As we’ve blogged before, Nick Davies’ recent book, Flat Earth News, uses findings from a specially-commissioned team of researchers at Cardiff University to show national newspapers’ dependency on press agencies.
After an investigation of 2,207 domestic news articles and their sources over two random weeks, the research team reported that 60 per cent of ‘quality print-stories’ (carried by the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the Daily Mail and the Times) came wholly or largely from a combination of PR releases and news agency copy.
The dangers of dependency on wire copy were illustrated on journalist Jo Wadsworth’s blog this morning: she describes how yesterday her site’s biggest hits and highest comments were on ‘several month-old stories about Premiership teams,’ which can be viewed here.
It looks like it was a technical error (she blames gremlins for playing havoc with the paper’s PA national football feeds), but it shows how manual checking on automatic feeds can never be replaced.
After an investigation of 2,207 domestic news articles and their sources over two random weeks, the research team reported that 60 per cent of ‘quality print-stories’ (carried by the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the Daily Mail and the Times) came wholly or largely from a combination of PR releases and news agency copy.
Nothing new here the point being that MOST News Agency stories and picture stories are in fact set up by PR companies so Agency feeds should also be counted in the PR news release category. You might like also to consider that Radio and TV pick up from print media – particularly local ‘papers where the hacks on starvation wages or shifts will also send a black (sorry additional copy) up to the nationals and broadcast media for a tip off fee. It has alos been known for the recicled story then to be picked up again by the print media, the joy odf rolling news. My favourite trick for many years was to slightly misplace the punctuation or word spaces and see how this gets directly translated into newspaper data and printed complete with the dodgy typoing…(sic) Waht makes me weep is that the team have probably gained decent degrees on the back of this meaningless research.
Hopefully the gremlins have finished their fun now. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I take your point about manual checking of agency feeds. However, I’d like to make it clear these are national PA feeds, which are fed into all our group’s local news sites – and common practice on most local newspaper sites, whichever group they belong to.
When it comes to local news, we don’t take any agency copy, save from the usual court agencies (Central et al). And we hardly ever run the stories without putting in some legwork in checking and developing them too. Similarly, press releases rarely make more than a nib, if that.
Just trying to distance us from that terrifying 60% statistic you quote from Nick Davies . . . Thankfully, I think the standard overall is higher on locals, certainly the ones I’ve worked for.
Julian: The agencies’ frightening level of reliance on PR fed material is something Davies also addresses in his book. I agree that this is nothing new for anyone who’s witnessed a newsroom firsthand, but disagree that the research commissioned by Davies is ‘meaningless’ – he’s brought some outrageous truths about the industry (across global TV/Newspapers/Radio/Online) into a very public mainstream, where it does need to be identified as a major crisis in the quality of news reporting.
Jo: Hope your gremlins have disappeared! Have the other papers spotted the error too?
It sounds like your paper manages better than most compared to evidence in Davies’ book – at regional, as much as national level. He cites one Trinity Mirror regional trainee, quickly promoted to news editor, who ends up ‘lifting’ national coverage of his own patch (pg 65). The statistics Davies uses are scarier than the 60 per cent, even: a further 20 per cent had clear elements of wire copy (page 52)
“….he’s brought some outrageous truths about the industry (across global TV/Newspapers/Radio/Online) into a very public mainstream, where it does need to be identified as a major crisis in the quality of news reporting….”
Take it a stage further up the food chain: pay a tip off fee or commission a freelance or rewrite a handout… so how do you stretch the budget? Rewrite the hand out and no use hiding behind a PA feed as PA (and other national agencies) also uses press releases and PR agency sourced stories. In reality many journalists or ex-journalists are employed in the PR industry and the NUJ has a Press & PR branch, so long as it is honest, decent, legal and truthful so be it. If the press barons are being mean with the budgets and not putting resources into newsrooms the day to day quality will drop so will circulations – that is where hopefully the message will hit home… “exposing what has been standard practice for many, many decades is to my simple mind hardly worth the effort. I’m happy to debate the issue but there are much bigger fish to fry.
Jo Wadsworth scribes: “Similarly, press releases rarely make more than a nib, if that…. Northcliffe HQ in Derry Street, meeting our web developers…” PR people will tell you that Derry Street is a major market for PR tip offs, news releases and so on…I rest my case me lud!
For the pedants “,.’- () sprinkle these in where you see fit and call it a re-write..