10 ms·
Paying journalists to promote brands in articles
- sudouser 9y agosites like reddit are plagued of users inserting brands into the comment, seems like a place full of marketers...
- rb808 9y agoTotally agree, I wrote about it on my blog http://myblogclickhere.com/lookatmyblog.html http://myblogclickhere.com/lookatmyblog.html.
- losteric 9y ago404
- gk1 9y agoIt’s a joke.
- foobar1962 9y ago... and a pretty good one too.
- losteric 9y agoGuess I'm an idiot heh, totally missed that
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI really enjoy reading that blog on my LG Ultrawide monitor!
- hartator 9y agoThe new Dell 38” 21:9 is actually way better!
- gldalmaso 9y agoPlaces with user generated content used to be where a lot of people would go to get bullshit free opinions and reviews also. Then the marketing departments caught on to that and proceeded to poison that well.
- myf01d 9y agoQuora is more disgusting, people ostensibly pretend to answer questions, however most answers are just advertisements to products
- praneshp 9y agoCan you point me to such answers? Because for the past month or so, I open quora, see the question "What's the sluttiest thing you have done", and close it off.
- gk1 9y agoThis isn’t a secret among marketers. They talk about it very openly amongst themselves. This is why, when you see the Forbes, Inc, Business Insider, or HuffPo logo on the site of an “expert” or startup company, you know they are bullshitting—those “press mentions” were, most likely, paid for.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoIn both the current company I work in, and the company before that, we had articles written about us that were pushed by the company. I don't think that money was involved, but the marketing copy (wait, sorry, the "article") was basically written by us, and sent to the journos with some photos. All they had to do is upload it to the news site. Makes an workday for the journo, and the company gets some publicity. Win-win for everyone, except people that enjoy reading quality, impartial content, rather than advertisements dressed up as legitimate articles.
- Veen 9y agoThis is largely how "guest blogging" works too. Marketing agencies hire writers who create content for their clients. The agencies then give the content to publishers for free, and it's published under a pseudonymous byline or the byline of an executive that typically includes a link to the client. When you see an article in Forbes written by a CEO or some other executive, it's often ghost written by a marketing agency's writers.
- disiplus 9y agoalmost every crypto ICO had a huffpo logo on their site. just silly ( that would not work in couple of days). and then there are the ones putting logos of bbc and the like but linking general storyes about crypto, in the hopes that the visitor would not notice that the story is not about them. as somebody that likes crypto i hate this.
- coldcode 9y agoWhen I worked at a financial services company we constantly had to find uses for whatever tech the CIO had bought without our input, yet really had no use for. Inevitably there would be an article on the company's website by him about how wonderful the tech was and how it was making everything easier. We suspected (and later were proved right) he was getting massive kickbacks. Long after I left he was walked out the door when a new CEO was hired.
- wyck 9y agoPretty obvious when you read practically anything these days that PR has taken over not just promotions but the entire narrative.
- ghaff 9y agoIt’s a stretch to call the people accepting these payments journalists although the lines are admittedly blurry these days.
- BurningFrog 9y agoI doubt there was ever a golden age when journalism was pure.
- musage 9y agoAre you claiming all journalists are corrupt? "This file may be named image.jpg, but there is no JPEG data in it to be parsed." "I doubt there was ever a golden age where technology was perfect." "A very keen observation, this still isn't a JPEG file though."
- ameister14 9y agoI think it was a response to 'the lines are blurry these days'
- musage 9y agoAre you sure? Surely they realize that someone saying the lines are blurry "these days" does in no way imply that they have not always been blurry.
- ameister14 9y agoIt kinda does, though. If I say 'it's really cloudy these days' it implies that at some point it was not cloudy
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoOf course not, but there was a time when most people got their news from sources that at the very least paid lip service to journalistic integrity.
- neya 9y agoI always dreamed of a news site that is just like Wikipedia, but has the mechanics of HN (upvote, downvote, flag, etc.). So that, you can weed out all these middlemen agents and crooked journalists who poison our news consumption.
- lzy 9y agoNo voting mechanics as far as I am aware but perhaps something like [Wikitribune][0]? [0]: https://www.wikitribune.com/story/2017/12/07/media/ft-can-wikipedias-jimmy-wales-fix-the-news/26586/ https://www.wikitribune.com/story/2017/12/07/media/ft-can-wi...
- scrollaway 9y agoBecause upvotes and downvotes did such a wonderful job of keeping shilling off reddit? I don't follow.
- neya 9y ago> but has the mechanics of HN > keeping shilling off reddit? They do a pretty good job on HN. That's my point. I understand why you cite Reddit, but that's not my point.
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoClearly the mechanics of upvoting/downvoting don't prevent shilling at scale. HN is just small enough to not attract large numbers of dedicated shills.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoAre you under the impression that HN is impartial?
- bhhaskin 9y agoHN is getting just as bad as Reddit. Look at how many posts are links to "news" sites.
- cyberjunkie 9y agoA vicious cycle that's triggered by a perpetually degenerative and complacent society. This is a problem that runs through everything - social media, education, health sectors, the job market, etc. Marketing something that's really worth little as being world changing. To the point of paid journaliists. The media isn't paid well, not nearly as good as other career options (depending on where you are). It's because journalism (magazines, TV shows and web sites) are expected to pay for a service for free. They need to pay salaries, buy equipment, operate their business. This money has to come from advertisements. Advertisers, marketeers, PR folk are constantly paying less because there are abundant channels to pick from (web sites, magazines, TV channels) to promote their brands. There's someone who'll accept little to do the same job. The concept of an 'advertorial' is fading. Advetisers know their agenda gets diluted / ignored by using advertorials, so they've found a marketing gimmick to do the same - promote their content through legit channels and that's what we see. This is what earns them their bread and butter. When journalists look at other media houses getting a piece of the pie (big exclusive breaks, perks and good relations with big names), they want it too, so they become more willing to do so. We as consumers of journalistic media aren't willing to pay them neither do we don't want the ads either. As a society, we're only getting 'cheaper'. Perception owns more importance than reality. We love what we consume, it stimulates us what politicians say, what products we see our stars eat, drink, use. Advertisers and media provide what is demanded.
- tyu100 9y agoTone down the moral panic. The 'Style', 'Food' and 'Travel' sections in newspapers have been bought forever and this is more of the same in a different era. I've always been most interested in why European goods are seen as luxurious in North America despite usually objectively being nothing special (wines that aren't any better in blind taste tests, cars of average reliability, bogus health claims of olive oil). You can usually trace this back to some mid-20th century group of journalists or experts getting a fully paid trip to Italy or France by some interested industry group.
- kartan 9y ago"2.1 Advertisements must be obviously distinguishable from editorial content, especially if they use a situation, performance or style reminiscent of editorial content, to prevent the audience being confused between the two. The audience should quickly recognise the message as an advertisement." https://www.asa.org.uk/type/broadcast/code_section/02.html https://www.asa.org.uk/type/broadcast/code_section/02.html
- igravious 9y ago“ – Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage. – Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two. Prominently label sponsored content. ” https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp (Society of Professional Journalists) “ 2.3 Readers are entitled to expect that the content of the press reflects the best judgment of editors and writers and has not been inappropriately influenced by undisclosed interests. Wherever relevant, any significant financial interest of an organization should be disclosed. Writers should disclose significant potential conflicts of interest to their editors. ” http://www.presscouncil.ie/code-of-practice http://www.presscouncil.ie/code-of-practice There may actually be a technological fix for this. One can use [computational stylometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry#Current_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry#Current_research) to analyse a blogger's (sorry, I mean journalist's) written output. The algo performs clustering, any articles not written by the author are shown up as outliers. Author attribution works because everybody uses function words differently from each other but fairly consistently over time. If an author has 150+ articles you'd definitely spot copy that came from another source I'd say!
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- Legogris 9y agoI have previously seen The Telegraph as a relatively serious publication, but we were approached by a person from them who reached out to us for an interview. Only after the interview, they told us that it was for an ad-campaign and that they wanted money for it to be published. Looking back at the email conversation, they weren't blatantly lying but used weasel-wording to make it appear as being editorial content. Having a background as a journalist, this was shocking for me.
- janlukacs 9y agoFunny no one mentions Google, all this is done purely for the SEO juice. We've heard it for years, links don't matter that much these days.. but in fact they do matter. Imho Google needs to fix this, not the content farms that Google thinks are "trusted" news sources.
- Buge 9y agoThis is illegal right? Warner Bros. had an FTC settlement because they paid youtubers for video game reviews, and that fact wasn't disclosed by many of the youtubers. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/07/warner-bros-settles-ftc-charges-it-failed-adequately-disclose-it https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/07/warne...
- makomk 9y agoProbably is, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if parts of the press just didn't think the FTC rules applied to them. (I know they had to have sharp words with quite a few publications about actually following their rules on affiliate links, and that's a lot more publicly visible and easy to prove than the stuff alleged here.)
- yostrovs 9y agoSince the publishing industry as a whole is on the edge of bankruptcy, this is just a response to ad blockers not being able to block these kinds of ads. You didn't want ads, you get them anyway as part of fake reporting. People running ad blockers shouldn't have an opinion on how publishers run their operations. It's just tit for tat.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoIf you're getting paid to do this you are not a journalist. Can we please stop using the word journalist / journalism when we mean: reporter, hack, whore, propagandist, marketer, etc.?
- black_puppydog 9y agoIMHO your suggestion makes it unnecessarily easy for other journalists to distance themselves. "Nonono, THAT guy is not really a Journalist! Among us, the REAL Journalists, there's no systemic problem whatsoever!" Same applies for other groups and their swept-under-the-carpet problems, I don't really want to bash on Journalists specifically.
- iamdave 9y agoIMHO your suggestion makes it unnecessarily easy for other journalists to distance themselves. GOOD. If you're someone who works earnestly to report affairs objectively and without the influence of money to promote $thing_goes_here, it is absolutely an imperative for you and the integrity of your outlet and profession to call this behavior when it happens.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoHow did you get to "...no systemic problem...? I got lost. In any case, that wouldn't be a problem for real journalists. A real journalists asks questions. Lots of questions. Hard questions. And that includes where they gaze into the mataphorical mirror. In order words, yeah journalism has issues. But we don't need to voluntarily get sucked into that vortex. Just because they don't police thrmselves doesn't me we have to be stupid as well. The headline of this article is wrong. The fact that the author is so mistaken is a very bad sign all around.
- closed 9y agoCould you give an example where you've seen someone use the word "journalist" when you think they should have been using "whore"?
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- cdurth 9y agoWe do it for our politicians...why stop there
- banderman 9y agoI wish that TV shows and movies had to disclose which companies paid for product/brand placement.
- txsh 9y agoThese journalists should just call their critics racist and sexist. It worked during the Gamergate scandal.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoThis would happen less if the people writing the stories were paid more (so it removes some temptation on the writers part). The problem isn't new though. After I had written a few articles for the old BYTE magazine I had the weird experience of being called up, at home (this is before Cell phones), by a company with an expensive schematic design package call me up and ask if I'd like a copy of their software. It was pretty clear they were angling to get a positive mention/review into BYTE and I turned them down, the then called Editor-in-chief Fred Langa. He laughed and said that now I was a "true" BYTE author since it indicated I had enough visibility to attract the attention of the advertisers.