POLITICAL-MEDIA FACTORS AFFECTING THE EXECUTIVE’S NEWS MANAGEMENT IN IRIB NEWSROOM

The approach of IRIB to public information has changed from a rather traditional press release policy - based on interpersonal exchanges between politicians and journalists -to a professionalized and specialized process of strategic communication controlling the flow of news. In the light of this general development, news management of governments is one practical solution for strategic communication between IRIB and the Executive to further their political and policy goals. The paper using semi-structured interviews and grounded theory tries to explore news management of governments from a variety of angles. How is the relationship between news management and the political process? What factors impact IRIB newsroom? Our assumption is that the variation in news management, its styles and outcomes across different political systems depend on a series of contextual factors, originating in the political system, the media system and the media culture. The main objective of the paper is to analyze news management and review the context that shapes the approach of IRIB towards the Executive news. The central argument we propose is that media-centered news management is most likely to occur in IRIB newsroom due to the ideological context, a highly budgetary-dependence of IRIB to the government, lack of private television and competition and the predominance of adversarial journalism, while the government tend to feature a less adversarial working relationship between the national media.