Many Quebec media outlets have aired sponsored articles for online casinos in recent years, an investigation by Décrypteurs shows. This advertising practice, known as “backlinking,” is used to exploit media credibility to manipulate search engine results in order to increase the visibility of these websites, which remain illegal in Quebec.
On Thursday evening, the Montréal Campus student newspaper revealed that promotional articles with links to online casinos had been published on the personal website (New Window) of Patrick White, director of UQAM's Bachelor of Journalism program. Mr. White announced he would be going on unpaid leave through 2024 for personal, family and work reasons, the student newspaper reported.
The news sparked a reaction. His membership card of the Quebec Professional Association of Journalists (FPJQ) has been suspended. On Friday morning, La Presse columnist Isabelle Hachey signed a text on the affair (New Window) and concluded that Mr. White had breached the B. Basics of journalism.
“I take full responsibility for my actions and do not trivialize the situation,” Mr. White responded in a written statement Friday morning. Sponsored content was used to pay for site maintenance. I regret agreeing to this even though I wasn't the one who did it. This type of content had no place on the site at all.
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UQAM's director of journalism A-level studies, Patrick White, will be on unpaid leave for 2024.
Photo: Jean-Pierre Perouma
The tree that hides the forest
The Decipherers can reveal that Patrick White is far from the only media figure to have acted in this way. In recent years, around ten media outlets in Quebec have also aired promotional articles with links to illegal online casinos.
We were able to find articles with links to these casinos on the websites of several local media outlets, including the Courrier de Laval, the Journal Les Deux Rives de Sorel-Tracy, the Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, the Pensée de Bagot and the Regional Eye of Beloeil and Estrie more. Cultural media also published articles of this type, including Atuvu, Baron Mag, Le Canal Auditorif and Pieuvre.ca.
Additionally, local media websites that have ceased operations are now serving as a platform for advertising these online casinos. The former locations of the Journal de Sherbrooke, the Journal le Havre and the Quebec edition of the Métro newspaper now only broadcast advertising of this type.
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The Journal de Sherbrooke website has been transformed into a promotional tool for online casinos.
Photo: Le Journal de Sherbrooke
With the exception of Baron Mag, the articles in question have not been identified as sponsored or promotional content. Some of these articles also contained misinformation, such as praising the legitimacy of these sites.
Loto-Québec emphasizes that these casinos are actually completely illegal. There is no ambiguity in Quebec. “If it’s not Loto-Québec, it’s illegal,” recalled Renaud Dugas, spokesman and head of media relations for the organization. There is no gray area. He added that advertising for these websites is not permitted in the province.
Unethical but profitable
The director of the Center for Media Studies at the University of Laval, Colette Brin, believes that the fact that newspapers have agreed to broadcast advertising that could damage their reputation clearly illustrates the crisis facing the media.
This is a reputation and credibility issue for these companies. I think a self-respecting news outlet would be very, very careful about things like this. But let's say I'm not throwing stones because I know that some of these media have very, very few resources and very little expertise in this matter, she judges.
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Colette Brin is director of the Center for Media Studies at Laval University.
Photo: Radio-Canada / Marie-Eve Cloutier
If you are poor, you are willing to compromise on ethical issues because you simply need income to survive. “It's reminiscent of the old days of brown envelopes and low-paid journalists accepting small gifts from their sources to ensure more positive coverage,” adds Colette Brin.
In fact, promotional items for illegal casinos are much more profitable than traditional advertising, several site managers told us.
The reason this advertising is so profitable is that its target group is not the readers of the respective media, but search engines like Google. These articles are part of an advertising strategy called backlinking, which is designed to improve a website's visibility in search results.
When a user performs a search, Google tries to figure out which results are most relevant. One of the elements taken into account by the algorithm is what reliable sources, including news sites, say on the topic. By posting a link to an online casino on a local newspaper's website, advertisers hope to encourage Google to show it to people searching for online casinos.
Advertisers are therefore willing to pay a lot to benefit from the special status that Google gives to media websites.
Arnaud Nobile, editor-in-chief of the website atuvu.ca, states that his site only agreed to publish backlinks if the advertiser offered at least $400, much more than for traditional advertising. He says he regularly receives such offers from advertising agencies and that the promised amounts per ad are often $50 or less.
We are reluctant to accept these contracts that distort the content of our platform. We simply do it to supplement our income. Since our small cultural niche media is obliged, for reasons of survival, not to neglect any source of income, no matter how small, he replied to us via email and emphasized that his website does not receive the same subsidies as general media, community newspapers, etc. Cultural sector . The ads in question have been removed from the website.
For our image and for our readers, we have no interest in offering publications on the subject of casinos. We have also implemented strategies to make this casino content almost invisible to our readers.
The sales and content director of Estrie Plus, François Lafleur, recognized that there is still significant revenue associated with it and that in a context of declining advertising revenues there is an incentive to accept this type of advertising.
He assured that Estrie plus would no longer publish articles of this type and that those that contained incorrect information had been removed from the site, but the others would remain online to respect contracts with advertisers.
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There are still articles promoting illegal online casinos on the Estrie Plus website.
Photo: Estrie plus
The manager of Pieuvre.ca, Hugo Prévost, told us that he believes that these ads are, at worst, a gray area and that he decided to air them because the amount offered was much more important than what can be achieved with conventional advertisements.
The money from these ads is income that allowed me to run the website and pay freelancers. I didn't put the money in my pockets, he assured. He cleaned up and removed the articles as soon as he was informed that these sites were illegal. I'm not proud of that, complains Radio-Canada's surplus employee.
“As soon as we were informed of this, we asked Hugo Prévost to put an end to this practice as it is inconsistent with his status as a journalist,” responded Charles Grandmont, director of continuous news and digital operations at Radio-Canada.
Articles with links to illegal casinos on Courrier Laval's website were removed after we contacted the owner, 2M Media. The nuances between locations […] where gambling is free and permitted and [ceux] Unfortunately, we have not found out where the game is paid for and what it is forbidden to advertise, its vice president Patrick Marsan replied by email.
The articles were also removed from the websites of DBC Communications' local newspapers, namely the Journal Les Deux Rives, the Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, the Pensée de Bagot and the Regional Eye. They should not have been found on our websites. argued the media group's editor-in-chief, Martin Bourassa. Someone missed it at the public relations level. I like that my owner is profitable, but I don't think this type of advertising makes the difference.
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Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, the oldest French newspaper in America, also published articles promoting illegal casinos on its website. The articles have since been removed.
Photo: Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe
Le Canal Auditif also removed the four casino-related articles that had appeared on its website. Its editor-in-chief, Louis-Philippe Labrèche, said he cleaned it up a few years ago, but some of it remained on his site. We quickly remedied the situation and stopped publishing because we found it wasn't what we wanted. And this, even if the income that could result from it is attractive, he explained by email.
Baron Mag did not respond to our interview requests.
According to Camille Alloing, director of the Laboratory of Influence and Communication at UQAM, this strategy, although profitable at the moment, could cost the media dearly in the long run.
It is a game that, on the one hand, is dangerous for the press sites that do this, simply because a search engine may at a certain moment notice that there are too many links leading to pages that it itself considers spam, he explains. He adds that search engines could penalize media sites that use backlinks by reducing their visibility.
Colette Brin sees this whole matter as a sad reflection of the media landscape in connection with the collapse of revenues on the Internet, a real media graveyard, in her opinion.
She was sorry when she was informed that the Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe had also participated in this practice. Published continuously since 1853, it is the oldest French-language newspaper in Canada and has featured Quebec historical figures such as former Quebec Prime Minister Honoré Mercier and Le Devoir founder Henri Bourassa, among others.
It's really terribly sad. Le Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe is a legendary and mythical medium in Quebec in terms of reputation and history. And seeing him there is really worrying,” she says.
precision : The original version of this article noted that Le Canal Auditif did not respond to our interview requests. However, this interview request was not sent. The necessary corrections have been made.
