Is PR Taking Over the News
Journalists are a busy lot, out reporting each day as fire breathing editors demand they fill news holes post haste.
No wonder the allure of a press release. Flip a word here and there, massage some copy and here you go, an article ready for publication.
Not so fast.
England’s Media Standards Trust has released a “churn engine” that lets readers compare articles to press releases to see whether what they’re reading is actually independently reported. Some results can be seen here and examples run the gamut from science to royal family reporting.
As the Guardian notes:
A new website promises to shine a spotlight on “churnalism” by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.
The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a “churn engine”. It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a “churn rating”, show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material…
…In a typical example, the Express, Mirror and Sun all lifted of chunks of text from a press release last month on behalf of the Benenden Healthcare Society, which quoted a poll showing ‘British women spend more money on their looks than their health’. The Daily Mail copied 98% of the text directly from the press release.
92 notes
-
jjarichardson reblogged this from think4yourself
-
sweetsweetrandomness likes this
-
hoppypoppy likes this
-
theendofirrelevance likes this
-
nessieonthelane likes this
-
katyanderson reblogged this from markcoatney
-
dpratt likes this
-
irwinloy likes this
-
sofresh likes this
-
thetylerhayes likes this
-
mopostal reblogged this from markcoatney and added:
x2 intrigued
-
mopostal likes this
-
catron likes this
-
think4yourself reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
-
think4yourself likes this
-
lindsaydoll likes this
-
latenighttaskforce likes this
-
lord-kitschener reblogged this from pantslessprogressive
-
lord-kitschener likes this
-
mdt likes this
-
anywayyourun likes this
-
supersoygrrrl reblogged this from thebergeronprocess
-
thebergeronprocess likes this
-
kasperthesardonicghost likes this
-
beret likes this
-
ttfe likes this
-
emmadagostino likes this
-
priyankaboghani reblogged this from brooklynmutt
-
krisisisipoo likes this
-
jonaha likes this
-
mapaokelo reblogged this from futurejournalismproject and added:
geld lenen met bkr toetsing - geld lenen met bkr toetsing financiering met bkr - financiering met bkr verzekering...
-
thebedheadblog likes this
-
theaustinchronicles reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
-
kimbeamish reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
-
ofoliver reblogged this from markcoatney and added:
Journalism has long been established as sourcing news from PR. I’ve been on both sides of the line in the past 6 months...
-
up-schist-creek likes this
-
amosaikman likes this
-
oisel likes this
-
losingweightinthecity likes this
-
paperbrolly reblogged this from jhnbrssndn
-
huckleberryhart reblogged this from markcoatney
-
lukehackney reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
-
terenceinmonochrome reblogged this from markcoatney
-
violence likes this
-
abcsoupdot likes this
-
keilani likes this
-
umanesimo likes this
-
ijwphoto likes this
-
gonzodave likes this
-
myrealname reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
- Show more notes
