Google's spokesperson clarified that this news website must follow the Google AdWords adult content policy.

Google's AdSense has told San Francisco news outlet The SF Appeal that it has three days to remove editorial content that violates its advertising policy.

SF Appeal Publisher Eve Batey said, "Your advertisers shouldn't be telling you what to cover in your publication." She added, "that Google seems to think that it's OK to send a vague email like this is pretty staggering, and seems to suggest that the company is not the friend to journalism they claim they are."

Update: Google's spokesperson responded to this article saying that despite Ms. Batey's email from AdWords telling her otherwise (included in this article), Ms. Batey and ZDNet are incorrect to believe that AdWords is requiring content to be changed.

Google's spokesperson clarified that this news website must follow the Google AdWords adult content policy.

Google said this morning via email, "We don't comment on specific publishers, but below is a general statement. Also here is more on our adult content policies. Your headline is inaccurate -- we don't require publishers to change their content. They cannot run ads against content that is not in line with the policies (so they could take the ads off those pages and still run them elsewhere on the site)."

Ms. Batey responded, "Given the email sent to us by Google, then, Google's remark that "they could take the ads off those pages and still run them elsewhere on the site" isn't accurate."

"That said, this response does a terrible job of even pretending to address the question posed, nor the issues raised in your report."

Batey detailed,

If Google were, say, a major grocery store chain, and the major grocery store chain told a television network that it was likely going to pull its advertising from the network because it violated the grocery store's standards, then sent a vague list (none of which appears applicable to the network's content) of things that violate those standards, we would all be talking about what out-of-touch fools the grocery store chain is, and how it seemed like they were trying to bully a network into changing its content.

Despite Google's remarks, the email we received from Google read "please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own. To reduce the likelihood of future warnings from us, we suggest that you review all your sites for compliance."
It appears that to AdWords, a website's content is up for re-classification as porn anytime -- and this isn't good news for online journalism.

Many news websites use AdSense for backfill, including majors like Hearst, as well as smaller indie news blogs like those in the Gothamist network, The Awl, and others

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