ARTelevision

May 7, 2003
A Respected Face, but Is It News or an Ad?

from the New York Times

Aaron Brown of CNN, Walter Cronkite and other broadcast journalists have been hired to appear in videos resembling newscasts that are actually paid for by drug makers and other health care companies, blurring the line between journalism and advertising.
Mr. Brown and Mr. Cronkite, the former CBS News anchor, are the new hosts of video "news breaks" produced by a Boca Raton, Fla., company called WJMK Inc. that are shown on local public television stations between regular programs. They are replacing Morley Safer of CBS, who has appeared in hundreds of the videos but has concluded, according to a "60 Minutes" spokesman, that the work does not meet the standards of CBS News.
Based on information that it received yesterday, CNN said it was reviewing its decision to allow the participation of Mr. Brown, who has not yet appeared in a video.
The hosts of the videos, standing on an elaborate news-style set, provide a general introduction to segments that profile health care companies or their products. According to WJMK documents, the companies pay WJMK about $15,000 in connection with the segments and other services and are allowed to edit and approve the videos, which are two to five minutes long.
Similarly, a drug marketing company called Healthology hires journalists from local television and radio stations to appear in video Webcasts. The Healthology programs are available through the Web sites of many large newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald. Drug makers pay for the Webcasts, which feature the journalists interviewing doctors and patients about their products.
For years, local news stations, as part of their newscasts, have broadcast videos created by drug companies' public relations agencies — a practice that critics equate to publishing unedited press releases. Now, production companies are expanding that marketing tactic to public television and the Web and using celebrity journalists to add to the videos' credibility.
Government officials said that the new programming might run afoul of federal drug regulations, which prohibit drug makers from advertising experimental medicines or promoting drugs for ailments that they have not been approved to treat. Communications lawyers said that the WJMK programs might fail to meet public broadcasting rules, which require the disclosure of corporate sponsorship.
Critics of the news media say that the videos mislead viewers by packaging promotional material to look like news. Dr. Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said that he had seen similar videos in the past that tried to imitate news but never ones featuring working journalists, let alone such prominent ones as Mr. Safer and Mr. Brown.
"They are buying credibility," he said of the health care companies that pay for the appearances.
One executive working for a company that was solicited by WJMK said that WJMK's employees had told him that Mr. Safer was paid "six figures" for one day in the studio.
Kevin Tedesco, a spokesman for "60 Minutes" on CBS, said that Mr. Safer had agreed to work for WJMK four years ago, thinking that the work complied with the network's standards. "After doing it, he realized it did not square with CBS News standards," Mr. Tedesco said. "Some of that work that he did back then continues to appear now. I don't think there is anything we can do about that."
Ronald Konecky, Mr. Cronkite's lawyer, said his client had agreed to work for WJMK after being told that the videos would be educational and would not promote products. He said that Mr. Cronkite would resign if he found that was not the case.
In one WJMK video where Mr. Safer appeared as host, executives at Innapharma, a small pharmaceutical company, promoted the company's experimental antidepressant nemifitide. "Patients rapidly get well and they stay well for months or years," Dr. John P. Feighner, the company's president, says in the video. "I've never seen anything that compares."
Last month, Innapharma filed for bankruptcy protection after the Food and Drug Administration ordered it to stop human trials of the drug because a study showed it was toxic to beagles. Dr. Feighner said this week that the company still hoped to sell nemifitide and was planning studies to try to show that the toxicity is limited to dogs.
Dr. Feighner said that he thought that regulators would consider the video to be appropriate because the medicine was still years from approval when the video was produced three years ago.
The Innapharma video was part of a series called the American Medical Review, which is produced by WJMK. WJMK hired John Stossel of "20/20" on ABC in 1998 to serve as the host of the series. Mr. Stossel asked WJMK to release him from his contract in August 1999.
"Neither John nor ABC News were comfortable with the ultimate arrangement," said Jeffrey W. Schneider, vice president of ABC News. The network has asked WJMK to remove Mr. Stossel's photo from its Web site.
Mark Kielar, the president of WJMK, said the videos were educational, not promotional. He said that the companies did not pay for the videos that are shown by local public television stations and that the companies had no control over content.
But a review of several written contracts between WJMK and the companies shows that they have paid $14,900 to have their products or services featured in American Medical Review videos and have them provided for use on public television stations. According to WJMK documents, the production company's staff writes a script based on information from the health care companies, including a questionnaire where the companies are asked what is superior about their products. They are then allowed to edit the script and give their final approval, according to WJMK documents.
Mr. Kielar said the $14,900 was charged solely for a related "corporate demo tape" that WJMK also created for the companies and that they could use on their Web sites and for other promotional purposes. He said he had created a second company so that one company produces the segments for public television and another company creates the promotional tape.
But groups and companies that WJMK asked to pay for the videos disagree with Mr. Kielar's description. "They were selling PBS and they were selling Morley Safer," said Jeff Cronin, spokesman for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The group declined to participate, Mr. Cronin said, after a WJMK salesman called late last year.
WJMK's clients, according to its Web site, include the big pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis and others. They also include small companies like Sleep Angel, which sells a device to keep the mouth closed during sleep to stop snoring. The company has a link to the WJMK video on its Web site, saying that the device was "featured and seen around the world" on "Morley Safer's American Medical Review."
The American Medical Review videos are distributed to local public television stations, which can show them free. Mr. Kielar claims that 30 million households see each one.
But several stations said they had declined to air them because of their promotional nature. Steven Weisberg, program director at WLRN in Miami, said the station did not run the videos because the content was paid for by the companies that were profiled.
But Suzi Stone at KSMQ in Austin, Minn., said she broadcast most of the dozens of videos that WJMK produced every month. Ms. Stone said she did not know that companies paid fees to WJMK. "They offer them to us for free," she said, "so I don't go digging around for any other information."
The videos do not mention that the companies paid WJMK to produce them — which may violate federal communications law.
John Crigler, a lawyer in Washington, said that under federal law, both the video producer and the public television stations that broadcast the segments must make sure that any corporate sponsor is disclosed.
Healthology, which is based in Manhattan, uses the Web to distribute the videos that it creates for drug companies. To help make the videos look like news, it hires local television reporters, including some who cover health-related stories for their stations, like Dr. David Marks of WNBC in New York.
In a recent Healthology Webcast, Dr. Marks interviews a doctor about a medicine for multiple sclerosis called Avonex. When asked what drug a patient should take, the doctor tells viewers that Avonex has fewer side effects than competing medicines and may be more effective.
The physician, Dr. James Miller, says that about a quarter of patients given a competing medicine develop antibodies that work against it. While Dr. Miller is careful to say that these antibodies "may" make these other medicines ineffective, a full-screen graphic appears while he speaks, stating that the antibodies "block" the other medicines' effectiveness.
The F.D.A. has warned Avonex's maker, Biogen, not to make such statements because they are not supported by scientific evidence.
Viewers are also told that the Avonex video was paid for by MS Active Source. They are not told that MS Active Source is a Web site created by Biogen to help market Avonex. They are also not told that Dr. Miller has been paid by Biogen in the past for other work or that he was paid by Healthology for the Avonex video.
Mary A. Malarkey, director of the case management division at the F.D.A.'s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that if drug companies pay for the videos, they could be considered to be advertising. "We would be interested in taking a look," she said.
Timothy D. Hunt, a spokesman for Biogen, said that Healthology had independent control of the video's content.
Dr. Marks, who appears frequently on WNBC, said that he did not know that Biogen had paid for the video. He said he had done his own research on the medicines and asked his own questions.
"I was never told what to say or what questions to ask," he said.
Liz Fischer, a spokeswoman for WNBC, said the station questioned the way Healthology packaged its Webcasts but did not question their content.
Dr. Miller said that Healthology executives had asked him to talk about antibodies but had not told him specifically what to say.
Dr. Steven Haimowitz, the president of Healthology, said that drug companies did not write or edit the videos' script. The drug makers pay for the videos and suggest the topics, he said, but Healthology's medical experts take over from there.
"All the Webcasts are fair and balanced," he said. "They are editorial in nature."
Dr. Haimowitz, who worked as an executive at a Madison Avenue ad agency before creating Healthology, said that the drug makers also do not suggest which doctors should be hired to appear in the videos. He said that in some medical specialities, like multiple sclerosis, almost all doctors do some kind of consulting work for the pharmaceutical companies.
Healthology promotes itself as an effective marketer of prescription drugs directly to the consumer. As consumers watch the videos, they have several opportunities to press buttons and be transferred to Web sites maintained by the sponsoring drug company, where they may be asked to provide detailed personal information and whether they want to be sent further information about the drug company's product.
Some of the Healthology videos are about how a medicine can be used for a condition that has not yet been approved by the F.D.A. For example, Pharmacia paid for a video about how pain relievers known as cox-2 inhibitors, including its product, Celebrex, could be used to treat lung cancer.
Susan J. Yarin, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, which bought Pharmacia, said the company had no control over that video's content.

.............

Think of our news media as a bond of trust.
Pay close attention as the bond of trust is manipulated and used to fool us more than we are already fooled.

This kind of thing is always bigger and more pernicious than it may appear on the surface.

In the end, we lose and they win...

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create evolution

Cynthetiq

This is not new, it was done in print before, which is why most print ads that don't look like ads have a "special advertising section" header.

60 Minutes (owned by Viacom/CBS) aired a segment on Digital Video Recorders (DVR) specifically the Tivo product. It was from the angle of it being the hot new technology that didn't have any competition (there was little if no discussion about the Replay version, and other computer related solutions.) The very next day the stock rose incredibly as if people where buying "with insider knowledge"

Here's the rub. Showtime has an equity stake in Tivo. Showtime is owned by Viacom.

This happens all the time with news, from products to stars. I was scratching my head the other day when Marsha Clarke was on Entertainment Tonight being asked about Scott Peterson and the Laci trials. WTF does that have to do with entertainment?

One morning on my way to an early gig, I was listening to the radio and I heard what I thought was a talk show talking about the benefits of Aloe. It turned out that it was an infomercial in the talk show format, with callers calling in, doctors chiming in giving opinion. Made me mad thinking WTF music radio on an early Saturday morning isn't as profitable as selling an informercial space????

Unfortunately it's the sheep out there that don't separate the wheat from the chaff and know that it's just propaganda and not really news.

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troit

And I thought propaganda only happened in other countries...

Thanks for the good read this morning Art.

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I've yet to dephile myself...

phredgreen

just like anything else in showbusiness... your job is to keep the people paying your bills happy. ever notice how in the movies they always hold their pop cans logo facing out? it's gotten alot more viral than that. the news needs local and national sponsorship to continue to air, they're just another tv show trying to pull in advertisers... so of course, they're gonna have a specific lean towards whomever is sponsoring that particular segemnt of the news.

news is showbusiness. showbusiness is a schill. the people paying for it (advertisers) will always have authority as to what people see and more importantly what they won't see.

__________________
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
- Thomas Paine

ARTelevision

yes, I think we who are informed and aware do know this.
what's astounding is that we are in a severe minority
you'd think that we'd be media savy just as a defensive strategy because we have all been burned
our nervous systems and learning mechanisms can't quite seem to keep up with the repeated onslaught, I guess.
the upshot is many are fooled...

__________________
create evolution

Charlatan

What is galling is that for a democracy to function properly it requires an informed populace. Our body politic lives and breathes by being informed about the choices we have to make in the voting booth.

Increasingly, our media is dumbing down. It is very difficult to find context and back story. You cannot expect to get the story or even begin to search for "truth" in something called Headline News for example.

We are bombarded with "news" stories that have little to no relevance to our personal lives. We worry about Lacie Peterson's fate. Why? Do you know her? Does her death have some relevance to your day to day life? At best this story deserves some local coverage and at the most an in depth magazine style story.

While I was in LA recently I was amazed at the "news". Pure fluff. CNNs coverage of the war in Iraq. Total surface coverage. Very little to no critical analysis.

Infomercials and using anchors to sell drugs are just the tasteless and visible tip of the iceberg.

What is needed, and desperately needed, is a universal media literacy campaign. It should be a major component of every child's education. We should all learn how to critically "read" the media we consume.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

spectre

I'm not really bothered by this as I am by perscription drugs being advertised, especially the way that the drugs are advertised. In many of the commercials, you can't really tell what the drug does, and in others, the information about symptoms is so vague that every hypochondriac (and there are a lot of them especially now) think that they need that drug.

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No goddamn slave
I will be different" ~ Machine Head

Big Julie

I.....like to watch....

Daniel Boorstin was writing in the early sixties("the Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America"), about how most 'News' was manufactured, so this would just be a natural progression.

gov135

I agree with Big Julie. Everything has a spin, "journalists" no longer acurately depict both sdes of a story, but find an "angle" they feel will "sell" the story.

So if everything is a spin, and your dumb enough to follow Aaron Brown to the bridge, well if you jump its your fault.

I don't like to see these kinda things. I think lines of credibility and journalistic integrity are crossed, but I'm sure I'm in the minority on this one. If you need to buy some credibility, its just money, and if you wave it they will come.

Course I don't even think drug companies should be allowed to direct market to potential consumers. Doctors are the paid professionals who are best able to assess what remedy is best for whom. Doctors don't need patients coming to them and telling them what medicine they need, doctors need a patient to accurately relay symptoms. And with this direct marketing you often see drug companies stretching the truth - the shouldn't have the opportunity. Aaron Brown knows nothing about a drug. Old ladies souldn't be led to believe that by taking a drug they will be frolicking in the woods with their grandkids, it don't work that way. Finally, if drug companies spent half as much on research for new drugs as they do on print ads and airtime....

If Aaron Brown is comfortable with it, who cares. Fault moves to the drug company and people stupid enough to lend credibility to it cause of Aaron Brown.

Cynthetiq

yes. it's completely opposite of the rules and standards for children's advertising. The whole,"Ask Your Doctor if X is right for you."

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.