of awareness of the similarity. The study also found that practitioners, expecting contributions of social good by public relations, perceive greater public relations' influence on news content than do journalists.

What’s the harm in moonlighting? A qualitative survey on the role conflicts of freelance journalists with secondary employment in the field of PR

“…Lewis et al, 2008;Sallot et al, 1998), on the ambivalent and wary views of journalists towards PR (e.g. DeLorme and Fedler, 2003;Merkel et al, 2007), and on the particularities of the source-journalist relationship (e.g.…”

Painting a picture of America's nonprofit foundations: a content analysis of public relations photographs distributed through online wire services

“…However, when comparing survey results of journalists and public relations practitioners in regard to the importance of journalism principals and ethics, the two groups were found to hold very similar opinions (Sallot et al, 1998). Public relations practitioners understood and respected traditional news values even if journalists did not feel that they did.…”

“…The journalist-public relations practitioner relationship Scholars from journalism and public relations have conducted a significant amount of research to examine the relationships that exist between the practitioners in the two fields (Kopenhaver et al, 1984;Pincus et al, 1993;Cameron et al, 1997;Sallot et al, 1998;Shin and Cameron, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c. Research has shown that the fields are interdependent: public relations practitioners need journalists to write news stories about their organizations, and increasingly journalists need information from public relations practitioners .…”

Perceptual dynamics of pluralistic ignorance and social distance: public relations practitioners and journalists in South Korea

“…For example, journalists perceived public relations practitioners in general as low in source credibility (Aronoff, 1976), ethics, honesty, and trustworthiness (e.g., Cline, 1982;Jeffers, 1977;Pincus et al, 1993;Ryan & Martinson, 1991), and similarity (Sallot et al, 1998). The key culprit to such negative views and, subsequently, the conflictual relationships between public relations practitioners and journalists is attributable to the advocacy role of public relations (Spicer, 1997).…”