Stephen Salaff
Electricity Daily
April 11, 2002

An advertorial published in Canadian newspapers last month has set off a major controversy. The issue is whether the six-page advertising supplement, paid for by the Ontario government, represents propaganda on behalf of the impending opening of the province’s market to competition.

Toronto-based gadfly Energy Probe recently complained to the Globe and Mail newspaper, and Advertising Standards Canada, that the daily had published "disguised advocacy advertising" in its "Special Supplement on Ontario’s New Electricity Market," inserted by the government in the March 11 issue.

Probe’s complaint to Advertising Standards Canada was followed by a like complaint to that body from Michael Prue, a Toronto member of the Ontario parliament for the opposition New Democratic Party. The NDP is campaigning vigorously along with the labour-based Ontario Electricity Coalition to prevent the May 1 start of the competitive Ontario electricity market.

Probe executive director Tom Adams wrote the Globe, "Nowhere is there an indication in the supplement that the material mimicking journalistic content outside the ads was paid for and controlled by the advertisers. The authorship of the ads in the piece is clear but the authorship of the text is not disclosed." Energy Probe has advocated competition in Ontario for nearly two decades.

But Probe has become increasingly disillusioned with the prospects for the new market under the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario Premier Mike Harris, issuing a demand for the replacement of Harris’s minister of energy.

The Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail’s main competitor in the greater Toronto area, carried a similar six-page special electricity supplement on March 21. In a regular editorial comment on March 30, headlined "Power ad insert paraded as news," Star ombudsman, Don Sellar, called the supplement "slick and cheery feel-good stuff that government publicity factories dream up as vehicles for one-sided messages." Sellar revealed that bundles of the supplement were surreptitiously delivered from the printer to the Star’s newspaper production plant in the Toronto suburb of Vaughan less than 24 hours before the supplement was pre-inserted into the daily with other ad inserts. The Star’s vice-president of advertising, Sellar said, acknowledged, "They slipped one past us, no question. We would not have accepted this insert in its present form."

Adams rapidly leapt into the breach. "Some readers were clearly confused about the authorship of the infomercial material," he said. "The Toronto Star, by admitting that it made a mistake running the stealth advertising has shown itself more committed to ethical journalistic standards than the Globe and Mail."

Globe and Mail CEO, Philip Crawley, told Electricity Daily, "We publish special supplements which serve the needs of advertisers seeking to reach our high-end readership. This is in line with the practice of other leading newspapers around the world, such as the Financial Times."

Stephen Salaff is a freelance energy and environment writer.