Bribe money
Noted: The gap between freelance journalists and well-paid staff journalists is growing wider and wider, forcing freelancers to seek out lucrative sources of income.
Column The gap between freelance and well-paid staff journalists is widening, forcing freelancers to look for lucrative sources of money It is astonishing how little media attention this bribery scandal has generated: The Bush administration "bought" several journalists with US taxpayer money. Armstrong Williams alone, a prominent conservative columnist, has pocketed 24,000 dollars in this way to support a political campaign of the President ("No child left behind") in the media.Strangely enough, hardly anyone seems to be upset about something that in the "good old days" would certainly have been a solid reason for a ministerial resignation. Why is that? Are we - on both sides of the Atlantic - gradually becoming accustomed to PR and journalism working together symbiotically and becoming indistinguishable?
Perhaps the underlying reason why more and more journalists are earning extra money with PR - and in some cases violating the professional norm of journalistic incorruptibility in the process - has to do with developments on the labor markets and growing income disparities. Many years ago, the economist Isaac Ehrlich argued that such growing "gaps" create incentives for corrupt and criminal behavior.
Without being able to prove this empirically in detail, I suspect growing income disparities in journalism and the upstream PR sector at five different levels:
- A "star system" has emerged in journalism. Above all, those who appear regularly on the screen and attract viewers to the station with their likeness quickly become top earners who lose all grip on the ground.
- Apart from these stars, journalists earn relatively little compared to other demanding professions, such as doctors, managers and bankers.
- Within journalism, the gap between well-paid permanent employees and miserably paid freelancers working on a fee basis is widening. Many freelancers are victims of outsourcing - in other words, they used to be permanent employees.
- The same applies within the PR sector.
- The difference in fees for journalists and PR people is also huge. For the same article for which I as a journalist receive a fee of 200 francs, a client at a PR agency has to pay X times that amount.
Such inequalities not only generate envy. They also encourage those who can live more poorly than well on their fees to look for additional sources of income in creative ways - for example by taking advantage of discounts (www. journalistenrabatte.de), accepting invitations and creatively financing research trips that are not paid for by the employer, but often by those who are to be reported on.
On the other hand, the Armstrong Williams case is proof that corruptibility is not solely dependent on income. Stars often don't get their mouths full - perhaps precisely because they live in an environment that is light years away from the everyday realities of most journalists. When it comes to bribes for journalists, we collectively bury our heads in the sand - the topic is surprisingly taboo, no matter how hard journalists try to remove the taboos. In Western democracies, we are approaching Russian conditions faster than we would like due to the momentum that the PR sector and journalism are developing. There, it is common practice for journalists to gnaw on their hunger pangs - and therefore hold their hands up when they are asked to report on someone.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Lugano.
Perhaps the underlying reason why more and more journalists are earning extra money with PR - and in some cases violating the professional norm of journalistic incorruptibility in the process - has to do with developments on the labor markets and growing income disparities. Many years ago, the economist Isaac Ehrlich argued that such growing "gaps" create incentives for corrupt and criminal behavior.
Without being able to prove this empirically in detail, I suspect growing income disparities in journalism and the upstream PR sector at five different levels:
- A "star system" has emerged in journalism. Above all, those who appear regularly on the screen and attract viewers to the station with their likeness quickly become top earners who lose all grip on the ground.
- Apart from these stars, journalists earn relatively little compared to other demanding professions, such as doctors, managers and bankers.
- Within journalism, the gap between well-paid permanent employees and miserably paid freelancers working on a fee basis is widening. Many freelancers are victims of outsourcing - in other words, they used to be permanent employees.
- The same applies within the PR sector.
- The difference in fees for journalists and PR people is also huge. For the same article for which I as a journalist receive a fee of 200 francs, a client at a PR agency has to pay X times that amount.
Such inequalities not only generate envy. They also encourage those who can live more poorly than well on their fees to look for additional sources of income in creative ways - for example by taking advantage of discounts (www. journalistenrabatte.de), accepting invitations and creatively financing research trips that are not paid for by the employer, but often by those who are to be reported on.
On the other hand, the Armstrong Williams case is proof that corruptibility is not solely dependent on income. Stars often don't get their mouths full - perhaps precisely because they live in an environment that is light years away from the everyday realities of most journalists. When it comes to bribes for journalists, we collectively bury our heads in the sand - the topic is surprisingly taboo, no matter how hard journalists try to remove the taboos. In Western democracies, we are approaching Russian conditions faster than we would like due to the momentum that the PR sector and journalism are developing. There, it is common practice for journalists to gnaw on their hunger pangs - and therefore hold their hands up when they are asked to report on someone.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Lugano.
