Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

An Island of Reliability in a Sea of Misinformation? Understanding PR-Journalists Relations in Times of Epistemic Crisis

An Island of Reliability in a Sea of Misinformation? Understanding PR-Journalists Relations in... With technologies making sources more accessible than ever before, journalists’ prime concern is no longer obtaining data; but rather sorting information out – undermining the traditional role of information subsidies. This study exposes for the first time a unique form of “epistemic subsidies,” suggesting a new explanation for PR-journalists’ paradoxical relations. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative reconstructions, in which Israeli news reporters from national news outlets accounted for the sources they used (N = 1,147), this paper reaffirms the persistence of the paradox, while shedding new light on it, showing that the relationship is based on reliability rather than trust. Information from PR sources is communicated to journalists in a significantly more reliable way than from non-PR – making reliance much safer. Analyzing the findings with a framework that is based on social epistemology and the intereffication theory, the paper suggests that the epistemically-virtues practices of PR act as “inductions,” which could result from an “adaptation” to journalists’ increasing epistemic needs. Findings also reopen the normative debate about the implication of reliance on PR, indicating that such reliance reduces vulnerability to factually incorrect messages, while not defending journalists from misleading messages or “spins.” http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Public Relations Research Taylor & Francis

An Island of Reliability in a Sea of Misinformation? Understanding PR-Journalists Relations in Times of Epistemic Crisis

Barnoy, Aviv
Journal of Public Relations Research , Volume 34 (3-4): 20 – Jul 4, 2022
Download PDF

An Island of Reliability in a Sea of Misinformation? Understanding PR-Journalists Relations in Times of Epistemic Crisis

Abstract

With technologies making sources more accessible than ever before, journalists’ prime concern is no longer obtaining data; but rather sorting information out – undermining the traditional role of information subsidies. This study exposes for the first time a unique form of “epistemic subsidies,” suggesting a new explanation for PR-journalists’ paradoxical relations. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative reconstructions, in which Israeli news reporters from...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/an-island-of-reliability-in-a-sea-of-misinformation-understanding-pr-V1U3KyhXnS
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN
1532-754X
eISSN
1062-726X
DOI
10.1080/1062726X.2022.2077347
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

With technologies making sources more accessible than ever before, journalists’ prime concern is no longer obtaining data; but rather sorting information out – undermining the traditional role of information subsidies. This study exposes for the first time a unique form of “epistemic subsidies,” suggesting a new explanation for PR-journalists’ paradoxical relations. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative reconstructions, in which Israeli news reporters from national news outlets accounted for the sources they used (N = 1,147), this paper reaffirms the persistence of the paradox, while shedding new light on it, showing that the relationship is based on reliability rather than trust. Information from PR sources is communicated to journalists in a significantly more reliable way than from non-PR – making reliance much safer. Analyzing the findings with a framework that is based on social epistemology and the intereffication theory, the paper suggests that the epistemically-virtues practices of PR act as “inductions,” which could result from an “adaptation” to journalists’ increasing epistemic needs. Findings also reopen the normative debate about the implication of reliance on PR, indicating that such reliance reduces vulnerability to factually incorrect messages, while not defending journalists from misleading messages or “spins.”

Journal

Journal of Public Relations Research – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jul 4, 2022

Keywords: Public relations; journalism; epistemology; trust; subsidies; mixed methods; intereffication

References

  • The when, why, how and so-what of verifications
  • The familiarity paradox: Why has digital sourcing not democratized the news?
  • Trusting others: A pareto distribution of source and message credibility among news reporters
  • Choosing your informant
  • Reevaluating public relations information subsidies
  • Journalism as the new knowledge profession and consequences for journalism education
  • Epistemologies of digital journalism and the study of misinformation
  • The dynamics of professional identity
  • Social epistemology as a new paradigm for journalism and media studies
  • Alternative facts and fake news entering journalistic content production cycle
  • Inside Churnalism: PR, journalism and power relationships in flux
  • Performance expectations as a measure of relative status of news and PR people
  • Re-evaluating journalistic routines in a digital age
  • A compromised fourth estate? UK news journalism, public relations and news sources
  • More news for less: How the professional values of 24/7 journalism reshaped Norway’s TV2 newsroom
  • Journalism–PR relations revisited
  • The journalistic structure of feeling: An exploration of career life histories of Israeli journalists
  • The one thing journalism just might do for democracy: Counterfactual idealism, liberal optimism, democratic realism
  • Deep impact? How journalists perceive the influence of public relations on their news coverage and which variables determine this impact
  • Measuring the impact of PR on published news in increasingly fragmented news environments
  • Measuring the impact of PR on published news in increasingly fragmented news environments
  • Stubbornly Unchanged: A longitudinal study of news practices in the Israeli press
  • The anatomy of leaking in the age of megaleaks: New triggers, old news practices
  • Country report: Journalists in Israel
  • The decline in orally negotiated news
  • How news become “news” in increasingly complex ecosystems: Summarizing almost two decades of newsmaking reconstructions
  • The state of the news beat
  • Disagreements as a form of knowledge: How journalists address day-to-day conflicts between sources
  • Justifying the news: The role of evidence in daily reporting
  • Between the technological hare and the journalistic tortoise: Minimization of knowledge claims in online news flashes
  • Belief, credence, and pragmatic encroachment
  • Journalists and public relations practitioners: Why the antagonism?
  • Investigating relationships between journalists and public relations practitioners
  • The communicative structures of journalism and public relations
  • Churnalism on the rise? Assessing convergence effects on editorial practices
  • The co-evolution of public relations and journalism
  • Public relations versus journalism: Comments on Turow
  • Journalism’s epistemic crisis and its solution: Disinformation, datafication and source criticism
  • Integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches to research
  • Feedback from research participants: Are member checks useful in qualitative research?
  • Information subsidies and influence
  • Public relations and newswork: A neglected relationship
  • Trust in distant sources: An analytical model capturing antecedents of risk and trustworthiness as perceived by journalists
  • How journalists think while they write: A transcultural model of news decision making