Mixing PR with journalism

In recent years, German dailies have come under fire for increasingly blurring the line between advertising and editorial content as they try to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive market. Staff at Deutsche Welle, a German broadcasting company, report on German newspapers being criticized for mixing journalism with PR. Journalist Wolfram Schutte recently panned a Munich-based daily newspaper for selling books, CDs and wine in the advertising pages of its cultural section. In response, a German lobby group for investigative journalism developed a media code and a 10-point plan to combat the issue.??