Politico to go: Inside truth about "journalistic integrity" during a political season

A large chunk of my career (16 years) was spent in the world of advertising. I worked for various advertising agencies planning, negotiating and recommending the placement of media for many top advertisers.  Once I explained my job as spending money, but since it was other people’s money I had to make sure my clients were getting the best possible deal. 

That “best possible deal” involved more than getting the best costs, but also getting the best editorial coverage.

Magazine editors and Television news people who talk about journalistic or editorial integrity make me laugh because in most cases there is no such thing. One of my first projects in advertising was working for a pet food company. We negotiated with CNN to create pet care news segments just to create a compatible environment for our advertising. 

Years later working for a major toy advertiser, I negotiated with magazines to run stories on toys to run next to my clients ads, though their readers expected a different editorial selection. When Bayer Aspirin started its campaign about aspirin and heart attacks, to get our ads, magazines ran stories about heart care to run opposite our advertising.

Why is any of this important? Because you need to keep this in mind as we enter the 2012 political season.

After 16 years in the ad trade, I switched to the media selling side and was able to see the process from their perspective. There is supposed to be a wall of separation between the advertising and editorial staff of the business, in most cases that wall does not exist.

When I was marketing director for a magazine group, once a year I would take the projected ad schedule for the following year and sit down with the editor’s to negotiate what kind of editorial we would need to run as to make those advertisers happy the next year. 

As publisher of a different magazine, I directed my marketing staff to write articles about advertisers we would run them in the book next to their ads, with a little slug at the top saying advertisement (in the ad business it they are called advertorials). The trick was to make the advertorials look just like the regular articles in the magazine so the readers would not notice the slug at the top.

There are two reasons why this is important information in today’s political world.

First, if the advertising sales part of a media company, even with its traditional strict separation from the editorial side, can influence the stories a magazine will publish, just imagine what the influence of a bias that originates from the editorial department.  Editors who toss off their “journalistic integrity” the ad department can make money; will easily toss it off to accommodate their own political bias.

The other reason behind this stories importance has to do with the argument some on the left or the right will make about research coming from the other side.  In many cases when a study is published which refutes a stance supported by the other side, the usual counter attack ignores the facts or methodology of the study.

What they don’t tell you is that those same magazines or television shows that publish their counter attack, are usually running advertising from sponsors who are demanding those types of stories be published, just as I did as a media director sometimes from those same “evil corporations” who provided the grants for the study. In most situations, those “evil” corporations are actually supporting both sides of the argument.

For example, recently the progressive media watch dog Media Matters (MMFA) criticized a study by the Heartland Institute which cast doubt on the theory that global warming is man-made. Instead of criticizing the facts of the study, they argued that Heartland received $676,500 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006, including $90,000 specifically for “General Operating Support — Climate Change.”

But consider this: You can’t read the science journal Nature which publishes studies supporting the theory of anthropogenic global warming without being bombarded by ads by from oil companies (including ExxonMobil). Is Nature bought and paid for by “Big Oil?” Why not? (That’s a rhetorical question. We all know the answer.)

Truth be told, journalist ethics is an oxymoron not just for MMFA but for most of the sources we approach for information. Whether it is AARP articles supporting Obamacare because they stand to make millions of dollars from sales of its licensed insurance products, or Al Gore’s potential billions from his “green” investments should the of anthropogenic global warming theory receive universal acceptance.” The only thing you should trust implicitly in political writing is the advice given during each episode of the “X-Files” Trust No One. Read everything (especially the Jewish Star) but in the end make your own decisions.