A new survey says 19 percent of marketers believe their organization bought ads on a “news site” IN EXCHANGE FOR A STORY. additionally: 10% of marketers say they believe their companies have a “non-verbal agreement with journalists or editors for which, in exchange for buying ad space, they can expect favorable coverage of their products or makes.” The survey was conducted by Millward Brown for PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee.

I fear that survey may give journalists a black eye they may not deserve. Here’s why:

I’ve been an editor for about 17 years, and have never personally noticed any such arrangement. I have, on the other hand, run into many “marketers” and even company CEOs who believed such a relationship does or should exist. Here’s why. News organizations typically have a “Chinese Wall” amoung the editorial and advertising departments. The ad sales public (who are usually strangers to the editorial people) are in white-hot competition with the ad sales citizens from other publications, and need to give advertisers reasons to do business. So I think a small number of these ad sales public tip at the concept that they’ll “talk to the editors” or manufacture the potential advertisers believe they’ll be given some kind of advantage in coverage. that is the person with whom marketers have their “non-verbal agreement.”

When the editorial staff does cover a product, negative coverage is met with an alarmed “what happened?” phone shout to the publication’s sale contact, and trouble with the relationship amidst the

marketing person and the sales person. But when coverage happens to be positive, the advertiser pats themselves on the back for making it all happen, and they’re a big hero at their own company for the big “win.”

At most technology publications, editors and writers don’t even pay attention to who is advertising.

This survey merely does an stock of the beliefs of marketers. It does not actually measure corruption among editors and writers.

Also: Be careful of the numbers. A report that says 19 percent of “senior marketers” “admit” their organizations bought ads on a news site in exchange for a news story. A careless read of that finding may lead readers to think, OK, 19 percent of publications are corrupt. But the 19 percent figure doesn’t at all measure a percentage of news organizations. It’s the percentage of marketing public who believe that somewhere in the company they work for, such a relationship exists with an unknown number of news organizations. It could be one organization. It could be a million. And the whole thing could be just an unfounded perception. The survey has no info on the number of news organizations involved, or even the validity of the beliefs among marketers.

Anyway, “news organizations” already have a worse public reputation than they deserve, and that survey doesn’t help.

The story I link to above opens with a quote from Ogilvy & Mather’s David Ogilvy, who said, “The huge majority of editors are incorruptible.” That has been my experience as well.