© Copyright 2000
S. Camille Broadway.
All rights reserved.
Questions? Comments?
Contact me at:
scbroadway@mindspring. com

Caught in the Web between advertising and news

Linking issues | Bottom line

WCBS-TV in New York accepted more than $300,000 to run an ad on its Web site featuring a live Webcast of a laser eye surgery procedure on March 23, 2000.

Not a problem.

Later that day, the news department did a story about laser eye surgery and quoted the same doctor and patient featured in the Webcast, according to Electronic Media, an interactive newspaper for broadcast and cable. The story also pointed viewers to the WCBS-TV Web site to see a video of the procedure featured in the news story.

Big problem.

The creep of advertising into news content is one of the challenges to online credibility. And no one is immune. The New York Times book reviews came under scrutiny because the online review was positioned near a Barnes and Noble link to purchase the book.

"The rules are the rules -- news is news, sales is sales, and everybody has to walk their side of the street, and anything short of that, the public will not believe in us," Paula Madison, WNBC-TV vice president of news, told Electronic Media. "In this new medium it should be the same old practice of journalism, journalism cannot change, there can't be any compromise about that."

But in the online news world where linking to anything else on the Web is possible, the gray area gets a little bigger. If you are reviewing a product like a computer, do you link to the manufacturer at the end of the review or to an online retailer of electronic products? In a travel section, do you link to cruise lines and tourism offices? Consumers want information at their fingertips. If they have to leave your site to book their vacation, will they come back?

The line may be easier to distinguish in hard news, but in consumer-oriented material blurring may occur.

Merrill Brown, editor in chief of MSNBC on the Internet, said the site already provides some access to products. "With some reluctance, we provide access to purchasing, particularly in travel," Merrill said on March 1, 2000, at a forum sponsored by the Online News Association and the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center. "We should do our best to distinguish between advertising and news, but the bottom line is that it's still very confusing."

Rich Jaroslovsky, president of the Online News Association and managing editor of the Wall Street Journal Interactive, said the crossover problems have existed for print as well as online news.

"Look at the real estate section or the automotive section of most major metropolitan newspapers," Jaroslovsky said. "Because the standards haven't fully evolved in our medium, those 'mushy spots' can proliferate, whereas by now they're relatively segregated in most responsible newspapers."

Readers have to be able to pick out paid links from editorial links in order to establish trust and to maintain a sense of balance and fairness.

C.C. Sandorfi, senior editor at ZDNet and former managing editor of Channel 2000 in Los Angeles said online sites must look at the long-term credibility and health of the site rather than short-term gains from advertising links.

"If we pander to advertisers and censor ourselves, limit content, whatever, the viewers aren't stupid; they'll know it, and they'll turn elsewhere for more objective news and information," Sandorfi told Barb Palser for an article in the American Journalism Review. "Thus, in the short run, it might appear that our sales folks can sell more advertising. But in the long run, they'll lose, because page views will drop."