News from Urals with Love and Payment: The First Look at Non-Transparent Media Practices in the Urals Federal District of Russia

Abstract

Building on the previous research of media non-transparency in Eastern European countries, this study examined non-transparent media practices that occur at the interpersonal, intra-organizational, or inter-organizational levels in the media of the Urals Federal District of Russia. It appears that although the majority of non-transparent media practices happen at the inter-organizational level, the single most frequent practice was documented at the interpersonal level. This practice included accepting small gifts and benefiting from the provision of such services as transportation, food, or hotel stay that are eagerly offered by the news sources. The results showed that this trend is common in both local Ural media as well as in the Russian national media. The difference of non-transparent media practices that occurred between local and national media was mostly evident at the intra-organizational and inter-organizational levels, indicating that local media are more prone to be non-transparent than the national media. The study offers implications of the findings and recommendations for future research.