The Atlantic runs fawning 'sponsor content' glorifying Scientology; Disqus employee appears to override comment moderation, writers balk; Update: Advertorial removed

The Atlantic is coming under fire for an “article” that appears to be nothing more than a paid advertisement for the Church of Scientology. The piece, which practically deifies church president David Miscavige, looks suspiciously like an actual Atlantic article, with only a small yellow label denoting its status as “Sponsor Content.”

Check out @TheAtlantic photo gallery of brainwashed morons – no, wait, it's an ad for Scientology! http://t.co/SXArnaV0

— Jacob Weisberg (@jacobwe) January 15, 2013

https://twitter.com/owillis/status/290993558436069377

Utterly gobsmacked as to why The Atlantic would accept money to run this Scientology propaganda. http://t.co/iCwLHY2v

— Rhodri Marsden (@rhodri) January 15, 2013

https://twitter.com/joshgreenman/status/290994399553404928

https://twitter.com/joshgreenman/status/290994782422069248

[SPONSORED] Wow, Scientology is really on a roll with all these new churches!

— Parker Higgins (@xor) January 15, 2013

Look, I understand sponsored content is sponsored content, but Scientology is Scienfrickintology.

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) January 15, 2013

Honestly, an ad department flub shouldn't reflect badly on a whole media publication. But it is a flub.

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) January 15, 2013

FYI, all comments on Atlantic scientology piece have to be approved by a moderator. No moderation on regular stories. http://t.co/qAfAZTvT

— Ross Neumann (@rossneumann) January 15, 2013

The squelching of negative comments did not go unnoticed, as anyone knows that troll-free comments sections are not a naturally occurring organism in the ecosystem that is the Internet.

Even magazine employees expressed discontent. A note on The Atlantic website explains that sponsored content is produced without the input of the magazine’s editorial team. Correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg took the occasion to post a piece on The Atlantic website touting the book, “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief,” even including an Amazon link. His link to that piece was retweeted by James Fallows, another Atlantic correspondent.

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/290998808765161472

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/290998052850892802

Atlantic senior editor Alexis Madrigal also gave a shout-out to “Going Clear.”

https://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/status/290999794598563841

https://twitter.com/thehedrick/status/291019230399307776

https://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/status/291020377960894464

The buzz about The Atlantic’s choice of sponsor content was so strong that it even generated a parody account.

https://twitter.com/TheAtlanticAds/status/290988840850694145

https://twitter.com/TheAtlanticAds/status/290985001191866369

Brilliant!

* * *

Update: The infamous Mat Mullen of Disqus weighs in and laments that his comment disappeared as well.

RT @rossneumann: Is this guy who commented on Atlantic scientology piece only able to comment b/c he works at Disqus? http://t.co/c2QqCToi

— hundreds of billions of triangles (@alexnklein) January 15, 2013

@alexnklein @rossneumann Doesn't work like that, it ended up getting deleted just like all the others unfortunately.

— Mat Mullen (@matmullen) January 15, 2013

Update: The Atlantic has removed the Scientology ad “pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads.”

https://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/status/291045087440412672

More here:

https://twitter.com/ali/status/291114593059737600

Editor’s note: The title of this post was amended to reflect that it was not firmly established that a Disqus employee circumvented comment moderation to get his negative comment approved. Tweets about his comment making it through moderation were speculation.