Ajaleht Pealinn 2009-2010

Date

2010

Journal Title

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Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

“Newspaper Pealinn 2009–2010” Pealinn is a newspaper which is published in Tallinn and which writes about the actions of the city government and the events of the city. The newspaper was chosen as a subject of the study because it has been accused of being unobjective and biased. Since the local governments are funded from the state budget and a part of the city budget comes from personal income tax, the taxpayers have a right to know where their money goes and to get the best possible service. The subject of the study is the weekly newspaper Pealinn, which was content analysed coding for 16 issues of Pealinn from 2009 and 2010, from which a total of 76 articles were analysed. In addition to that, the study also concentrated on the accusations towards Pealinn, and, in general, introduced Tallinn’s city media, the newspapers, and TV and radio shows of the city districts; their costs, and the city’s decisions in relation to the city media. The study questions focused on the attitude of Pealinn towards the city and the state, and on who got the most article space in the paper. The study also analysed the degree of critical attitude of the newspaper towards the city government, and the amount of changes made in the paper after the signing of the new coalition agreement. According to the results, 70 of the 76 articles showed negative attitudes towards the state and 45 positive towards the city. As Pealinn was not critical towards the city, it can be presumed that the publication does not serve the public interest; the results also showed that there is no place for public debate in the paper – the majority of the article space was given to the representatives of the political party who has a majority in the city council. Thus, the newspaper Pealinn can be defined as being in between a public relations publication and a newspaper. Even when the coalition agreement was signed, the average number of articles criticising the state and praising the city remained the same. Keywords: local newspaper, PR publication, party press, unobjectiveness, bias, content analysis, Tallinna TV, newspaper Pealinn.

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