Beyond clickbait and commerce

Denis Muller
were presented to the audiences as if they were the hosts’ own
genuinely held opinion. The practice became known as ‘cash for
comment’.
In February 2000, the authority found that this conduct had led to
90 breaches of the broadcasting code of practice and five breaches
of Sydney station 2UE’s licence conditions. The authority imposed
three new standards on commercial broadcasters, including a
requirement that they make on-air disclosures of any agreements
between sponsors and programme hosts.
In the United States in 2005, a series of scandals erupted over the
payment of fees to journalists in return for various services. As
The Economist (2005) reported, Michael McManus, a syndicated
columnist, received $US10,000 from the Department of Health and
Human Services for helping to train marriage counsellors. Another
syndicated columnist, Margaret Gallagher, received $US21,500
from the same department for helping to draft brochures, and
a talk show host, Armstrong Williams, received $US241,000 to
promote the ‘No Child Left Behind’ initiative. These journalists not
only took the money but they continued to write and broadcast
about these issues without disclosing them to their audiences. In
these cases, deception and conflict of interest were intertwined.
Deception is also the principal criterion used by the Australian
Press Council to determine complaints from newspaper readers
concerning sponsored content (Weisbrot 2015). The council’s
general position was spelt out in its adjudication of a complaint
brought against the Sydney Morning Herald concerning its labelling
of a supplement on Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN).
Whilst dismissing the gravamen of the complaint (Adjudication
1548, 2012), the council found that the label ‘special report’
did not assist substantially to provide adequate identification
of the nature of the supplement. It went on to state that in the
absence of a prominently displayed ‘unequivocal branding’ of such
supplements, there was a substantial risk that a publisher would
breach those principles of the Press Council concerning disclosure
of vested interests and conflict of interest.
Conclusions
Whatever terms are used to describe news-like content, it is
ubiquitous in online media and in legacy media alike. It presents
pressing ethical challenges to the profession of journalism and to the
media as an industry concerning conflict of interest and deception,
and mocks the concept of editorial independence. Ethical norms
concerning these issues are grounded in assumptions about the
nature of news, the nature of journalism, the role of the news media
and the processes by which media manage the tensions between
106 Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016