Browsing by Author "Saari, Eeva-Kaisa"

The thesis is a study of journalists ethics in health and beauty field. The research is aiming to answers questions as follows. Firstly, how do PR agencies get publicity for their clients and their products by using journalists as a tool? Secondly, how does it affect journalists ethics when a PR company wants to achieve the best results for their clients project? Thirdly, how do journalists experience objectivity towards readers when dealing with PR practitioners? Advertisers influence in the process is also taken into account. The starting point for the study is the hypothesis that British journalists are more biased than their Finnish colleagues because the industry is bigger in the UK and they get more gifts from public relations machinery. My view changed towards the end of the research; the study results indicate that both countries are in a similar situation. The readers are one of the main reasons why this study was conducted. They are the ones that suffer from unethical journalism. Journalism industry has its own code of conduct in both countries and the thesis examines the impact on journalists attitudes. The study is qualitative and the method used is thematic interviews. For this study seven journalists from Finnish and six from British monthly magazines were interviewed. The interview questions were designed to find out what is the public relations practitioners impact on journalists work. The theory of the thesis includes theories of ethics, journalism, journalism ethics and public relations. The concept of ethics used n this research is western. Thematic analysis is used in order to find out research results. Main result is that it is not the amount of gifts that affects journalists ethics but rather the relationship between the journalist and a public relations practitioner. Journalists get harassed by the public relations practitioners to the point that a journalist gives in just that she can have a peace of mind. The relationship between PR people and journalists can also be extremely friendly and as a result a journalist might feature their products. Advertisers play a key role on editorial content. They have power to tell what to feature and which launch event a journalist should attend. The results were similar in both Finland and in the UK other than one exception. A publisher in the UK has its own ethical rules that employees have to obey. The concept is more helpful when resolving ethical issues comparing to codes of conducts that are issued from an institution such as National Union of Journalists.