The logistics of how this paid content gets written by the news staff is kind of important, even if it seems mundane. Let's assume that Google is indeed buying favorable coverage. Who writes it? Presumably it'd be the tech reporter, on someone on the business desk. Who tells this reporter to do it? In other words, is the reporter part of this conspiracy? Or just their editor? If the reporter is not part of this conspiracy, how is the reporter compelled to write a puff piece about Google if their (likely legitimate) excuse is that they're too busy working on actual stories for their beat? At some point, that reporter is going to get annoyed and suspicious if they are repeatedly asked to stop what they're doing to jump on a random puff piece.
How many stories does this deal buy? When are these stories assigned -- e.g. does Google have a year to assign X number of stories? Does this deal include the power to kill/subvert stories -- e.g. if a privacy fuckup becomes news, Google asserts the right to have prior review and make as many changes as it wants? Who is the contact person for this on Google's side? Presumably it wouldn't just be an advertising person, it'd have to be someone fairly experienced in PR.
This is a long way of getting to the core problem: this kind of thing requires a committed conspiracy, especially in the face of possible sanctions by the UK advertising authority. If it gets exposed, besides sanctions, Google risks a massive publicity blowup. Having several editors in the loop is problematic enough -- it gets even shakier when you add in reporters who may likely rebel.
As someone who has worked in a few newsrooms, I know I'm biased into thinking that journalists will do the "noble" thing and speak out. But I don't think I'm in the wrong in this kind of situation. Even in today's emaciated industry, journalists don't have much of a problem speaking up even if it means their jobs:
Note that it's not just adherence to principle at play -- journalists who make a brave public stand have a chance at getting hired by other outlets.
It's not that news outlets can't have systemic bias or subservience toward commercial interests. But that usually comes via pervasive influence over time from a publisher -- i.e. the fable of the frog not jumping out of a slowly heated pot of water.
One of the best known examples of a newspaper selling out that I can think of is the LA Times' 1999 arrangement with the Staples sports center to share revenue from an issue devoted to positive coverage of the center:
I don't think any more came of that. The cross-advertising in Murdoch papers is so routine it's a regular feature in Private Eye. The British press is largely a disaster area.
This is not only how news works. Of course there are hot political stories of the day but 90% of the business and tech news is PR driven.
PR agencies have ongoing relationships with journalists covering the specific areas and routinely pitch profile stories, 'innovation' stories, industry trend stories, third party research stories, topical stories that show the company they represent in good light.
And for the financial press there is a whole separate investor relations team with their own PR agencies. Similarly for government relations there are teams with their own lobbying agencies all actively engaging their targets including the media. There is nothing inherently unethical about this, though there is potential, but this is how the industry and media works.
This kind of thing has been going on forever, and doesn’t require a massive conspiracy. Google buys an ad campaign, one of the journalists publishes a fluff piece or drops a negative piece. I remember Matthew Wright talking about why he left the Daily Mirror over a Pizza Hut article.
A recent alleged example I can think of is Sharon Waxman, former NYT reporter who founded and runs The Wrap, claiming the paper was pressured to give up her 2004 investigation into Weinstein [0]:
> After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted.
> I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known. I knew he was a major advertiser in the Times, and that he was a powerful person overall.
However, this to me is another example of why the details of the conspiracy are important. First, the NYT editors involved deny her allegations:
Of course, that's the kind of denial you would expect from editors trying to cover their own asses. But the strongest evidence that Waxman may not have had anything akin to what the NYT won a Pulitzer this year for reporting is Waxman's own article:
It's a pretty lengthy article for what feels like insider baseball involving a little known entertainment official ("Miramax Sues Ex-Chief in Italy, Saying He Had 2 Jobs"), one that required her to spend time reporting in Italy, which is pretty good considering she was (in her own words) "a fairly new reporter" based in Los Angeles. The NYT is apparently ready to jump at Weinstein's word -- with that kind of familiarity/subservience toward Weinstein, how could editors even approve Waxman's proposed investigation (nevermind the travel expenses)?
The other thing against Waxman is the fact that she had ~8 years as the executive editor of her own Hollywood news site (The Wrap began in 2009) to pursue the investigation she claims was held. She did not. She appended an explanation to her initial article [0], in which she says "the moment had passed" because Miramax was mostly-defunct and she was too busy doing the work of raising money and running her own company. And also, Waxman writes, she did not hear of anything bad about Weinstein in the subsequent years and assumed he had reformed. It's possible had Waxman had more resources and faith from higher-ups, that she could've eventually uncovered the scandal. But it's clear she had nothing in 2004, or in the years since, that was a smoking gun about Weinstein's crimes -- she would not have sat on such a story otherwise.
I agree editorial scandal does not "require a massive conspiracy". David Simon famously alleged [1] (also known as the 5th season of "The Wire") that Baltimore Sun higher-ups looked the other way as a reporter published Pulitzer-bait fake stories. And there's of course the recent example of TMZ founder Harvey Levin's purported friendship with President Trump [2]. And there are numerous, more ambiguous cases in which an editor's/reporter's personal relationships may have influenced coverage [3] in subtle ways.
One of the most egregious examples -- in terms of obvious cause-and-effect of advertiser pressure, and the number of people involved -- is BuzzFeed's admission [4] it deleted several stories critical of advertisers because of advertisers' complaints to BuzzFeed's business team. But even in that egregious example, it's worth noting that it was exposed because BF felt compelled to do an internal investigation, which immediately got leaked to Gawker. And the examples of advertiser influence all involve ad-hoc deletions of articles that were outright critical. Even as influential as these advertisers were (and as flimsy as BF's editorial reputation was in 2015), advertisers still didn't have prior review, or other mechanisms to prevent bad press.
What's being alleged with The Evening Standard, by comparison, is a massive conspiracy. From the reporting in the submitted article, it sounds like there are meetings involving a good number of folks for ES's editorial and business side, as well as PR people from some of the most media savvy corporations. There's even a fancy PowerPoint presentation. I don't believe that corporations are above using their financial resources to bend journalism toward their ends. I just don't believe it would be done so unnecessarily out in the open and so brazenly.
How many stories does this deal buy? When are these stories assigned -- e.g. does Google have a year to assign X number of stories? Does this deal include the power to kill/subvert stories -- e.g. if a privacy fuckup becomes news, Google asserts the right to have prior review and make as many changes as it wants? Who is the contact person for this on Google's side? Presumably it wouldn't just be an advertising person, it'd have to be someone fairly experienced in PR.
This is a long way of getting to the core problem: this kind of thing requires a committed conspiracy, especially in the face of possible sanctions by the UK advertising authority. If it gets exposed, besides sanctions, Google risks a massive publicity blowup. Having several editors in the loop is problematic enough -- it gets even shakier when you add in reporters who may likely rebel.
As someone who has worked in a few newsrooms, I know I'm biased into thinking that journalists will do the "noble" thing and speak out. But I don't think I'm in the wrong in this kind of situation. Even in today's emaciated industry, journalists don't have much of a problem speaking up even if it means their jobs:
- https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/univision.php
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/business/media/denver-pos...
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/business/media/fox-news-a...
Note that it's not just adherence to principle at play -- journalists who make a brave public stand have a chance at getting hired by other outlets.
It's not that news outlets can't have systemic bias or subservience toward commercial interests. But that usually comes via pervasive influence over time from a publisher -- i.e. the fable of the frog not jumping out of a slowly heated pot of water.
One of the best known examples of a newspaper selling out that I can think of is the LA Times' 1999 arrangement with the Staples sports center to share revenue from an issue devoted to positive coverage of the center:
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/04/business/the-media-busine...
A few editors were apparently in the know. But once others outside of the conspiracy caught on, it immediately blew up into a major scandal.