On a recent visit to our office in Taiwan, our staff there complained about a disturbing trend in their market. Due to declining revenues from shrinking readership and viewership, Taiwanese newspapers and TV news programs have begun selling news coverage to local businesses. The segments which are hardly distinguishable from the real news are sold like advertising, then inserted into the news broadcasts with the unpaid news stories. In print, the purchased content even carries the byline of a regular reporter.

Not surprisingly, our people are troubled by this trend. In some cases, their clients are asking them to develop the content for the "fake" news stories rather than pay for a PR campaign. In other cases, they are questioning the value of even conducting a media relations campaign when they can get guaranteed results by simply buying the coverage.

Aside from the business issues, the new development presents deeper ethical issues. The controversy in the US over the unidentified use of VNRs pales in comparison to the idea of paying the stations to get a preproduced segment included in the news. Could such a trend ever surface in the western media?

It sounds unfathomable but in the future as media outlets search for new revenue sources it is not impossible that selling editorial will seem like a reasonable business strategy.