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It is well known that journalists rely heavily on PR material when producing news items. Journalists prefer to frame the relationship between them and PR's as adversarial, but in reality the relationship is much more of a negotiation. Well, that's not quite true either: a negotiation implies reasonably equal participants. As a recent study from Cardiff University shows, the PR agencies are the dominant party by some margin. According to the study (done on a sample of 2,207 stories from five national newspapers (Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent and Daily Mail), 71% of which were 'standard news articles', most of the rest news in briefs, plus an analysis of 402 TV news items):

About 60% of print news items and 34% of broadcast news items rely wholly or mainly on pre-packaged information (in most cases PR-produced or news agency material that is simply plagiarized verbatim in the news item without attribution).

A further 20% of news items are relying in varying degrees on PR and agency materials.

Only 12% of press news items and 18% of broadcast news items contain no information derived from PR or agency material at all, i.e. is wholly produced by the news organisation itself.

In an article in Journalism Studies, the authors of the report conclude:

Taken together, these data portray a picture of the journalistic process of news gathering and news reporting in which any meaningful independent journalistic activity by the media is the exception rather than the rule. We are not talking about investigative journalism here, but the everyday practices of news judgment, fact checking, balance, criticising and interrogating sources etc, that are, in theory, central to routine day-to-day journalism practice. News, especially in print, is routinely recycled from somewhere else, and yet the widespread use of other material is rarely attributed to its source (e.g. "according to PA..." or "a press release from X suggests that...". Such practices would, elsewhere, be regarded as straightforward plagiarism. (Lewis, Williams & Franklin 2008:17-18)

Sounds depressing? It's going to get even worse. Upcoming here on doctorofjournalism.com: German study shows that journalists spend on average 8 minutes per working day checking sources and verifying facts...