That strange sucking sound …

If you’re an advertiser, you want your ad placed in an environment highly amenable to persuasion.

That’s no news to anyone in either the ad biz or the news biz — especially in the U.S.

But it was to me, lo these many years ago, as I placed a story about a fatal airliner crash on an inside page … wherein rested an ad for a major American airline.

When I arrived at work the next day, the publisher (he of the beefy red, angry face), chewed me out and showed a copy of the ad contract with said airline. In as many words, it said: If you place news on a page with our ad that shows the airlines in a negative light (like a plane crash?), then pull the ad.

So I’m a little less than shocked when British Petroleum and Morgan Stanley try to tear down the “church vs. state” wall between advertising and editorial. Frankly, that wall has been porous for a very long time.

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