Values of advertising

Context:  Ethical values in advertising.

What are the guiding principles for publishing advertisements in the newspaper?

• Principles: The code of business values has eight governing principles: honesty and integrity, respect, humility, excellence, consumer focus, transparency and fairness, neither favour nor discrimination, and finally, commitment to social good.
• A fair balance: If journalism is about maintaining a fair balance between what is in public interest and what the public is interested in, the ethical business practice for a news organisation in its pursuit of a sustainable revenue model is to refrain from interfering with editorial practices.
• The code of editorial values: There is no wall but there is a firm line between the business operations of the company and editorial operations and content.
  • It is necessary to create a professionalism in the editorial functioning independent of shareholder interference so as to maintain an impartiality, fairness, and objectivity in editorial and journalistic functioning.
• The advertising team is guided by a triad: the laws governing the sector, the code adopted by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), and the in-house code of the newspapers.