Salon is running "Yes on 8" adds in their RSS feed headers. Booo....Turns out, "Yes on 8" bought a crapload of Google AdSense spots, and hit a bunch of lefty/tech sites. A Google search shows that a lot of people are pissed about it, both Google for trying to play both sides, and "Yes on 8" for contaminating their site.
MacInTouch got hit:
Without our knowledge or consent, Google displayed political propaganda on this website today as part of our participation in its AdSense advertising program. This is contrary to our own advertising policy.TPM got nailed, so Josh had to put up a note explaining their policy on ads.
We follow this policy because it is essential to preserving the editorial integrity of our product, which is news and information. Precisely because we are in the news and opinion business, advertising tied to ideas, issues or advocacy presents us with a particular challenge. If we reject ads that we disagree with, every ad we accept becomes, to one degree or another, a de facto endorsement. In other words, if we run ads only from candidates or causes we support, then the ad relationship also becomes an endorsement relationship. Even worse, a paid endorsement. That threatens the integrity of what we do -- which is to report the facts we find and explain the opinions we have.As I'm linking to this, the ad is still up on the TPM website, but you know what? I can respect that policy. We often get wound up when some network won't air an ad produced by a progressive group because the content supposedly violates some "advocacy" policy that only seems to apply to progressive advocacy. Unfortunately, it works both ways: if you want to maintain that kind of editorial integrity, you have to put with the stuff you disagree with as well.
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1 comment:
It didn't occur to me that the ads were part of AdSense. TPM's argument makes sense to me; I'd rather they retain some distance from advocacy in their ads, and if I have to put up with a few objectionable points of view, so be it.
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