This point was made recently about the NY Times having an editorial about advertising / tracking being invasive, while also having advertising / tracking on their own page.
The justification / defence given was that you want separation between editorial and business decisions. If the two are aligned, the freedom of the editorial team to write what they want will diminish, and the business will ultimately dictate what gets written.
If it feels a bit pessimistic, I agree, but pessimistically, I also feel like it's just realistic.
As their long form journalism with moving graphics and images is so popular and gets so many clicks, think how awe inspiring and what a major effect it would have to shut down all of that stuff on articles talking about that stuff, just to give people a dose of what it could/would be like. It would be respected, get other articles about it, etc.
There is a difference between a news platform publishing a news article or op ed story that denounces things the host company itself might be doing and a corporate PR office issuing a statement.
Is google hypocritical for having flat earth stuff on youtube and running huge satellite imaging operation?
(Edit: I should probably have replied to the "hypocritical" comment below :))
The justification / defence given was that you want separation between editorial and business decisions. If the two are aligned, the freedom of the editorial team to write what they want will diminish, and the business will ultimately dictate what gets written.
If it feels a bit pessimistic, I agree, but pessimistically, I also feel like it's just realistic.