Brooke Robinette
brobinette66@gmail.com
Social media has changed the way that many people get
their news. According to the PEW
Research Center, 20% percent of Americans in 2018 used social media as
their primary news source. The ease of scrolling, a huge variety of articles, and
pervasive questionable content often leave social media users in the dark in
terms of content origins. To muddy the waters further, many companies are
creating advertisements that are designed to look like news or magazine articles
called native advertising.
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| LinkedIn 2018 |
Native advertising is used by many different news sources
and magazines. One of the entertainment media outlets that feature native advertisements
quite often is Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed creates content in
conjunction with advertisers to promote products and they are not shy about it.
Some of the articles recently listed on the site are entitled “34
Products the Buzzfeed Shopping Team Basically Cannot Live Without” and “39
Things You’ll Basically Be Doing Yourself A Favor For Buying”. These
blatant advertisement articles feature disclaimers about Buzzfeed receiving
payments if a reader uses their link to purchase. These blatant advertisements
are posted on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram and blend in with
news and magazine articles, blurring the lines between news, entertainment, and
advertisements.
Native advertisements are not always as obvious as the ones by
Buzzfeed. The New York Times uses native advertisements through their TBrand Studio department. TBrand
Studio has worked with several brands to create journalistic content that
features products. These native advertisements are slick and well-written
pieces that blend in easily with feature articles by the news outlet. The
TBrand Studio website seems to put the practice best with the tagline “Inspired
by the journalism and innovation of The New York Times, T Brand
crafts stories that help brands make an impact in the world’. These
types of native advertisements certainly can make and impact in our world, but
is the impact positive and are native advertisements for ethical?
This ethical dilemma is discussed in an article
featured on Mediashift. The writer, Ava Sirrah, previously worked at TBrand
Studio and assisted in creating native advertisements. Sirrah says that the practice
provides much-needed funding to news organizations but she warns that it could disrupt
the independence of journalists. She warns that advertisers are seeking to gain
more control within news organizations and assist in the creation of the
content from the inside:
“As media critics, academics, and news consumers debate the
ethics of native advertising, I fear they’re missing the larger story of how
publishers are evolving their business model to secure revenue. Advertisers are
asking the New York Times and other news publishers for more. They want to work
with the newsroom in deeper and more complex ways. To combat this breakdown of
the editorial and advertising wall, media watchdogs need to fight for
regulation that demands news publishers disclose which brands they are working
with and what they have been asked to produce.”
As Sirrah points out, native advertisements
themselves may not be unethical on the surface, but not disclosing partnerships
with brands and keeping the goals of advertisers a secret does not mesh well
with journalists’ code of ethics in terms of transparency.
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| TGH 2017 |
The blurred lines between news, entertainment, and advertisements on social media can be harmful to the public as well. When Facebook
newsfeeds are filled with faux editorial content, access to information about
important news events can be diluted. Another PEW study
from 2020 states that those who get their news from social media “tend to be
less likely than other news consumers to closely follow major news stories,
such as the coronavirus outbreak and the 2020 presidential
election. And, perhaps tied to that, this group also tends to be less
knowledgeable about these topics”. Native advertisements could exacerbate this problem
by drowning out important news or by frustrating followers and ultimately
driving them away from news sources.
Because journalistic institutions
have been in dire financial straits for most of the decade, native advertisements
will continue to be a source of steady revenue. Sirrah has some advice about
holding these institutions accountable that could combat the lack of disclosure,
however. She suggests creating policies that disclose how much money was
received from each advertiser and what articles are linked to these
advertisers. She also suggests quarterly reports that would be made public that
contain this information. These suggestions could provide the much-needed
transparency that every journalistic institution should strive for.
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