This Article is not Sponsored by any Company. Most Others are, Though.

I recently came across a study that was conducted in 2014 by a team of scientists from TU Dresden. They investigated the influence of ads in Der Spiegel and in Focus, two weekly German news magazines. The team concluded that the more ads a company had in the magazine over a period of time, the more and the friendlier the articles about these companies are and the more products are placed in the articles.

So, next time Der Spiegel writes about which car tires are best for the next winter, how can we be sure that brand X did not just win because they had a lot of ads and therefore paid much more to the magazine? Caution is required (as always)and cross-checking helps (also as always). There are almost no voluntary journalists who investigate and produce articles for free. And the thing with online news magazines is that most people do not want to pay for the content (including me). The easiest way for the magazine is to include ads, both in the online version and in the offline version. With dropping sales of the paper version, the revenues drop as well. With the online version, lots of people use adblockers (adblock plus just announced 100 million users, and I am one of them), which doesn’t make it easier for the publisher. But somehow, the journalists have to be paid, or at some point, the will not be any free news source left.

So while we can’t be certain about product tests and their outcome, it might be our own fault that publishers have to use such techniques. But what could be a soultion? Personally, I’d pay for my news. But only if I can be certain that it is as neutral as possible. And right now, I am not certain about that with any source. For now, ad-blocking and cross-checking seems to be the way to go for me. Unfortunately.