State Newspaper accused of “unethical” behavior in aggressively soliciting payday lending ads
May 20, 2008 | Uncategorized | Comments (1)The plot thickens. The SC Hotline broke the story of the State Newspaper aggressively solicating advertising from the payday lending industry while its editorial pages attack the industry. From Jeffrey Sewell’s article:
Over the last two years, for example, The State has made the payday lending industry its whipping boy, targeting the industry for elimination by publishing dozens of slanted articles and dozens more scathing editorials.
In addition to the almost daily barrage of editorial attacks, The State’s reporters also frequently use misleading 300% interest rates in describing the “danger” of payday loans, despite the fact that these percentages are artificially inflated by annualizing interest rates for loans that in reality only cover a period of a few weeks.
The newspaper has also refused to cover a major ethical scandal involving several State Senators looking to make millions of dollars off of suing the payday lending industry (a blatant conflict of interest), yet it has treated legal campaign contributions to other legislators from the industry as the second coming of Watergate.
Now, SC Hotline has discovered that while The State’s newsroom and editorial board were both busy bashing the payday lending industry, the newspaper’s marketing department was using these attacks to try and convince the industry to advertise in the paper in an effort to counter its “distorted” information.
We won’t hold our breath waiting for holier-than-thou Warren Bolton to weigh in on this.
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[...] The State Newspaper was recently accused of “unethical” behavior in aggressively soliciting payday lending ads. SC Hotline has discovered that while The State’s [...]