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Despite what we may think of as the ideal, the news business is, well, a business. You can argue about the economics of it all, but the bottom line is that it costs money to gather and distribute news. It is a business that relies primarily on advertising revenue to pay the bills and that creates obvious ethical concerns about the level of separation between the “news” and “business” sides of the industry. A question along those lines hit our in-box this week. Viewer Curtis H. was curious about an interview correspondent Anthony Mason conducted with Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, one he had seen promoted and was curious about before it even aired (you can watch the piece as it actually aired by clicking the picture). Here is his missive:

I have a serious concern about your exclusive interview with Wal-Mart's CEO, which was teased on your broadcast this evening. Wal-Mart, as noted at the close of your broadcasts last week … partially sponsors CBSNews.com. This does cause one to wonder about your editorial objectivity. Was the interview part of getting the advertising buy? I would have less of an issue if the advertising copy was not read by the same announcer who does the voice-over for other CBS items within your broadcast. This is a reasonable question, and should be addressed as part of your newscast tomorrow evening.

I asked “Evening News” Executive Producer Rome Hartman to respond to these concerns and, in and e-mail, he wrote, “news judgments and advertising are completely unrelated, in this and every case. Period.” We visited this issue last December and asked Mike Sims, director of news and operations for CBSNews.com, whether advertising impacted editorial content in any way:

"Absolutely not," said Sims. "I would invite you to search for Wal-Mart on our site. You'll see a number of stories that are negative." Sims adds that when CBSNews.com runs a negative story about the company, Wal-Mart has the option to keep their ad from running on that page – but the company typically doesn't exercise that option.

In response to this specific e-mail, Sims reiterated those comments, saying, “the evidence shows that neither Evening News nor CBSNews.com have ever been shy about doing negative stories about Wal-Mart during the term of their sponsorship. The proof is on the web site.” Sims also wanted it to be clear that “the announcer used for the Wal-Mart commercial on CBSNews.com is not used elsewhere on the site.”

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Liberal media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has released a piece suggesting that the money Wal-Mart spends to advertise in news outlets may be buying more than ads. Peter Hart and Janine Jackson write:

Just how tough has media scrutiny of Wal-Mart really been? “You’ve heard the firestorm of criticism about the company, about wages, benefits, union-busting, about locking employees in, about making them work overtime without paying them for it,” ABC’s Charlie Gibson said in introducing a Good Morning America interview with CEO Lee Scott (1/13/05). But how much have most people really heard about these issues?

The answer, Hart and Jackson suggest, is not enough, in part because of the Wal-Mart's advertising. As regular CBS News and CBSNews.com consumers know, Wal-Mart is a major CBS News advertiser – click on a video on the Web site, for example, and there's a good chance that you'll see a Wal-Mart ad. I asked Michael Sims, CBSNews.com's director of News and Operations, if the advertising impacts the site's editorial policy.



"Absolutely not," said Sims. "I would invite you to search for Wal-Mart on our site. You'll see a number of stories that are negative." Sims adds that when CBSNews.com runs a negative story about the company, Wal-Mart has the option to keep their ad from running on that page – but the company typically doesn't exercise that option.



One would never expect a news director to say that advertising impacts editorial, of course.

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