A bad day for journalism

[Updates with info from comments, below, saying The Atlantic did not properly distinguish between ad copy and editorial, and with a link to a post by David Dobbs.]

As the media consultant Jeff Jarvis tweeted on Tuesday, it was a "disturbing day for journalism: CNET sells out for CBS; Observer kills a column for the offended; Atlantic runs Scientology advertorial."

In three separate instances, websites had been ordered not to publish or had withdrawn material that had already been posted. But the circumstances were different in each case, and the differences bear scrutiny.

The CNET/CBS clash

I posted yesterday on this case–CBS's decision to quash a review by its subsidiary, CNET, of a digital-video recorder that allows viewers to skip commercials during prime-time network television–including on CBS. CNET named the Dish Network's ad-skipping Hopper its best-in-show product at the CES consumer electronics trade show. CBS, which is suing Dish over the device and claims it's illegal, ordered CNET's editors to pick something else and not to disclose the editorial interference, which predictably became public. One of CNET's senior writers resigned. 

The Observer

In news that hasn't attracted too much attention in the U.S., the editor of the English newspaper The Observer withdrew a commentary by the writer and provocateur Julie Burchill entitled "Transsexuals should cut it out." The editor, John Mulholland, said in a statement, "The piece was an attempt to explore contentious issues within what had become a highly-charged debate. The Observer is a paper which prides itself on ventilating difficult debates and airing challenging views. On this occasion we got it wrong and in light of the hurt and offence caused I apologise and have made the decision to withdraw the piece." 

The commentary in question, which is of course no longer on The Observer's site but has been published here by The Telegraph, described transsexuals in coarse and dismissive terms. ("A bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs" is one of the milder phrases.) The commentary, not surprisingly, drew heated criticism on the web, and so did the decision to withdraw it. The reprint in The Telegraph had 827 comments this morning.

A piece in Salon by Mary Elizabeth Williams carries the subhed, "The Observer publishes a scathing, transphobic, editorial, then deletes it. Which is worse?" Except for the fact that post was an opinion piece and not an editorial, the subhed captures the Scylla-and-Charybdis moment The Observer found itself in. 

The Atlantic and Scientology

Last night around 11:30 p.m., The Atlantic pulled an advertorial entitled "David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year," roughly 11 hours after the piece was posted. In the briefest possible explanation, The Atlantic posted the following statement, which I'm quoting in full: "We have temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads." A copy of the advertorial, which is no longer on The Atlantic's site, has been posted here by scribd.com.

Later, in another statement, The Atlantic said, "We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism — but it has — to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes."

My first question was whether the advertorial looked like editorial copy–an unforgivable offense, if true. It's difficult to tell from the copy at scribd. Josh Voorhees, in a nice wrap-up of the situation in Slate, says the ad looked like advertising. It was "branded as such with a yellow-highlighted SPONSORED CONTENT above the headline," he writes. Some Tracker readers disagree (see comments below). "The Scientology ad absolutely looked editorial," writes Maia Szalavitz. Maryn McKenna adds that while the post had a "little yellow eyebrow" identifying it as sponsored content, "Almost everything else — font, lower rail content, header, footer, etc. etc. — was the same as on a regular Atlantic page, down to the 'new content' widget for the columnists and the Facebook Likes pane." [Update: David Dobbs at Wired called the decision to publish the Scientology post "a huge betrayal of writers and readers."]

This is unforgivable. Advertising copy should never be mistaken for editorial copy, as ScienceBlogs and Pepsi discovered in the so-called Pepsigate affair. Erik Wemple of The Washington Post, in a post recreating the timeline, noted that The Atlantic has run many such advertorials before and has not received complaints. But McKenna writes that "those pages had greater differentiation, with a bigger label and explainer block."

The issues

I discussed the CNET/CBS case in my post yesterday, but the bottom line is this: The single most important thing news organizations can offer their readers is credibility. Lacking that, they are doomed to fail. CBS robbed CNET of some of its credibility; whether the theft will prove fatal, we don't yet know. It was a dumb decision by Moonves. While the Dish Network's DVR might affect CBS's business, the story by CNET could not have had more than a minuscule impact on CBS. Running the story would have cost the company almost nothing. But what it lost by killing the story? Priceless.

The Observer likewise tampered with editorial content, and deserves the criticism it's getting. The time to correct the commentary's rough language, or to kill it, was when it was being edited–not after it was published. An editorial decision to kill the piece before publication, had it become public, might also have sparked criticism. But The Observer would have been on solid ground; the solid exercise of editorial judgment is one of the things we look for in news sites, even if it isn't always correct. (See paragraph above re: credibility.) But killing the commentary after publication was a mistake. A better course of action would have been to encourage debate, report on the debate, and allow the commentary to slip into the archives. 

At The Atlantic, the situation was quite different. The Observer and CNET were dealing with journalism. The Atlantic was not. The standards that apply to journalism do not apply to advertising copy. Journalism is intended to inform; advertising is intended to sell, and we all understand that. The Atlantic is squirming primarily because it now must explain to critics why it withdrew the Scientology advertorial–and why the advertorial looked so much like the site's editorial copy. In this case, it's the company's business practices that are under scrutiny, not its journalism.

Still, as Jarvis declared, Tuesday was a bad day for journalism. So far, today seems like a better one.

-Paul Raeburn