Abstract:

Abstract Concerns about the decreasing impact of advertisements on target audiences have led public relations professionals and advertisers to search for new ideas. As a result, advertisement content in the form of news, called advertorial, has become commonly used in newspapers. Although there have been many studies on the effects of advertorials on target audiences, this issue has not been addressed in terms of the profession of journalism. Nevertheless, advertorial has the potential to threaten the credibility of genuine news, which must be distinguished from advertisements by clear boundaries. The aim of this study was to reveal the perspective of journalists on advertorials, and the effects of advertorials on journalism. In-depth interview, which is a type of qualitative research method, was conducted for data collection. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with 15 journalists from Hürriyet, Sabah, Habertürk, Zaman and Posta newspapers in May 2014. The study showed that the negative effects of advertorials on journalism could be grouped into six categories. These were the blurred boundary between news and advertisement, violation of the reliability of journalism, deception of the reader, lack of news value, the use of journalists as advertising copywriters, and effects on advertising revenue. Keywords: Advertorial, News, Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising.

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