Re:BuzzFeed Says Posts Were Deleted Because of Advertising P...
by jrochkind1 on Sunday April 19, 2015 @08:42AM
(#9402933)
Are you saying it's a non-story because you _expect_ Buzzfeed to lack journalistic ethics?
Re:BuzzFeed Says Posts Were Deleted Because of Advertising P...
by notahacker on Sunday April 19, 2015 @09:16AM
(#9403008)
I'm saying both that I wouldn't expect Buzzfeed to have much in the way of journalistic ethics, and that brief opinion pieces on ad campaigns and board games are not journalism. It's not censorship when respectable publications won't publish a few hundred words and animated GIFs on "Why Monopoly Is The Worst Game In The World, And What You Should Play Instead" in the first place, so I'm not seeing it as particularly terrible if a more permissive editor takes it down after a complaint on the basis there's really no upside to keeping it.
I think it's a pretty open secret that the comparable brief lightweight pieces and listicles on fashion, travel etc. that appear in the supplement sections of even respectable publications are heavily influenced by who the fashion columnist had lunch with and what freebies they've been given, and nobody really cares.
We start worrying about chilling effects on free speech when they cheerfully ignore major scandals involving high street banks because that high street bank is attaching strings to their money.
The Telegraph saw its politics editor resign after claiming that the newspaper had suppressed stories other reporting investigations into money laundering against HSBC, a major advertiser, run the Chinese government's version of the repression of Hong Kong protests to similarly protect its relationship with HSBC and carried paid Russian and Chinese government propaganda supplements (although the newspaper proper did take an anti-Russian editorial stance). When the Guardian gleefully reported the troubles at their right wing rival, the Telegraph responded with an anonymous front page story insinuating the Guardian's advertising sales management were responsible for suicides on their team.
A content mill deleting some questionable opinion pieces that wouldn't have passed editorial review at other media companies doesn't seem to fall into the same level of scandal...