Dominic Bush
db583018@ohio.edu
Have you ever seen those recommended stories after you finish reading an article online? How often are those stories taboo or seem completely unrelated? This is no coincidence; these articles are purposefully placed at the end of almost every major news production company in the world (that uses an online forum).
Picture source: https://www.brax.io/blog/what-is-taboola
According to the article "You'll never believe how recommended stories are generated on otherwise serious news sites", these stories are generated by a computer. Even worse than that, every time that each of these stories is clicked on, the news company and the program receive pennies in return.
The company running this program is called Taboola; an Isreal based company that makes all its money from these weird suggested stories. According to the article, Taboola is set to make just over 100 Million dollars in profit from their programed story production. And these stories are unethical to say the least.
The biggest problem with these computer generated stories is it does a horrible job of separating advertisements from journalism. Journalism, when truly ethically correct, should not promote a product, idea, or person; but rather provide true information.
In the above picture showing these stories made by Taboola, you can clearly see the product promotion in these stories; and because of these glorified advertisements, both the news company and Taboola receive money for promoting the article from the original site.
According to the article, over one third of Americans have clicked on one of these Taboola articles in the last month alone. These articles are surrounded in controversy for their product promotion, but also their lack of class.
Many of these articles are sleazy, scandalous, filled with sex appeal, and promote misleading titles. All of these are against journalism ethics. They're scams to say the least. These articles have a diarrhea of ideas but a constipation of information. They are computer generated, half attempts at news stories, that steal your attention from real stories to profit.
The most major news companies in the world use these programs. Companies that use this program include CNN, Politico, and NBC to name a few. Look at any story at any three of these sites It's all a scheme to make money quick with no effort, and a real eye sore in the journalistic body. It challenges the integrity of journalism as a whole, and it combines journalism and advertisement, which violates the idea of ethical journalism being separate from advertisements.
There is no real solution to the problem right now. It is human nature to look at stuff that peak our interest. The biggest way to fix this issue is to actively ignore these articles, and try to bring down faulty journalism. These articles are taking credibility away from real journalists doing real, honest journalism. It is our job as journalists to keep our integrity, and realize information is more valuable than any monetary value.
The vast majority of us posted on astroturfing, so it was especially enjoyable reading your post on taboola and other annoying content that attempt to get users to read more articles on the same site.
ReplyDeleteGreg
gy028518@ohio.edu
Hey, Dominic!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. I appreciated that you mentioned that ethical journalism should not promote an idea, person, or product. Ethical journalism works hard to find and report the truth. It is sad to see unethical articles steal attention for a profit. Now that I have read your blog, I am going to look companies you mentioned and be sure to keep a closer eye out for those unethical articles.
Olivia Gauding
og198415@ohio.edu
Dominic, I could not believe this. I use a site that gives free event tickets to military and veterans. The site is riddled with these articles that have nothing to do with the site it's self. I now makes a lot more sense.
ReplyDelete