BuzzFeed editorial is controlled by advertisers

Advertising is unavoidable online. "Ah... but I have AdBlock Plus installed!" I hear you cry. It doesn't matter. You may not see advertising, but it still affects your online experience; this is particularly true if you are BuzzFeed reader. I'm not in the habit of criticizing others in the trade -- and I realize that I'm opening myself up for attack here -- but BuzzFeed is a site filled largely with listicles (lovely words) and churnalism (ditto), headlines sucking up to Google left, right and center.

But for all of the coffee-break-filling articles it pumps out each day, it is the articles that have been deleted that have generated more interest recently. About a week ago one BuzzFeed writer resigned after an article she wrote that was critical of Dove soap ads was pulled. BuzzFeed conducted a review, and this weekend details of the findings came out. It transpires that this is not the first time posts have been deleted because of a conflict of interest between editorial and advertising. BuzzFeed may not be a particularly influential site, but it's worrying nonetheless.

As revealed by Gawker, a memo sent by BuzzFeed's editor in chief Ben Smith to staff shows that over one thousand (1,000!) articles were deleted. Last week, Smith responded to criticism about deleted posts. The post about the Dove ad campaign was restored, as was one post that criticized the game Monopoly written shortly after the game-maker Hasbro started an ad deal with BuzzFeed (the deletion of neither had been advertised) but it was denied that advertiser pressure was to blame:

Appreciate the criticism. We just reinstated two posts and I sent this note to staffers. pic.twitter.com/YodxHiQmt2

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) April 10, 2015

The latest memo -- sent to BuzzFeed staff on Saturday -- shows that three posts were deleted after "advertiser complaints." To most reasonable minds, the only justifiable reason for an advertiser to make a complaint to a website about content should be if an error has been made (which can be easily corrected) or if something defamatory is alleged that can be proved false. There may be other possibilities, but what certainly should not be the case is an advertiser taking umbrage at the tone of an article, criticism in an article or something of that ilk, and then using the threat of ad withdrawal to influence whether said posts stay online or not.

But the menu goes into some details about three posts that were deleted and stayed deleted. Mark Duffy wrote an article about Axe body spray that was deleted. The tone was deemed questionable, Duffy was ultimately fired, and Smith assured people that "our editorial team operates independently of advertisers, and I've never based a decision about reporting on an advertiser's needs". Another post by Tanner Ringerud that criticized Internet Explorer was deleted because he had previously worked on a Microsoft ad campaign (hang on -- I thought the two were meant to be independent of each other). Smith explains that "we set up a 'cooling off period' in which he wasn’t allowed to write about any brands he’d worked with for six months" -- so just sort of independent, then.

The third deleted post was written by Samir Mezrahi and included a mixture of positive and negative coverage of various companies. References to Pepsi were pulled because the business side of BuzzFeed is making Super Bowl ad content for the company that would be run on Twitter. If the two sides of BuzzFeed were truly independent, this would not have mattered in the slightest.

To be clear about BuzzFeed's position on writing about ads, Smith says:

We don’t write about ads that are running on BuzzFeed unless they are genuinely newsworthy. Appreciation buzz posts celebrating a fun or cool ad are fine, as are posts critical of ads -- but that content should not be about ads BuzzFeed's business side has created.

Again, if it is not possible to be critical of ads created by the business side of BuzzFeed -- which is supposedly entirely independent of the editorial side, remember -- impartiality is lost. Any content should be game for praise or criticism. Of course, this opens up the possibility of disclosure of association. If a writer used to work for a company and lambasts said company in a post, that's valuable information for the reader to have. It should not mean that the writer is not able to post their article, however.

I have reached out to Ben Smith myself, asking how, in light of the recent revelations, readers can be sure that there is no pressure from advertisers influencing content. I'm yet to hear back, but I'll update this post with ant response I receive.

As regular readers of BetaNews are no doubt aware, here we are not afraid to say what we think. If we like something, it's because it does what it's meant to do and does it well, because it's great value for money, it's sexy, etc. If we don’t like something and give it a bad review it because we think it's crap; it offers poor value for money, is badly made, and so on. We have zero relationship with advertisers to either promote a particular product, nor are we encourage to berate others. What we say is what we think, and that's precisely how it should be.

Of course this means there will be occasional disagreements. Products and services can summon up strong feelings -- both positive and negative -- and it's sometimes the case that among BetaNews staff we don’t feel the same way about something. One of us may love the latest build of Windows 10, while another hates it. Neither writer is being paid by Microsoft or its rivals to promote or condemn, and there is no pressure from an advertising team to give promotional coverage (or even any coverage) to a product or company.

Independence matters. Independence means honesty. Independence means that nothing is out of bounds. At the very least readers should be aware of what influence advertisers have over what they are reading.

Photo credit: PathDoc / Shutterstock