I
wandered out onto the Internet a few days ago to visit one of the aggregation
sites I frequent, and there it was, in big bold print, like a tabloid headline
at a checkout counter at the grocery store: “Why is Taylor Swift Buying Up
Porno Sites?” If you check out the story, you will find that the pop singer in
question isn’t purchasing pornographic web sites, or any other kind, in fact;
the article is about public figures buying domain names that include their own
name, in order to keep anyone else from starting porn sites (or other
unauthorized web pages) under those names. I’m not going to comment on the
ethics of that because I don’t believe there is another side to it; creating
pornographic material of any kind using the name or likeness of another person
without their permission is wrong, and needs no further debate. But the concept
of tabloid-style headlines that are used to mislead a person into clicking on
an otherwise dull news story (or worse) seems worth a closer look…
We
should probably begin by noting that tabloid headlines have existed for at
least a century now, as have a variety of other sensationalist publishing
practices. The story you found inside many print publications was rarely as
interesting as the headline made it sound, precisely because headlines have
always been part of a publication’s marketing efforts. Accurately presenting
the contents of your articles, rather than adding misleading headlines to draw
people to read them became one of the marks of a reputable news organization,
and the same standards (good and bad) carried over into radio and television
programs once those became available. One could reasonably suggest that
Internet headlines following the same standards (collectively known as
Clickbait) would be no better or worse than their paper-and-ink predecessors…
On
the other extreme we have Internet ads featuring pictures of attractive models,
exotic locations, world leaders, unfamiliar plants and animals, or even company
logos that have promote stories or entire websites that have nothing to do with
the pictures. And while some of these links are clearly fraudulent – there is
no magic secret that will change the dimensions of your genitals or motivate
outrageously attractive members of the opposite sex to throw themselves at you,
to take only the most obvious examples – it isn’t always clear when an online
sources is merely amusing and when it is an outright criminal deception until
you have clicked on the link. We could simply ignore all Internet headlines and
all proffered links, of course, and perhaps we should, but this still does not
address the ethics of the situation itself…
The
legality of misleading Internet ads, and the extent to which they can be or
even should be subject to the same standards of truth in advertising required
in other media, is one of those subjects that is still evolving as our society
adjusts to life online. My question is much more direct, and hopefully more
appropriate to a business blog: what responsibility do we, as managers, have to
accurately present links to information, websites or products online as what
they honestly are? And under what circumstances is it ethically acceptable to
use a salacious or titillating headline in order to draw attention to a story,
website or link that does not deserve that attention?
If
we are presenting information to the public as Internet journalists, then we
must hold ourselves to the same standards of integrity as a print or
electronic-media journalist assuming we wish to have any credibility at all,
but what if our only goal is to amuse, entertain and develop online
relationships with potential customers – as well as convincing them to purchase
our products and/or services, of course? If it presents our advertising
material to potential customers, generates sales, creates revenue, keeps our
company running, generates jobs and salaries for our employees, and produces a
reasonable return for our owners it is difficult to say that there is any real
harm in convincing people to click on a picture of an attractive model that
leads to a website that has nothing to do with the picture. However, no matter
how benign our motives might we, we are still misleading the public and using
up their bandwidth under false pretenses every time we do this…
It’s
worth thinking about…
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