Bigger, better, stronger, faster

I hate advertising. Really, I hate it. All of it. I can grudgingly admit that some it is occasionally useful, like when I see an advertisement for something that genuinely interests me. However, most of the time, it’s nothing more than a crass and frequently dishonest attempt to sell me something by definition I don’t need.

If I actually needed it, I wouldn’t need an advertisement to sell it to me, as I would know that I needed it and so would go looking for it. So, no need for an advertisement.

So why do I have such strong feelings about this issue? Well, there are a variety of reasons. The first and most obvious is that I work in journalism and have to live with the insidious influence of the commercial agenda in my day to day work.

Briefly, to explain to those who may not have come across the idea before, newspapers don’t actually make money on the cover price they charge for their product - the €1.20 or €2 you fork over for your daily newspaper actually just subsidises the printing costs. Newspapers actually make money through the sale of advertising. The thinking here is that companies will pay to have their products or services advertised to the readership of the newspaper.

Newspapers are commercial operations themselves – they exist to make money and not for any altruistic purpose. It's important to state that I'm not anti-capitalist and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with making money or wanting to make more money than you already do.

In order to make more money, newspapers need to grow their circulations, to attract more readers. The more readers a publication has, the more it can charge advertisers to place their ads before the eyes of the readers. To make their advertising space more attractive, newspapers commission research to show what the demographics of their readership is. The more information they have on their readers, the easier it is to persuade advertisers that that particular newspaper is the right one for them to get in front of potential customers.

So far, so good, eh? I mean, this doesn’t sound that bad? Advertisers get to draw attention to their goods or services and newspapers get paid for the privilege. However, in the middle of this there is massive potential for someone to lose the plot.

Because in a country like Ireland, there are a relatively large number of media outlets competing for the advertising budgets of large companies. So what happens when a journalist gets a story that concerns a company that spends hundreds of thousands or even millions of euro each year with the newspaper that employs them?

Tricky huh? After all, the reader is best served by the publication of the story, but the paper, and by implication it’s shareholders, is best served by growing the revenue the advertiser spends. However, it’s the readers and the circulation they bring with them that controls the amount of advertising the paper gets and how much it can charge for it. It’s chicken and egg territory.

The editor, the guy caught in the middle, the guy with whom the buck stops, frequently has to stand alone and argue for the editorial independence of his paper and the right of his journalists to do their jobs. Surprisingly sometimes the editor, and by default the interests of the reader, wins. However, disturbingly, it’s often the commercial interest that wins.

And what’s more disturbing is that there is a change occurring in the media business in Ireland which is seeing more power vested in the hands of the management at newspapers. Given the commercial nature of publishing, often the people judged most capable of guiding the company to increased profits are people are promoted out of the advertising departments.

In general, advertising executives see journalists as annoying and difficult to deal with - they get in the way of the commisions that come with selling advertising. There are always exceptions and I’ve been lucky to work with some very intelligent and conscientious senior management as well as a few truly excellent sales people who knew their jobs inside out and never promised preferential treatment to an advertiser as a means to a sale. But I’ve also met those who would sell their grannies for a sale, and there are a lot of them out there. But let's face it, nobody buys newspapers for the advertising, they buy them for the news.

To an extent, highlighting the problem is a little like tilting at windmills – it’s everywhere and it’s growing and it will continue to grow. It’s also a symptom of a bigger issue, the commercialisation of the world we live in. I understand that this is inevitable and I also understand that it’s not necessarily always bad, but it does require people with back bones to stand up and be counted, to take the side of integrity and honesty and not to ask whether we can get away with something but whether it’s the right thing to do.

There are people out there who get this, but they are sadly in the minority and the wagons are being circled.