The European Union recently gave the go-ahead for paid-for content in its movies. Already, however, James Bond had switched his martini for Heineken. And far from being subtle about this, the new beverage has been boasting about its (paid-for) part in Casino Royale with an extra advert in cinemas.
At least that’s one case of paid-content that’s upfront. But media is not always so frank — as revealed in the recent disclosure that coverage of South African Broadcasting Corporaiton head Dali Mpofu appeared in Leadership magazine only because of a hefty behind-the-scenes payment.
In West Africa, that’s known as brown-envelope journalism: you slip something to the piper and he plays your number. In SA print media, the practice is an institutional, rather than individual arrangement — but the principle is no different.
The result in both cases is that what you see is not what you get. Rather, what you get is something you don’t see. Instead of content chosen on editorial merit, and produced with editorial values, you get commercial messaging masquerading as agenda-free content.
Most of SA’s fashion and leisure magazines are as corrupt as the movie industry in terms of product-placement or engineered editorial. But even news magazines and newspapers are not immune, according to researchers Adrian Hadland and Lesley Cowling, who publish a Human Sciences Research Council book on the topic early next year.
The pair identify a growing volume and variety of paid-for content in South Africa print news media. The commercialised character of this messaging is frequently hidden … and even where it is signalled, there is often a deliberate ambiguity about its actual non-editorial status.
What’s at stake in all this is not advertorial clearly presented as such — ie, content with a noticeable label, and a different typeface and design to ordinary editorial.
Rather, the bigger issue is the proliferation of so-called supplements, surveys and special sections in the print news media. All these threaten the integrity of editors because the content rationale comes from the advertising departments, rather than the interests of readers.
The irony of such publishing is that the paying client naively assumes that readers imbibe the propaganda. Yet, it is as likely that many readers recognise — and accordingly discard or discount — this kind of dross, no matter whether it has donned an editorial dress or not.
Client vanity may explain why so much of this kind of content emanates from the government. One can picture communication officers pleasing their political principals because they show them speaking to the people. Whether anyone on the receiving side has found the messages credible is ignored.
On the other hand, Hadland and Cowling have done focus-group research with students and found this group unsavvy about detecting what is paid-for content and what’s not.
If this finding is more widely applicable, then perhaps the government and other clients are getting value for paid-content. But if no-one knows, or gives a damn, about this kind of content in our pages, there’s cause for concern.
The reason is that the resultant haze cheapens content at large. It carries the seeds for a generalised cynicism whereby all media content is homogenised down to low credibility status.
And it’s not just readers who may blur paid and unpaid content; the same danger applies to journalists. Specialist staff — separate from the news desk — are indeed employed at Independent Newspapers’ Special Projects division. But this is not the case with the Financial Mail¸ where ordinary reporters also write the special surveys.
Some FM staffers say this does not compromise their main job, and that in fact such work can give them leads for their ongoing output. I’m told their integrity in surveys is covered by a contract that requires them to speak to sources additional to the paying client. Further, the client is also contractually required to agree to this autonomy.
Although I e-mailed FM editor Barney Mthombothi asking to see a template of these contracts, he ignored the request. Meaning: it’s unclear how independent the FM’s surveys actually are, and whether in fact his staffers are switching between editorial and PR identities in a kind of schizophrenia that compromises content all-round.
Abroad, newspapers like the Financial Times do highly credible (and readable) special supplements which attract explicit advertising (as distinct from editorial that’s designed primarily to please a client).
But many South Africa print news media seem increasingly to be fiddling and fudging core distinctions at the heart of their mission. Yet content driven by client interests — even when honestly presented as such — is not the way to win the audiences which in turn attract advertising.
When the tail wags the (watch)dog, we end up with a media that misunderstands the basics of its business. Just as James Bond now risks losing the plot.