A Reporter, Posing as Sketchy PR, Asked 28 Media Outlets If They'd Take Money To Publish Content Without Disclosing it Was Advertising. More Than Half Said Yes.

Corin Faife, writing for BreakerMag: The level of deception used was minimal: we created a fake email account, and claimed to be representing a PR company. There was no fake website or domain associated; it was simply a Gmail address with a profile picture found by image searching 'Russian actor.' Next we compiled a list of blockchain media sites. This was by no means exhaustive, but to have a sense of the scale of the problem, we needed numbers. All in all, we reached out to 28 sites, and received a yes/no reply from 22 by the time of publication, with two inconclusive. Of the 22 outlets who replied conclusively, 12 of them -- more than half the total -- were willing to publish paid content without disclosing it as such.

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