Yesterday, Mashable reported that the Washington Post accidentally inserted Amazon's "Buy It Now" buttons into the text of news stories, like so:


The Washington Post says this was a mistake. Though the company has had Amazon "Buy It Now" buttons alongside their articles for five years, a Washington Post spokesperson says the new article formatting accidentally drew the buttons into the article text.

This has started a big discussion in the office. Some Stranger staffers think the inclusion of the "Buy It Now" button into the text of the article crosses a line. Someone else in the office says this is no problem at all. I think the Post already crossed that line into advertorial five years ago when it included the "Buy It Now" buttons on their site in the first place. The Post was already directing its readers to Amazon, and they were already taking a cut on those purchases. How can you fully trust a book review when you know the newspaper publishing the review will directly profit if you buy the book?

You could argue that any periodical taking ads is corrupt. The Stranger runs ads from movie theaters, after all, and movie theaters are obviously more likely to buy ads if they're selling tickets. Isn't that just one step removed from the "Buy It Now" deal? Well, maybe. But it's a fairly large step. And it doesn't tie any one review directly to the selling of a product, the way Amazon's automated system does.

What do you think?