Study: Editorial content in Romania is influenced by media outlet owners

Half of Romanian journalists (50.8%) and a similar number of Romanian PR professionals (44%) consider that the editorial content of Romanian publications is generally influenced by media outlet owners, according to a study on transparency in PR-media-public relations, according to Mediafax.

The study was conducted by  U.S. Institute for Public Relations and the Forum for International Communications, was published on pr-romania.ro and was supported by Romanian Independent Journalism Center, APEL and the association of local publishers in Romania.

Data used for the study were collected online, from February 2009 to February 2010. Forum for International Communications gathered the info according to the methodology of the U.S. Institute for Public Relations. The survey polled 128 PR professionals and 68 journalists.

Study shows that a third of journalists (35.4%) and 30% of PR practitioners consider editorial contents are influenced by advertisers, while half of journalists and 44 44% of PR professionals said the owners of the media outlets generally influence editorial content.

Same study showed that unmarked publicity is widespread in Romania, 26% of PR professionals and 15.4% of journalists saying that unmarked advertising is a generalized fact.  Related to this subject, journalists and PR say that unmarked advertising appears in national press and is widely spread in magazines. More than that, they also say that unmarked advertising is frequent on websites.

On the other hand, indirect payments (non-cash benefits) received by journalists from organizations/companies aren’t mentioned in the stories and articles.

According to the PR practitioners involved in the study, they said there aren’t any written regulations regarding the value of the presents journalists may receive. Also, there is a widespread practice to pay journalists or editors to publish positive information about companies.

The entire study is available here.