Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ban!

One, Two, Three. In a weird sort of way, I feel for some of the people who work there and had nothing to do with the 'non-sting', however, I still maintain that culpability must be placed at the door of the Editors and Management of the channel. Anyway, I think yet another re-brand might be around the corner for this channel.
An anonymous commenter on the last post pointed out the habit of advertising masquerading as content - heck, I have one channel for that - NDTV Good Times. Anyway, it is true that in these commercial driven times sometimes there is a whole lot of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours that goes on. If Reebok helped organise an interview you must put in the company's name somewhere if you want to get an interview the next time. The problem is that a 'Reebok makes great shoes' should technically go into a product section in the business pages of the paper, not in the Sports Pages, but when most newspaper/channel bureaus run like little fiefdoms with minimal interchange of ideas, this of stuff ends up happening and some interviews or stories end up reading like advertorials because the story has been poorly placed/positioned.
Of course, this is not to condone what goes on, journalists should have the gumption to avoid getting taken in by the fluttering eyelids of the PR girl and ask what they want to ask and write what they want to write. Does it happen that way? Naah!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would be interesting to see someone file a case like this here... :D


Rather: Government influencing newsrooms

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070921/ap_en_bu/tv_rather_lawsuit

J said...

It's no surprise that almost all the top notch journalism institute also offer AD & PR courses on the side.

Anonymous said...

I donlt know if you guys have noticed, but one of the best examples of the struggle between balancing editorial integrity with advertising imperatives is visible rather close at home for journos and media people. There is this magazine called Impact, which is an advertiser's delight, even covering parties and whose very successful anniversary issue featured every tom, dick and harry from the industry writing a column.. A whole lot of the articles can be identified for the plugs that they are.

In the other corner we have another magazine called The Brand Reporter, all serious and issue led.With a majority of stories about brands who would never advertise there in any case. They seem to have the same advertisers and number of ads... How does one explain this?