I know about this practice in the Indian Media but Outlook India magazine has covered it in detailed!
Here is the excerpt from the article:
In the cynical times that we live in, rumours of an MP or an MLA paying money to a newspaper or a television channel to elicit favourable news coverage might perhaps raise no more than an eyebrow. One may possibly progress to a shrug of the shoulder when one hears a journalist saying that his colleague might have succumbed to pressures from the “marketing” department and filed a soft interview with a politician.
But when a victorious chief minister openly admits that he himself approached the leading newspaper of his state with money for “positive stories” after learning that the newspaper had signed a “package deal” with his rivals to print negative stories, you had better sit up and take urgent notice. It can only mean that the selling of editorial space has become both blatant and institutionalised, and that neither the print nor the electronic media are immune to the malaise.
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