• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 11, 2014

With publishers and networks under intense financial pressure, it’s never been more difficult for news divisions to maintain their editorial independence. Take AOL and its “This Built America” video series, which is sponsored by Ford. Fara Warner, Editorial Director of Aol Tech, has had to fight to keep the series from turning into one big advertorial for the car company. “You’ll never see a Ford truck drive through any of our stories,” Warner told attendees of MediaPost’s Content Marketing Insider Summit on Wednesday. Testing the church-state divide, Ford recently wanted Warner and her team to remove a mention of General Motors from a video spotlight on Shinola, the Detroid-based producer of watches, bicycles, leather goods, and journals. Warner said she went back and forth with the sales team five times before they finally relented, and bought her argument that the series would ultimately suffer from such interventions. (A quick scan of the videos featuring Shinola on AOL On found no mention of GM.)