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

Credibility and readership (%) Fig. 10123455,210,313,824,146,60 10 20 30 40 50editorial line, which should be guided, amongst other things, bythe other essential role <strong>of</strong> the press: the role <strong>of</strong> watchdog overpolitical and corporate powers and their interests.Both figures 8 and 9 demonstrate that journalists workingwith daily newspapers can not necessarily exercise their pr<strong>of</strong>essionalobjectivity when it comes to reporting on either the politicalsphere or the business community.Such shortcomings will not go unnoticed by the readers.Newspapers succumbing to such influence from the outsideare destroying the very foundations <strong>of</strong> their existence. <strong>The</strong>yare bound to lose their credibility.Whenever someone is asking for two contradictory thingsto happen simultaneously, the Romans have but one shortclipping question: You want to keep the barrel full <strong>of</strong> wine andyour woman drunk, too?This comment comes to mind when looking at those 84.5per cent <strong>of</strong> the journalists, who defined credibility with theirreaders as being important to very important for the editorialline <strong>of</strong> their paper. (Fig. 10)How does a newspaper retain credibility with its readership,when the editorial line keeps the quest for truth andobjectivity as high a priority as economic revenues, consideringthat a big chunk <strong>of</strong> these revenues depends on advertiserswho are free to choose the newspaper closest to their intereststo place their advertisements?GENERAL SURVEY RESULTS 79