Journalism under a PR threat

We love to read about success stories in newspapers. For example, a story about an entrepreneur managing to catch a break after failing five times is always a good one. Even past failures become nice details after success. Or maybe a surgeon, after losing many patients, finally manages to successfully perform a very high risk surgery with good amounts of luck. However, we do not want to think about the surgeon's failed surgeries because these distance the story from perfection. We love to read about how a successful director grew up on a farm fighting poverty, but we do not want to read or hear about how that director sexually harassed women.

We ask for stories in which we can name the protagonist man of the day, month or the year. We think stories like that spark interest and motivate readers to continue. This approach can be called "praise journalism." However, life is not all about happiness, love, joy or everything working out all the time. Failures, tragedies, anger, jealousy and despair are all part of life. As Orson Welles put it: "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."

Nevertheless, poets and novelists are free to create their work any way they see fit. No one can find fault in that. But a journalist does not possess the same privilege. They have to stick to the facts. Comedy or tragedy, they must relay the story as it is. Doing the opposite falls under "PR journalism."

Brain drain

In the past days there was a news story about an international PR company opening a branch in Turkey. The company hired experienced journalists to work in the branch. According to the deal, journalists with at least 10 years experience will continue their work life as PR specialists.

Of course this is not the first time the PR sector ever recruited from the media. Especially after the economic crisis in 1999, many journalists were out of jobs and a big chunk of them either opened their own PR companies or were hired by existing ones.

Two years ago in Sabah daily I witnessed three of my colleagues follow a similar route. When we look into this comparatively we realize that while newspapers are shrinking the PR sector is growing with new firms continuing to set up shop. While the annual salaries of journalists are steady, the number on the paychecks of PR specialists continues to rise. Media loses its qualified personnel. This change allows the PR sector to gain strength and PR journalism to become more common. Similarly, especially in economy pages, PR language starts to dominate news language and this leads to many arguments.

Hidden advertisements

Let me give you an example. Until two years ago, power distribution was under the control of the state. Two years ago, a sector became privatized so people can now buy their electricity from any company that provides it.

Right now there are 98 companies competing with each other to gain a share in distribution. As their numbers continue to rise, these companies are promoting campaigns in order to make their product and service more appealing to customers. These campaigns include PR as well. Discounts and flexible packages determined according to usage and the like are being woven into news stories in newspapers. If a company's PR department enjoys more connections than others, then those companies manage to get a leg up on the competition.

After all, everyone uses electricity, and we want to save as much as possible. Therefore, at a glance these news stories look like they would capture readers' interest. But since they are not made in an all-inclusive manner, they become subject to accusations of favoritism. The companies not included in the news stories say: "Why are you reporting on their campaigns and not ours?" or, "We are selling the energy cheaper." In the end, consumer rights organizations knock on our doors with complaints of "hidden advertisements."

Speaking with numbers

We go through similar unfair competition claims in many sectors such as education, technology, cosmetics, tourism and so on, but especially in food, communication and health.

As readers' representatives, we are subject to PR's claims from time to time. Usually two things are said: "They excluded our company's name from the article," and, "They included another firm's name in the article." Without generalization or naming names, let me summarize this contradiction. PR specialists work to have their company and its work in the news and at the same time they are not happy with news articles about their competitors. Some firms take the issue so far that they read every story word by word about other companies and file a complaint with the Board of Advertisement.

Here are some statistics. The 2014 report is not out yet, but in 2013 there were 2,112 applications to the Board of Advertisement. A total of 1,029 of them were examined and in 974 instances the board found regulatory vionations. Because of 378 complaints there was TL 26,715,651 ($11,393,822) in fines. When we look at the sectors that issued the complaints, communications had 484 applications, food had 447 and the health sector had 341.

Ninety of those complaints were made with the claim a "hidden advertisement" and 80 of them were found valid by the board. In total, they resulted in issuing TL 4,335,197 in fines.

Laws and Regulations

According to the 61st Article of Law on Consumer Protection No. 6502: "Without declaring clearly as advertisement, including brands, logos, other defining visuals or texts, commercial titles or name of businesses in articles, news, broadcasts or programs with advertisement and advertiser capacity falls under the definition of hidden advertisement. It is forbidden for media to relay a hidden advertisement whether it is in sound, written or visual nature."

This law is detailed and supported by Commercial Law, the Code of Obligations, Cosmetic Law and others as well as legislation such as the Market Surveillance and Inspection Regulation. One of them, the third section of the Commercial Advertisement and Unfair Commercial Practices Regulation, deals with "hidden advertisements."

To summarize: "There must be no detailed information or advertisements about the goods or the services that can influence consumer choices willingly toward renting or purchasing the goods or services." A logo in a photograph, praise and sometimes presenting a project under the title of "social responsibility" can result in this.

Road to favor

Press tours, launches, gifts and personal relationships are the lock picks in the "hidden advertisement" scene. Hidden advertisements hurt a newspaper economically and put a dent in its credibility.

The issue arises when an advertisement is presented as a news story. This both costs the newspaper potential advertising revenue and misleads readers. Apart from exceptions, the PR budget and advertising budget switched places and this gave birth to a worm eating journalism from the inside out, not to mention the problem of favoritism. I hope our reporters and editors at Daily Sabah will be more mindful of this problem.