"Don't be evil" means doing well by doing right. It means avoiding the quick buck if it involves a conflict of interest, since that will only diminish your brand and damage your credibility.

Google rigorously separates ads from content, and does not allow payments to influence search results -- so people go to Google first to get the best, most unbiased information, and Google's brand, traffic and profit benefit. It's enlightened self-interest.

Many corporate news organizations have lost sight of this principle, and their brands and businesses are suffering as a result.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (sub req'd) that CNBC, Good Morning America, the Today show, and other national "news" shows regularly feature product reviews that are paid product placements.

For example, Child magazine's Technology Editor James Oppenheim, who called himself a "consumer advocate" who "tells the unvarnished truth about the products reviewed," is paid by companies like Atari, Microsoft, Mattel, Leapfrog and RadioShack to recommend their products in segments that look like unbiased news, but in fact are paid infomercials. This is evil, and it's driving intelligent people away from corporate news sources and toward sources they can trust.

Oppenheim says "getting paid by the companies he reviews on local television doesn't influence his judgment" -- so why keep it a secret? Why not disclose on the show that he's paid to pimp products and pass it off as "news"?

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Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett quit Newsday recently because she was fed up with the inability to do real journalism at the paper. Read her letter to her colleagues:


Honesty and tenacity (and for that matter, the working class) seem to have taken backseats to the sort of "snappy news", sensationalism, scandal-for-the-sake of scandal crap that sells. This is not a uniquely Tribune or even newspaper industry problem: this is true from the Atlanta mixing rooms of CNN to Sulzberger's offices in Times Square. Profits: that's what it's all about now. But you just can't realize annual profit returns of more than 30 percent by methodically laying out the truth in a dignified, accessible manner. And it's damned tough to find that truth every day with a mere skeleton crew of reporters and editors.

No wonder Sam Donaldson recently declared network news to be dead. Dinosaurs like Osgood think journalism can be saved by "designing new sets." Ed Driscoll observes that "craptacular graphics and new furniture really does always trump content on TV news, doesn't it?"

How about a "Don't Be Evil" approach -- get back to providing real information of importance and gravity, and stop shilling for corporate interests and calling it "news." Clearly show the separation between content and commercials and leave product placement to the movies, not journalism.