Sixty-one U.S. journalism and law professors have sent a letter to the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME, http://www.magazine.org) asking to set rules requiring disclosure of product placement in magazine, to prohibit the disguising of ads as editorial content, or providing special favours to advertisers.
The letter was orchestrated by Commercial Alert, http://www.commercialalert.org, a nonprofit group co-founded by Ralph Nader in 1998 that opposes commercialism.
The letter, addressed to ASME executive director Marlene Kahan, acknowledges that magazine editors are under increasing pressure to allow advertising to cross the line into editorial content and calls it a fundamental threat to press freedom and the integrity of journalism. Among the requests are that the words ‘advertising,’ ‘advertisement,’ or ‘promotion’ accompanying an advertorial or special section should be at least one-and-half times the size and weight of a publication’s usual body type.
