The Impact of Media Concentration on Professional ... - OSCE

At the same time, many <strong>of</strong> those contacted individually concededthat “it <strong>of</strong>ten seems like there is a company-driven agendabehind some coverage”. Another journalist admitted that “advertiserstoday are more likely to get editorial space for features”.And “occasionally we have to ‘tread carefully’ around certaincompanies”, which will then get “extra positive coverage”.Still, when it comes to evaluating the following criteria forthe editorial line <strong>of</strong> your paper on a scale from 1 to 5, where1 stands for “very important” and 5 stands for “not importantat all”, British journalists do not seem to be overly concernedabout possible influence from the outside. Both “truth”(Fig. 4) and “objectivity” (Fig. 5), the two main criteria to sufferfrom outside pressure, continue to get high marks.<strong>The</strong>re seems to be therefore, a stroke <strong>of</strong> continuity in traditionalBritish journalistic standards, which gets confirmed bythe fact that, at least according to their staff, many British editors-in-chiefdo not see generating economic revenue as theireditorial top priority. (Fig. 6)Truth (%) Fig. 4123452,07,910,222,051,50 10 20 30 40 50 60Objectivity (%) Fig. 5123458,67,419,729,634,60 10 20 30 40 50124 THE IMPACT OF MEDIA CONCENTRATION ON PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM