Here are the facts: After it came to Jim Chen’s attention that work at home scammers were advertising on the online edition of the Toronto Sun, Jim felt obliged to contact the editor-in-chief, James Wallace to let him know it was happening. Mr. Wallace failed to respond to Jim’s email, however, a short while after the letter was sent, and a few other steps taken, the offending advertisements were nowhere to be found on http://www.torontosun.com.
There is no way at this point to prove a causal relationship between Jim’s letter and the disappearance of the ads in question but Neopaideia is willing to give Jim the benefit of the doubt and applauds this young man’s sense of civic duty.
Below is a copy of the email:
Thu, 3 March, 2011 18:37:46
To James Wallace, Editor-in-Chief of the Toronto Sun,
My name is Jim Chen. I am a Grade 8 student in the gifted programme at Cummer Valley Middle School. Like most 21st century learners, I have to do much of my researching online. I recently became aware of advertisements that don't seem like they belong in a major national news publication like the Toronto Sun.
Attached is a .jpeg file I have of a screenshot of a Sun article with the advertisement I'm talking about. It displays an ad that I have found to be truly unethical. It portrayed a single and 'unemployed' Vancouver mother who made $6,397/month. Online. How is it possible that a single mother is supposed to sit in front of a computer all day and automatically get a paycheck towards their banking account?
This advertisement was obviously targeted to young, single, and unemployed mothers. Clicking on the ad sends users to something called the “News Daily 7” that has a newspaper-like format. It has been proven to be illegitimate. Apparently, in order to learn the secrets of earning money online, the mother must fill out personal information, including full name, e-mail address, and phone number. She must then pay $20.40 via Paypal or a credit card for an Automated Profit Package. When I tried to exit the page, a popup then showed a message, “Special $10.00 Activation Discount, click “Cancel” to view this offer!” The new price was then $10.18. Why would such a package lower its own price by over 50%? That’s because it is a scam, and the ones receiving money have nothing to lose.
In my opinion, it is deplorable to cheat money from single mothers who are most likely receiving state assistance. They are one of the main groups of people in the GTA suffering from poverty. Those mothers used a portion of their little income in hope of a package leading them to great job opportunities. However, after paying, they realized that they were being cheated the entire time. Taking money from the poor through false promises is wrong and disgusting.
It want to believe that your advertising department ignored the importance of analyzing the advertisements sponsoring the website before displaying them to the general public. New media requires new literacies, and one of the ways 21st century readers can gauge the value of the information we find online is in looking at who sponsors the information. If the Sun did not have a printed newspaper component, I'd think this was all scam material and thoroughly untrustworthy based on the advertising I've mentioned.
Toronto Sun has always been praised for its great articles. This type of advertisement should not be allowed on the website to disrepute the newspaper itself. I wish that you will take time to communicate with your staff and remove the advertisement as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Jim Chen
Jim has yet to receive a reply. After trying again to contact someone at the Sun but still to no avail and as the adverts were still there after several days, Jim made a complaint to Advertising Standards Canada (ASC). The ASC did reply and took the complaint seriously enough to assign it a case number and made a request for further evidence which Jim provided.
Some time later there was still no reply from the Sun or its representatives and so Jim decided to contact a number of other local Toronto publications but not many of them were interested in the story. In fact, the only publication to respond, and kudos to them for it, was Chill magazine, the free semi-seasonal Beer Store magazine (nice to know that the publishing voice of an alcohol monopoly of the Ontario provincial government took the time to respond to Jim when so many other ‘community oriented’ publications ignored him). In her response, Stacy Bradshaw, 360° Digital Director at Chill, explained that the ads probably ended up there in the first place as a result of google adsense policy and not the Toronto Sun. That may explain how it happened but it doesn’t absolve any publisher from the responsibility they have to be able to vouch for the legitimacy of their sponsors.
Coming back to the facts, as of the date of this blog entry’s publication (and possibly earlier), the Toronto Sun is completely free of the advertisements that were of concern. They can still be found out there in cyberspace, not in major Canadian news publications but in the places where they belong at the fringes of the internet in places such as semi-legal streaming sites for circumnavigating copyright regulations and watching heavy pixel laden pirate copies of popular TV shows.
Congratulations to Jim Chen. He wanted to see the ads gone. He sent them a message. They may not have had the courtesy to reply directly but in the end, the ads are gone. Mission accomplished.
This blog entry is part of a series related to Project Athene dedicated to promoting digital literacy in new media users.
