To be or not to be information or advertising

Covert advertising is a recurring issue in the Readers' Ombudsman's mailbox, and has already been addressed. on October 27 of last yearThe importance of this is demonstrated by the fact that the seventh point of the Code of Ethics for Journalism in Catalonia addresses the issue: "Forms of promotion or advertising under the deliberate guise of journalistic information must be rejected." The sixth and seventh points of the Statute of the Readers' Ombudsman of the newspaper ARA also promote this journalistic classic.

I'm flooded with new emails from two subscribers. I firmly tell myself: "I refuse to let advertising disguised as sponsored content take the form of information. what I link They motivate subscriber complaint campaigns. More subscribers are needed to reduce dependence on advertisers. Reducing the quality of information by passing off advertising as information will not improve the newspaper's situation. I request corrections."

For his part, Ricard Gené sent me this email: "I've read the article entitled "Report: Barcelona's model for management: fewer tourists, more distributed, and with a greater positive impact." Barcelona Tourism. I ask you to ask the newspaper's management to refer to the advertisement as "Advertising."

I have contacted the Catalan Information Council (CIC), which oversees the issue, and its secretary general, Josep Rovirosa, has very kindly responded. Based on the aforementioned Code of Ethics and the CIC's own jurisprudence, he notes:

"Journalistic content (entertainment, news, etc.) may be formatted in any format deemed most appropriate, but it should never disguise the presence of advertising.

Citizens have the right to distinguish when they are receiving a journalistic message from when it is an advertisement, in order to make an appropriate assessment.

Traditionally, the graphic design of advertisements was very different from journalistic formats, which were graphically defined by a headline, a compact text blog, and some informative or illustrative graphic element. Furthermore, their placement at the bottom of the page and on the outer sides of the newspaper organized the content with a certain clarity. But in recent years, advertorials that mimic news formats and avoid confusing the reader have gained popularity.

Using different fonts and a different color palette than the one the newspaper uses for journalistic content could be a solution. But this graphic code may not be sufficient in modern newspapers. Current journalistic design often uses different font families depending on the section or journalistic genre to which each piece belongs. Using the same graphic strategy that already serves to organize journalistic content does not seem sufficient to mark a radical change that would warn any reader that we have moved from journalism to advertising.

Therefore, the Catalan Information Council recommends that, in addition to changing the page's graphic and typographic appearance, advertising content in a journalistic format should include a heading or epigraph that explicitly states its nature as "advertising" or "sponsored content." And never use euphemisms such as "consumption," "you should know," "market," or other nuances that citizens are increasingly reporting to the CIC.

Advertising is always looking for new ways to capture the attention of potential customers; this is its effectiveness, and we must recognize its successes, both marketing and even artistic. A marketing success was the placement of the Lucky Strike tobacco brand on both sides of the box, one of Raymond Loewy's strokes of genius, and an artistic success are—in the enduring historical present of beauty—the ads for Ramon Casas (Anís del Mono, Codorniu Champagne...) and An Apple-Macintosh...). Now, press advertising captures firsthand how the standard ad model is becoming obsolete and seeks to reach readers in the language of journalism, the hybrid genre of the advertorial. The collision comes not from the genre, however, but because the advertorial is intrinsically biased, and the report should be intrinsically the opposite. The media, consequently, also seeks imaginative formulas to avoid being caught in the act.

The ARA newspaper, like the press in general, already develops solutions that highlight sponsorships, and, given the complaints I receive, it's clear that readers are almost distinguishing between advertising and information in their decoding. To use expressions from other semantic contexts: advertising discourse as they read it. Therefore, while praising reading comprehension, we ask for a margin of commercial comprehension at a delicate moment of thermodynamic transformation in the print media, which must also reinvent itself commercially in search of revenue.

Both management and the editorial board are informed by the Readers' Comment Ombudsman and are sensitive to an issue of such qualitative magnitude, albeit nuanced because it is episodic. In our case, we distinguish between information and advertising, even going so far as to highlight sponsored content in the twenty-six conveniently marked sponsored content sections, with the only misunderstanding being that three are signed "Editorial Staff," which can be misleading, as is the signature "NOW."

It would therefore be advisable to rethink these corporate signatures and, more generally, to seek imaginative formulas among advertisers and the press that, while respecting the Code of Ethics, are favorable to the interests of both sides in the common space of advertising, which has given life to journalism since its beginnings. Journalism, for its part, treasures the past experience of having transitioned from profession to science, which passes through the brilliant intellectual contributions of Umberto Eco, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Armand Mattelart, and Miquel de Mora.

In this initiatory journey, ethical and deontological issues have been specifically situated in our ecosystem, and the Frankfurt School philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in Moral conscience and communicative action (1983), already postulated a "discursive ethics" with its own characteristics and stated that "an action that is oriented according to ethical postulates must adjust its behavior to the imperatives that arise from strategic constraints." That is the question.

The Readers' Ombudsman pays attention to doubts, suggestions, criticisms and complaints about the contents of the newspaper in its digital and paper editions, and ensures that the treatment of information is in accordance with the codes of ethics.

By contact the Readers' Ombudsman You can send an email to eldefensor@ara.cat or record a message of no more than one minute on WhatsApp at 653784787. In all cases, identification with your name, surname, and ID number is required.