The streak of shame

I say, what a to-do at the Daily Telegraph. Last Monday's sports section was something of an eye-opener, to say the least. Six pairs of naked breasts were on display in a picture spread which must have had some male readers checking their pacemakers.

That was a relatively minor shock though. For a closer professional look revealed that the two pages, showing pictures of 10 streakers at sports events, were not what they seemed: they were a none-too-subtle merging of advertising and editorial.

The entire two-page display was, in fact, part of a five-week, six-figure deal between the advertiser, Clinique, and a wing of the Telegraph's advertising department, the commercial development division. Media Week has described it as an "advertorial". Yet the average reader would hardly have realised.

The strapline at the top tagged the pages as "sportextra", using the same typeface as appeared in the rest of the section, but did not make clear that they had been produced at the behest of the advertiser, whose advert ran across the foot of the two pages. The "cod" editorial copy, which was not bylined, did not state that the feature was part of a commercial enterprise.

It is true that the sans headline typeface and text were not typical of the paper's usual editorial format, but that was the only possible clue - apart from the un-Telegraph-like content - that the spread was not editorially driven.

An internal inquest was instituted at Canary Wharf last week because several journalists, including those at the highest level, were upset by the blurring of the lines between editorial and advertising. As one senior executive explained: "We are concerned about whether this kind of 'advertorial' could destroy the integrity of our paper. We certainly need to define where the boundaries between editorial and advertising lie".

The Telegraph incident should not be seen in isolation. It represents the growing problems all newspapers are facing as they strive to win advertising revenue against a background of falling circulation and falling profits.

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