Why the Times, CNN and others should reveal their roles in promoting threats to privacy

This guest post was written by Jeff Chester.

Interactive advertising and marketing are helping shape the transformation of the media, here in the U.S. and everywhere else. A infrastructure is being put in place, without the public's consent, designed to better sell to us 24/7. It's using some of the most powerful communications technologies ever created to do so. Among the key issues society should be debating right now include the need for privacy safeguards to protect our personal information online, and what kind of limits should be put in place to check the excesses of interactive marketing (think personalized ads flooding your PC, mobile and TV screens, propelled by a data profile of you created via artificial intelligence technologies, and designed to get you to feel or think in a way positive to the brand).

But critical commentary about interactive advertising is largely missing from the ever-present coverage of the digital marketplace. Each day, major papers run stories in their business section about the latest triumph of technology or company. But too rarely do they examine the negative consequences, let alone the role of their own publisher or media firm. One glaring omission by such major news outlets as the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, etc. is the relationship they have with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The IAB is a trade group whose mission is "helping online, Interactive broadcasting, email, wireless and Interactive television media companies increase their revenues." Among its goals include: "[T]o prove and promote the effectiveness of Interactive advertising to advertisers, agencies, marketers & press;" and "[T]o be the primary advocate for the Interactive marketing and advertising industry."

On the board of the IAB include officials from the New York Times Company (Martin Nisenholtz, its leading digital exec); Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Cox Newspapers, USA Today, NBC, CNN, and Disney. They work alongside board members representing Google, AOL, Conde Nast (attention New Yorker magazine!), Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo!, Forbes and others.

There is a clear conflict of interest here when newspapers, television, and online news report on interactive marketing and have a representative helping direct the key group promoting the industry. These news outlets should be disclosing their membership in the IAB and any other industry trade group (which have a political or marketplace mission). Editors at the Times, Post and other papers should commission stories which more effectively analyze the digital marketing industry, including raising the critical issues which the public should debate. They must also prominently disclose their conflict of interest with the IAB as they report on the industry they are working to serve.