Scameron
You're just muddying the waters again, and it does your argument no credit.
If you had bothered to take in my posts rather than immediately leaping to the defensive, you would notice that I had initially specifically argued against your comment that there was pressure to write articles because advertising needed to have an article, with specific reference to commercial flight training in the monthly glossy flying magazines. Nothing else. I did not address "...all sorts of techniques to increase selling space". I "honed in" on that one because that was the one you got very obviously wrong. The rest may be right, I claim no expertise.
Do me and Genghis the courtesy of reading our posts. I said that at the very least his meant your conclusion was too strong.
There have been cases where writers have been sacked or their work refused because it criticised something by a major advertiser; I'm not going to name them, but those in the business know where it's happened. That is unacceptable (to the readers and writers anyhow) but thankfully very rare and does tend to find itself out. So, I don't think it is, or need be, a major problem with the integrity of aviation journalism.
Which, to my reading, says exactly that.
Just because Towers thinks I was picking holes that doesn't make it true. Just because he claims to know my motive, doesn't mean he is right - in fact he just made that bit up, and his "truth" was not justified by any argument or evidence, it was simply asserted.
You
did argue "that".
However the same rule permiates the classifieds, if someone is taking more space the sales teams then contact everyone else with the "you should see what he's doing, you can't afford to be left behind" pitch.
That is not the same rule at all. That is nothing to do with not being able to sell adverts opposite adverts! That is the main issue I raised. I still don't know why you object to magazines trying to sell space by saying that other people are buying more, or what that has to do with editorial independence. Muddying the waters?
You are wrong about me advertising my employer. Since I know no "woman in a cafe" here, and since I have never had a cup of tea at the airport not made by me, a colleague or a student you must be thinking of someone else. Since there are 7 commercial training organisations and 4 RTFs in Bournemouth that is not very specific, and I think advice that any prospective student visit is fairly sensible. I don't specify my employer unless there is some definite reason to do so, not related to advertising.
I pointed out to Towers that PPRuNe doesn't lose advertisers, but that was simply an additional consideration in the wider argument, that could have been discussed calmly if you had chosen to do so. By the way, although anyone may write a post without outside intervention, it cannot stand if a moderator decides it must not. This is not my argument though: my argument is that the advertisers do not, as far as I can see, leave even when their product is criticised here. Therefore even if editors are influenced by advertisers, perhaps they need not be. The existence or not of intervention is irrelevant to that point.
Your final comment on OBA mystifies me. You are trying o argue that there is no expose of them because they would withdraw the advert. Then you say that you are more certain than I am that they would leave it there
