Would you have faith in a magazine or newspaper where most every page of editorial content was purchased by advertisers, but disguised as news?

How would you feel about a legitimate-looking “news story” reporting that a new drug remedied a certain disease, when the article was approved and paid for by the pharmaceutical company selling the medicine?

These are not hypothetical situations. Many of Ukraine’s newspapers and magazines carry purchased stories posing as legitimate news. As news stories, they are not worth the oft-noted paper they are written on. They are the equivalent of cotton candy masquerading as hard rock candy.

The problem posed by purchased news is endemic and represents journalism fraud by the publications that practice such deceptive “reporting.”
However, the companies that purchase stories – many of which are familiar and respected Fortune 500 companies – are just as guilty.

Practices that would be unthinkable in New York or London are common in Eastern Europe. In some cases, the companies’ expatriate managing directors are unaware of the shady way their marketing directors obtain coverage. Others likely permit this common, seemingly harmless, but thoroughly unethical activity.

The offenders include one of the largest international pharmaceutical companies doing business in Ukraine, and one of the largest worldwide fast-moving consumer goods companies. Their managing directors are prominent expats, but when it comes to purchased press, they are asleep at the wheel.

I’m tempted to name them here. However, in the interest of comity, one would hope they would quietly mend their ways and cease and desist. It would be the smart thing to do.

I honestly don’t think that “naming and shaming” would have much impact on the publications involved. Some struggle to survive, and lack the culture of ethical journalism. It is the multinational companies – members of the European Business Association and the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine – that enable the practice to flourish, and it is these companies that can bring change.

Several years ago, I launched a campaign with Willard Marketing Monthly and former Segodnya publisher Guillermo Schmitt to try and diminish the practice of purchased stories. The impact was akin to tossing marshmallows at a stone wall; nary was a dent made.

When I became CEO of the Kyiv Post, I inherited a more formidable pulpit than my limited-circulation and specialized magazine gave me. Also, at the Post I’ve found journalistic soulmates among the staff and editorial management, people who studiously divide editorial content and ads that appear in our newspaper.

This is not being holier-than-thou, but simply honest: One cannot say that he or she is a journalist, and work for a publication where there is no demarcation line between legitimate news and advertising. One simply becomes a commercial hired gun.

While the practice of selling stories is rampant in the publishing industry, it is particularly prevalent in the specialized glossy magazines. The word from one chief editor was that every editorial page in the magazine had to be approved by the company that paid for the story.

As a result, the articles that appear seem to stretch the boundaries of credibility. Many, in fact, include companies’ syrupy positioning statements as though they were news rather than simply promotional pabulum.

The sad truth is that the companies buying stories would actually be better off by purchasing display ads. Though this is a subjective judgment, purchased editorial comment wouldn’t pass even a semi-intelligent reader’s smell test.

During a panel discussion last year at an EBA public relations committee meeting, Myron Wasylyk, managing director of PBN, a public affairs company, pointed to a survey that revealed that few readers believe purchased stories.

Past experience with companies that have purchased press shows that buying press places a company on a slippery slope: Once you pay for a story, it is difficult to get into that same publication again without paying – even for a legitimate story with real news value.

Why, then, does purchased press happen?

First, it is an easy option for a lazy marketing director or less-than-ethical PR adviser. Also, having fed at this trough for many years, editors claim that even legitimate stories which contain product names legally constitute advertising and must be purchased.

Bull.

This common but self-serving contention stretches interpretation of the advertising law beyond recognition. The law simply does not require this, and I have obtained a legal opinion saying so.

If, as editors maintain, mentioning a company name constitutes advertising, then the rule must be applied across the board and no businesses should be mentioned unless they pay for the privilege.

Were that the case, the names of airline companies would not be mentioned when a crash occurred, stock prices could not be reported, and articles on professional football matches couldn’t mention the names of the teams involved.

Silly? Absolutely, but so is the ad law argument.

With endemic corruption in Ukraine, this one niche area might be thought small. However, one thing is certain: Purchased press will be with us as long as it has corporate enablers who otherwise pride themselves on being good corporate citizens.

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Kyiv Post CEO Michael Willard can be reached at [email protected].