TL;DR: Patricia Hswe and I wrote an article for American Libraries and the editors added some quotes from a vendor talking about their products without telling us. We asked them to fix it and they said no.

In my former job, I learned that much of what we think of as “news” is actual paid advertising. Segments on local TV, articles in newspapers and magazines, and even national news has paid portions that are not always called out as such. I’ve stopped trusting a lot of reporting because of knowing how much money is probably changing hands to make those segments come to life. Part of my job was scripting and writing articles that would then be presented in “editorial” fashion — that is, without any acknowledgement of our paid placement there.