The impact of journalists' salary and extra income on the quality of industry news

• Main Authors: Liao, Chien Ying, 廖千瑩
• Other Authors: 劉昌德
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/x6ev75

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 傳播學院碩士在職專班 === 103 === During last decades, the changes of newspaper economic environment lead to the serious cut-down on journalist’s regular salary. As a result, some journalists tend to find other supplementary sources of income. Such extra sources of income have inevitably affected the regular works of financial journalists. The slow increasement on salary over years has urged more financial journalists to look for extra income from multiple sources. These income sources can be categorized into those allowed and not-allowed by employers. Those allowed include non-cash treatments from interviewees and cash gifts from advertisement income of employers. Those not allowed include legal extra income such as capital gains from investment as well as incomes on the brink of legal boundary such as stock options from listed companies or mainly come from investment income and portfolio management on behalf of investors. Most interviewed financial journalists believe such non-salary incomes indeed affect the orientation of reports, including the compliment to interviewees that could somewhat degrade the journalists’ functions on monitoring and criticism. Furthermore, certain lines of coverage become more attractive to some journalists because they can provide bountiful profits. This is highly correlated with journalist’s low salary. Except the self-discipline from journalists themselves, newspaper publishers can set interior regulations as borderlines to confine journalist’s behaviors. Nevertheless, the fundamental amelioration has to be performed by changing the compensation system with healthy salary promoting channels and eliminating incentives from non-salary incomes so as to urge journalists focused more on their job.