Journalism or advertorial?

March 5, 2004

The latest issue of Outlook magazine has a piece titled The Body Electronic that I found... strange.

It masquerades as an article about exposing the Indian sex sites on the Internet and how they're hawking women to willing customers. If I didn't know better, I'd call it an "advertorial" for the sites in question. The writer goes all out to provide every last bit of contact information for the people involved in this business.

Examples:

"Business is good.... Earlier, we had services all over India...but stock was proving to be a problem...we are looking for customers for a lifetime..." —Sameer, who claims to be an MBA with specialisation in marketing, on the Mumbai mobile number 098216-86191.

www.indiasexguide.com, true to its name, is more pan-Indian, giving contact details for most big cities.

In Mumbai, you can contact one Robert or Ashok, reachable at 09819437751, who will do the needful. The duo has offices in Churchgate and Andheri (W).

A registration at the indiatimes.com dating site in Kashyap's name (Is Outlook ready with my bail money?) led me to Arun, available at 098218-44021. "I can sure provide the service in Delhi. Just call me two hours in advance," he said. Based in Mumbai, he needs just an hour's notice there.

 

The author concludes with:

My intention is not to raise awareness about Sameer, Arun, Purnima, Robert, Ashok, or their websites. I wouldn't dream of doing that in a magazine that's read by my mother. My honest intention is to make cyberspace a little more worthy of our kids' eyeballs. So I spoke to the cbi about it, whose spokesperson expressed surprise and wanted the addresses of these websites.

Gee, by publishing it in a magazine read by thousands of people, he's certainly raised awareness. Just what we need - a journo on a moral crusade who writes articles like advertorials. If he wanted only the CBI to investigate, he could've given them the mobile numbers in question. What purpose did printing them in the magazine serve?

Go read the article and tell me if you too find it stinks a bit.