Information subsidies and influence

Abstract

A basic assumption of the media-relations facet of public relations is that getting an organization's message, its view of what is “real” and important, into media content is “good.” It's not so much that organizations want journalists to accept their versions of reality, but that they expect to influence the opinions and perhaps even the subsequent behavior of those who read newspapers or watch news broadcasts. Evaluation of whether media relations activities are successful or not rarely extend beyond a count of which news releases were used by measuring inches of clippings or minutes of air time. This study, however, sought to go at least one step further by evaluating not only the degree to which an organization's “information subsidies” to journalists are used, but also the extent to which those information subsidies made media content different from what it might have been without an organization's information input. Judy VanSlyke Turk is assistant director and associate professor of public relations at the H.H. Herbert School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma. The study reported in this article was undertaken as part of her doctoral dissertation research in public administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.