INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS INFORMATION SUBSIDY ON GATEKEEPING AND AGENDA SETTING FUNCTIONS OF NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

Information subsidy is a global, cost-reduction practice in which news media source contents from Public Relations (PR) agencies. Studies from different countries including Nigeria have established that newspaper contents are increasingly sourced from PR’s press releases. However, despite its implications for media operations and functions, little scholarly attention has been devoted to how utilisation of information subsidy influences newspapers’ gatekeeping and agenda-setting functions, especially in the context of Nigerian media operating in a neo-liberal economy. Therefore, the quantities of news contents the Nigerian newspapers generated from press releases and those they independently sourced were examined, with a view to establishing reasons for newspapers’ use of press releases and how the use influenced gatekeeping and agenda setting functions of the newspapers.

Agenda-setting, Gatekeeping and Social Responsibility media theories were adopted as framework, while the mixed methods design was used. From five Tier-1 newspapers (The Guardian, Punch, ThisDay, Daily Trust and The Nation), a total of 3,441 news stories, drawnthrough constructed week sampling from 11 to 17 January 2016 (the year the first Nigerian PR industry report was published), were content analysed. Available 30 press releases received from PR agencies, and their published versions drawn from the five newspapers were also analysed for content similarity at the headline and lead levels. Key Informant Interviews were conducted among purposively selected five senior editorial staff of newspapers and five Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of PR agencies. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were subjected to thematic analysis.

Newspapers strongly upheld their gatekeeping function at the level of access as only 20.3% of the published news stories were exclusively sourced from press releases; 4.7% from a combination of press releases and independently generated contents; 17.0% from independently generated contents, and the rest from other sources (routine events: 34.8%; agency reports: 16.7%; anonymous sources: 6.5%). Nevertheless, the newspapers displayed minimal gatekeeping function at the level of editorial intervention as the headlines (verbatim: 38.7%; partially edited: 53.3%; re-written: 8.0%), and the leads (verbatim: 42.7%; partially edited: 37.3%; re-written: 20.0%) of the press releases they published reflected a fair reproduction of the original versions. The newspapers upheld their agenda-setting function by restricting contents from press releases to mostly small portions of the less-prominent pages (inside pages: 80.0%; main news sections: 17.3%; front pages: 2.7%). Senior editorial staff of the newspapers indicated that they incorporated press releases into news because they were often timely and cost effective. The CEOs of PR agencies and senior editorial staff of newspapers agreed that cordial relationship between them facilitated incorporation of press releases into news. Senior editorial staff of the newspapers disagreed with the claims of CEOs of PR agencies that monetary gratifications played a role in the process. However, they agreed that patronage and access to advertisements drove their considerations for publishing press releases.

Use of information subsidy weakened the gatekeeping function of Nigerian newspapers, but did not undermine their agenda-setting function as the newspapers devoted their prominent pages to self-generated contents.