Last week, Newsmax sent to its mailing list a promotion for a Pat Boone-endorsed “heart rate monitor watch” that touted an upcoming appearance in the Parade magazine Sunday newspaper supplement:
We have some exciting news!
This weekend some 66 million Americans will read Parade magazine with their Sunday newspaper — and Newsmax will be there!
Parade is running a special article featuring the legendary Pat Boone and his big secret to staying young. Boone teamed up with Newsmax on the piece to come up with a special offer for our popular Heart Rate Monitor Watch!
Well, the Sunday edition of Parade came, and the “special article” turned out to be … an ad.
The text of the ad is posted on the Newsmax website. It’s the usual loss-leader promotion Newsmax specializes in, selling the lead item cheap with trial subscriptions of various Newsmax publications thrown in for free — which you must unsubscribe from in order to avoid being charged for a full subscription.
Newsmax presumably knows the difference between a news article and an ad, and it was dishonest of them to portray the Boone ad as a “special article.”