So while marketers sponsor Pride based on widely held notions that equality for the LGBTQ+ community is important, they also helped create the conditions that allowed partisan sites to flourish, inadvertently fueling culture wars and creating financial incentive to create more divisive content.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s nothing inherently wrong with bias, but in order to build a better news ecosystem, we must acknowledge it exists, as well as our own role in creating the incentives that helped get us where we are today. Marketing alone cannot fix journalism, but we can be part of the solution by directing investment to news organizations doing vital reporting in Ukraine, Washington, D.C. and in local communities, and by starving those that pander to craven political interests and stoke culture wars for profit. 

What can brands do? First, they can come back to news, not just to reach its affluent and engaged audiences but to support a healthier news ecosystem that serves our economy and our democracy. One way to do that is to consider bias and reliability of news sources in buying decisions; this data already exists and can be used for planning, executing and reporting ad campaigns.

Does this mean avoiding biased news sites? Not necessarily; there is plenty of informational value on both the left and the right. Bias itself is not bad, but you need to understand and measure it to make sure your ad dollars are aligned with business goals and risk tolerances, whatever they happen to be. 

One thing we cannot do is sit on the sidelines and hope that ignoring the news will keep our brands safe. As corporations branded as “woke” now must accept, the status quo of trying to ignore or block the news is not a sustainable strategy. In a partisan news ecosystem, sooner or later, the culture wars come for you.