Credibility of paid promotional news in a study of kannada newspapers

Advertorial is a combination of advertisements and editorial content. Editorial space is sold and used for advertorials, promotional news/articles, any form of paid news. All forms of media are susceptible to this kind of promotion, especially regional newspapers and TV Channels with large readership/viewership and play a major role in moulding public opinion often. Paid Promotional News is the new practice applied by the advertisers, their clients, Govt., Institutions, and Political Parties who gain substantially through favourable public opinion by portraying themselves in positive light. With this emerging trend it is necessary to study the effect of advertorials on the readers and to know whether readers realize that these are paid news or not. As no such study was conducted on Kannada newspapers, this study tries to put-forth an clear picture of credibility of advertorials and their effect on the credibility of the newspapers carrying them. In this study, multistage sampling method, appropriate statistical analysis for interpretation and agenda setting theory were applied. This study shows that the promotional news/articles are not as credible as regular news/articles.