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By Marta Wohrle
Should you conduct a Google search for 'Media Industry Newsletter,' you will find that having barely typed “media industry” Google will helpfully try to complete your search terms with its Google Suggestions feature. Media Industry Newsletter (min) is the eighth suggestion, just below “magazine industry dying.” “Magazine industry decline” comes in at No. 4.
This provides a grim context for a question that I have been mulling recently: What happens to ethical standards when the going gets tough? Will the magazine industry’s much vaunted division between church and state become a little blurred around the edges in return for a couple of extra pages? Will journalists take freebies gratefully and resort—only because all those cutbacks in head count have left little time for proper reporting, you understand—to a thin rewriting of the accompanying press release? Goodness, standards could drop to the depravity of digital.
I went to check out the ASME guidelines and found them to be admirable—clearly written, forthright and determined. Basically, they are saying, “Don’t mess with me and my readers, ad guy.” Which is fine. But isn’t the reality a little subtler than ad copy trying to masquerade as editorial? Self-censorship and self-selection have been going on in magazines for a long time and may even be increasingly pervasive.
OK, this isn’t going to win me any friends, but I’ve never found the division of church and state to be that clear-cut. What about when the fashion magazine credits (and there are some honorable examples of editors that refuse to do this) the cover model wearing a key advertiser’s makeup when, in fact, she’s wearing whatever war paint was in the makeup artists’ bag of tricks? Or the editors’ picks that just so happen to always include those regular advertisers? Or what about the beauty editor who not so long ago said to me, “I’ve toned down your intro (about harmful chemical sunscreen ingredients) because some of advertisers use them"?
If that’s what daily life is like, it’s no wonder the ASME rules are so defensive. I guess it also explains why ASME guidelines are only about resisting advertiser pressure and not a declaration of broader editorial values and professional ethics.
Some magazines have their own guidelines. For example, BusinessWeek has a much broader code of journalistic ethics. But then it’s a bit difficult to uphold a business that very nearly died as a paragon of magazine virtue.
I went on to look at ASME’s digital guidelines and, I must say, that to me they are rather odd. I find the first rather patronizing and the second not a little self-serving: “Credibility is key to the success of all digital-media businesses with an editorial component. Users must trust the advice and information given, just as they do that of offline brands.”
Not all offline brands have earned the users’ trust. And there are many digital brands that have credibility. The digital guidelines also refer to an item 8 with regard to sponsorship policies. There is no item 8. Or perhaps there is another document that is not on the magazine.org site. It also suggests we go see Epicurious.com for an example of how to fess up to relationships with “featured merchants.” I went to Epicurious.com and was unable to find it.
Obviously, out there on the Web there is a plethora of faux blogs that are put up by marketing companies and are there to peddle products under a thin veneer of content. Yet I don’t believe that they really dupe that many consumers. In fact, in my experience, online readers are incredibly cynical and demanding. I know that readers have highly tuned antennae for authenticity. How do I know? Because they post on my Web site and so, in a very public way, the content is always held accountable. I can guarantee you that it keeps you on your toes to have readers tell you that the advertising is overwhelming or confusing. I took down an ad after readers said they mistook it for content. In fact, I gave over the entire real estate for that unit to promote our newsletter.
The ASME guideline on e-commerce says: “E-commerce commissions and other affiliate fees should be reported on a disclosure page, so users can see that the content is credible and free of commercial influence.” This I genuinely don’t get. Many of the bloggers and Web sites that I regard as trusted influencers direct readers to where they can buy a product. They do this for products that they have tested and without being compromised. They also declare when they are reviewing a free sample, as opposed to something that they bought. I have never seen that level of disclosure in a magazine.
ASME’s guidelines are necessary, don’t get me wrong. They need updating though. And for the digital world, they need a rethink.
Minsider columnist Marta Wohrle is president of Accord Media and the publisher of Truth In Aging, among other digital content titles. Previously she was SVP, digital media, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., and director of Mercer Management Consulting.
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