A few weeks ago, I wrote about Suze Orman’s entrance into the prepaid debit card business with something called the Approved Card. In that piece, I asked her whether she thought the viewers of her CNBC show would be troubled by her making money off their everyday transactions.

O, the Oprah Magazine

Would they trust her advice, given that she was building a product to compete with the banks and credit cards that she often criticizes?

She said that she was extremely proud of the Approved Card and promised never to talk about it on the show.

So imagine my surprise upon encountering the February issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, to find not one but two mentions of the Approved Card in columns written by Ms. Orman herself.

The first mention comes in response to a question that appears to come from a reader who is trying to help her son establish a credit history. (This mention does not yet appear to be online.) Ms. Orman spends more than half her answer discussing the Approved Card, even though it will be years before it can help people establish credit, if it ever does.

The second mention comes in a sidebar that might as well have been an advertorial and is currently featured on the magazine’s home page on the Web. Called “You Are Approved to Save Money,” it lists the features of the card that Ms. Orman is most excited about.

So how does this all square with Ms. Orman’s promise not to promote the card on air?

“I did tell you that I was not going to talk about the card on my CNBC show. I will respect the editorial rules of CNBC,” Ms. Orman wrote in an e-mail to me Monday afternoon.

“But of course I am going to talk about this card anywhere and everywhere I can! Because unless people get it and USE IT, then my mission of changing credit scoring in this country cannot be accomplished. You seem to suggest it is unethical to talk about it. Well my friend, I think it would be unethical NOT to talk about it. This credit system in this country has got to change. And I am an evangelist for change.”

As for O, The Oprah Magazine, I tried to get a handle on the editorial rules it has about this sort of thing. The editor is out of town and unreachable for the moment, so a magazine spokeswoman sent me the following via e-mail:

“Suze Orman has been a columnist for more than a decade, offering solid personal finance advice in our pages. Over the years, we’ve featured her books and other products that she feels can help our readers better manage their financial lives. As with all of our columnists, she makes recommendations, and it is up to readers whether or not to follow them.”

But an editor’s job is to provide context, to make sure writers offer real and complete solutions. At Oprah’s magazine, however, they allowed Ms. Orman to go on at length about her product even though it doesn’t solve the reader’s problem.

Then again, why would she mention an obvious solution that happens to be a competing product, like a secured credit card?  She’s in the business now of pushing her product and trying to change the way credit scoring works. It would have been nice if someone at Oprah had recognized that.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=358352254d5bc56e7763b30e5c070633