By Maxine Shapiro, KERA 90.1 business commentator
Dallas, TX – What do Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, and John Stossel have in common? Besides being highly reputable journalists, they've all hosted videos, in authentic news settings, promoting drug companies or their products. They were taken. I'm Maxine Shapiro with KERA Marketplace Midday.
This is a case of one good selling job by the production firm to get names of that stature. And according to the New York Times, it also entailed not telling the whole truth to these men or the companies.
These are not infomercials. These are two- to five-minute "educational" videos supposedly seen on public television. These credible journalists would do the introduction for what is called the American Medical Review. The rest of the video is spent promoting drugs usually experimental ones.
Already you've got to be asking yourself, "Can they do that and how did it work?" No, they can't do that, and here's how it worked: WJMK, the production firm, would solicit companies to have them promote their product to be on public television. Companies paying $15,000 for the production were told they could use any promotional message they wanted in the video. But the companies were not identified in the video as corporate sponsors. Now, according to communication lawyers, under regulations that cover public broadcasting, sponsorship would have to be disclosed. I was pleased to find out today that KERA have never aired these videos and never will. In fact, four years ago, PBS demanded their logo be taken off the videos.
So Mr. Cronkite was told these videos would be educational, not promotional. He resigned when he found out other wise. Morley Safer, who's said to have been paid "six figures" for his one day in the studio, is seen on the introduction of hundreds of videos long after his departure. Stossel quit in 1999. And CNN anchor Aaron Brown bowed out before production began.
Which shows, no one is exempt from being bamboozled in the world of marketing. For KERA Marketplace Midday, I'm Maxine Shapiro.
Marketplace Midday Reports air on KERA 90.1 Monday - Friday at 1:04 p.m.
Email href="mailto:mshapiro@kera.org">Maxine Shapiro about this story.