| One local television news department was the site of a participant-observation study to examine the influence of public relations activity on local television newswork and on the local television news product. The study found that public relations activity was able to consistently meet the news department's "market-driven" definition of news. Newsworkers were seen by the author to share a definition of newsworthiness that was not grounded in a traditional journalistic orientation; the newsworthiness of an informational item was determined, not on the basis of its predicted consequence or importance for the audience, but, primarily, on the basis of the item's predicted appeal to a wide audience. Public relations workers, who were seen by newsworkers to be legitimate and valuable sources of potentially newsworthy informational items, were regularly successful in communicating their news-like public relations messages through television news stories. |
