“Basic publishing ethics dictate that fake articles be printed in clearly different type fonts and column widths, be enclosed by borderlines and be identified prominently as advertising. By contrast, as native advertising is most often practiced – and as the Federal Trade Commission has very much noticed – publishers allow their advertisers to run content strikingly similar in look and style to the real editorial. The label “advertising” is almost never applied. Instead they use confusing wiggle words like “sponsored content” or, even more obscurely, “from around the web”. The result is not merely deceiving to readers, it bespeaks a conspiracy of deception among publishers, advertisers and their agencies,” – Bob Garfield, at the Guardian, the latest publication to embrace the unethical deception of “native advertizing.”
Garfield also has a good round-up of those outlets who have now embraced whoredom: The Economist. Forbes. The Atlantic. The Huffington Post. The Washington Post. Time Inc. The New York Times, and, most recently, Yahoo.
The Dish 