Industry self-regulation doesn’t work and never will for a simple reason: He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Companies that tell fibs to their customers don’t like being regulated by their own tame “watchdogs” any more than they like being told what to do by the government. The difference is, in the case of in-house regulation, they’re big enough to kick the dog.
So DeSmog Canada needn’t have held out much hope that Advertising Standards Canada would do or say anything about its complaint that Postmedia has been passing off paid advertising from the petroleum industry as unlabelled editorial content.
And a news organization that gives its readers the impression that advertising copy was written by real journalists is telling a fib. So, not to be needlessly cynical, you could see where this was going as soon as DeSmog complained to the industry self-regulatory body about stories that were really ads in the Vancouver Sun and the Regina Leader-Post, both newspapers and websites owned by Postmedia Network Canada Corp.
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