It is a strong title and I usually disagree with anything put up by NYT (it is a fake news factory that gets paid by subscriber revenues). However, this caught my attention because of the uneasy alliance between the advertising by pharma companies and the medical journals, for instance.
Remember- it is just an opinion.
Advertising financing presents an inherent conflict of interest, because advertising is a third party paying to manipulate someone. In traditional media, advertising can influence editorial choices. There are a series of ethical structures designed to inhibit excessive control of advertisers in media industries, a result of debates for hundreds of years among public figures on the nature of advertising and publishing. Some of these include the signaling effects of differentiated news brands, a diversity of news outlets, the separation of advertising and editorial departments, and guilds to protect journalistic integrity from publishing business interests. But such ethical debates have yet to occur around information utilities.
via Opinion | Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press – The New York Times
RadOncNotes 