Ottawa Citizen news page

Shell advertorial

Sierra Club Canada has filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) against Shell Canada and Canwest, claiming several of the latter's newspapers have been running advertising disguised as news content.

The complaint, filed Wednesday, concerns the New Energy Future series, which ran with the words "in partnership with Shell Canada" in several Canwest regional papers and its nationally distributed National Post.

The series focuses on Shell's environmental initiatives, profiles Shell employees and some end with a "Myth Buster" section that portray Shell's operations in the Alberta oil sands in a positive light.

The Toronto Star ran the New Energy Future content today, as a six-page pull-out section containing several of the stories that have appeared in the Canwest papers.

Sierra Club, an Ottawa-based environmental organization that has being trying to halt the oil sand's expansion, initially brought its concerns to the Canwest-owned Ottawa Citizen. The series was running in the paper's front section and were attributed to Brian Burton, who wrote the pieces as a freelancer for Canwest.*

"We were sitting here asking ‘Are these ads or editorial?' " said John Bennett, Sierra's executive director and a former journalist. "They didn't seem to be quite either."

In an e-mail to James Orban, the Citizen's publisher, Bennett wrote that if they were news stories, they "do not stand on [their] own in terms of fairness and balance and thus violate the commitment the Citizen has made as a member of the Ontario Press Council."

Orban confirmed the content was advertising, saying "I believe most Citizen readers would realize the page(s) are advertisements for Shell Canada, but I will review to determine if there is a need to make that clearer for the remaining advertisements in this series."

Orban told Marketing the ads looked different from the paper's regular news.

"It clearly isn't laid out as a news page," Orban said, because the typeface and page layout were unique. "In the last eight years, we never laid out a news page like that."

When asked to comment on the complaint, Phyllise Gelfand, director of communications at Canwest said "The piece referred to clearly states ‘in partnership with Shell Canada.' It is also in a different font, layout and style than the newspapers' editorial content."

On the Citizen's website, New Energy Future content appears under the "News" tab, as it does at several other Canwest papers including the Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald. Canada.com is also running the content under its "News" heading.

Laurieanne Lynne, a spokesperson for Shell, said the company has not seen the complaint and could not comment on its specifics.

"Our advertorial series is just one of the many ongoing ways that we seek to help Canadian media, government, and the general public understand the facts about our business and our commitment to develop an important product that society needs, while doing so in a socially and environmentally responsible manner," Lynne said.

"Shell considers itself one of the cleaner oil companies," Bennett said. "It is a little more progressive than most oil companies. It's really disappointing that they would do this kind of thing."

Advertising Standards Canada would not comment on the complaint, or confirm its receipt.

Janet Feasby, vice-president, standards for ASC, said generally complaints are presented to the accused advertisers, which then have 10 days to respond. The complaint is then reviewed by a volunteer committee of public and industry participants, which generally resolves investigations within a month of the complaint.

"If a complaint is upheld, the advertiser is asked to amend or withdraw the ad and we report on the complaint," Feasby said. "It puts the advertiser on notice that they can't run the same ad again or do the same thing."