Should newspapers take care to not place advertisements with dubious claims alongside sound medical advice?

My local paper is the Otago Daily Times. Today the ODT – as it is known locally – contained a supplement,* good health, which I think is let down by including advertising of some rather dodgy services and products.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the ODT. It’s easily one of the better papers. Overall the good health pull-out looks fine too; it’s a case of a few letting down the many.

As you read on, bear in mind that I’m interested the wider point the advertising in this feature raises, not this particular supplement, which I’m just using to illustrate my point.

The good health supplement is presented as a 12-page pull-out magazine with an A-Z series of short pieces on Asthma, Burns, Chilblains, Drug and alcohol addiction, … Yellow fever and Zoster (as in herpes zoster infection, or shingles).

A brief skim suggests that the short pieces look sound. A number cite sources, including WWW sites, and some encourage readers to visit registered practitioners: well done.

The presentation is so much that of an informative magazine that I didn’t notice the (not so small) ’small print’ that it was an advertising feature until after I spotted a few dubious advertisements and decided to look closer.

It would be nice to know who wrote the informative pieces. I presume these are by staff writers, or free-lancers contracted for this feature. Let’s assume it’s not the advertisers but by one means or other representatives of the Otago Daily Times.

Here’s my beef:** a few of the advertisements strike me as too dubious to be placed alongside the rest of the material, including the other advertisers. Including them undermines the credibility of the supplement.

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