Are all Advertising Dollars Equal?

This professor I follow on twitter retweeted an article (subscription required) on Ben Smith (aka BuzzFeed Ben), which called him a “shill for the right wing”.  Now I don’t know the professor’s motivation for retweeting, so I won’t hold the contents of the article against him. It was an interesting read.

The article's author views himself as an investigative journalist but is actually what I would call a “hater,” to the point that he wrote a book called “The Corruption of Malcolm Gladwell.”  In my eyes, it speaks poorly of your character when you write a book for the purpose of taking down another author.

The article makes a few points to back up the “RightWingBen” assertion, the first being that BuzzFeed hosted an immigration panel funded by the Koch Institute.  While true, the fact that everyone on the immigration panel ended up supporting a path to immigration is somehow lost on the author.  Actual conservatives were pretty unhappy about the panel.

Of course, none of the above has much to do with this class or blog.  Thus, more importantly, the article mentions that BuzzFeed had a webpage/advertisement sponsored by the Koch Institute.  I believe this is the article/webpage to which the author is referring. 

Clearly, this is quasi sponsored content by the Koch Institute.  Now comes ethical question… or the question that sprung up in my mind:

Should a content website, which is a business model that relies solely on advertising dollars, reject advertising due to its political nature? 

I’d argue that as long as the material isn’t offensive to your readers, you should be accepting money/advertising from all sources.  TV stations do it, newspapers do it, and now even online news portals have said they will do it.  The Washington Post and Politico both recently announced they were doing something similar, with the advertorial, allowing sponsors to post content.

In other words, I have no problem with BuzzFeed posting an “advertorial” written by the Koch Institute.  I’m sure BuzzFeed understands the economics of its choice and is willing to take the risk that its growing readership won’t go somewhere else for their adorable duck pictures.