Beyond clickbait and commerce

open to paying for content. Others felt that commercial activity
was incompatible with their mission. ‘[Earned revenue] is not part
of our business strategy because our roots are editorial. Our idea
is to share censored information in the best means so we can’t
capitalise; it would contradict.’
Resistance against earning revenues is a source of tension among
consultants. One noted: ‘Most are more on the activism side. They
don’t find the money generation as a value activity. They believe
advertisers have a pressure point on them. They feel a dollar in ads
is polluting their mission. They don’t see a legitimacy in delivering
audiences to advertisers and accepting a payment for that.’
Another advertising expert said: ‘It is simplicity of not having to
be sales person. This is much more an argument of convenience.
Blocking all ads is too broad brush. There’s always a way to do it
that is tasteful and ethical. There is a lack of knowledge. It’s more
that it suits them to say that rather than them having considered
the question of ethics.’
RESEARCH
PAPER
Reconciling commercial imperatives
Practitioners increasingly accepted that some revenue generation
independent of grant funding was of benefit. There was evidence
of a range of earned income in the sample (display, banner, Google
Adsense online advertising and an advertising network), although
earned income was often in limited amounts. There was much
variance in the ethical values towards revenue generation for the
news outlets included here.
Three sites used a specialist-advertising agency for fragile states.
It works by pooling advertising inventory into one global network
of standard advertising formats and sizes. The network carries
out due diligence on advertisers and has ethical guidelines. Some
publishers found that having the advertising agency separate by
name, domain and organisation helped them maintain ethical
operations. A director notes: ‘We help the publisher to avoid that
kind of editorial influencing that some might seek to gain. If we
are running all the ads we can screen it. We can run sponsored
content because we are separate from the publisher so it takes the
headache away. We are the ethical gatekeeper.’ In previous studies
exploring niche-subject journalism, news outlets have been found
to worry about seeking direct sponsorship due to perceived conflict
of interest (Nolan and Setrikian 2014). Three sites listed problems
generating revenues from syndication, as many larger media take
content without appropriate credit. One outlet covering Azerbaijan
said: ‘It is unethical that lots of large media companies take our
work without crediting us.’
Some were evolving their value set to accept more soft content to
bundle with harder news stories, or to refocus material, in order to
Copyright 2016-2/3. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 13, No 2/3 2016 75