Short abstract
Media watchdog reveals how US television networks are broadcasting pharmaceutical promotions disguised as “news”
Drug company marketing people are used to having to work quite hard at product promotion, but now there is evidence that some major US television news outlets are giving them a helping hand—by broadcasting “fake news” reports, graciously written and produced by industry.
The Center for Media and Democracy, a public interest group based in Madison, Wisconsin, that exposes “public relations spin and propaganda,” issued a report last week that tracked the use of 36 video news releases (VNRs) aired by news outlets over the past 10 months (www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary). VNRs are designed to look like independently produced news but they are actually prepackaged promotions containing film footage created by corporate publicists or their public relations firms.
Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price, authors of the report, studied VNRs and satellite media tours (SMTs provide interviews for news stations) and found that 47 of the 49 sources were companies “that stood to benefit financially from the favorable `news' coverage.” Of the 87 instances of VNR use documented by the centre, only one provided disclosure. That disclosure, however, identified the PR firm but not the corporate sponsor.
A favourite pitch used by drug companies to place their VNRs, said Price, is to announce Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a new drug. The VNRs, provided free to newsrooms, serve as a financial gift to news outlets since the station doesn't have to pay to produce the “news” segment.
The FDA requires drug companies to provide “fair balance” by disclosing significant adverse reactions and contraindications in VNRs, but there is no such requirement for “news” broadcasts. Furthermore, the broadcasts can be aired in countries that prohibit advertising of prescription drugs.
Drug companies know they can rely on broadcasters to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, according to Michael Wilkes, a former television network medical reporter who currently reports for National Public Radio and is the vice dean for medical education at the University of California at Davis. Dr Wilkes told the BMJ, “Drug companies' direct-to-consumer advertisements are now the lifeblood of television stations. More than ever, pharmaceutical companies provide a larger portion of television advertising budgets. The thin line between the editorial and marketing departments is becoming more and more blurred.”
Report author Daniel Price told the BMJ, “VNRs are doubly powerful; drug companies get to launder their stealth message while relying on television stations to strip out negative information since they like to keep their broadcasts peppy and they don't want to bog them down with 30 seconds of contraindications or statements like, `This drug may cause diarrhoea or bleeding from the eyeballs.'”
Three television stations removed safety warnings about a prescription cream for eczema
Although the VNRs examined by the centre did include adverse events and contraindications, the subsequent broadcasts often reduced or eliminated mention of adverse events while some amplified claims of efficacy. Three stations removed safety warnings about a prescription cream for eczema and one station touted a supplement used to treat arthritis as a “major health breakthrough,” even though a government report found it to be little better than placebo.
Contrary to the claims of some broadcast news directors that VNRs are rarely used and almost always indicate their source, the centre found that VNRs were widely disseminated and almost always undisclosed by television stations, including those owned by ABC, CBS, NBC, and the New York Times. Fox News was the worst offender, according to the report. The VNRs studied reached 52.7% of the US population.
Newsrooms used a number of methods to disguise the VNRs as news. In over 60% of cases, stations “re-voiced” the VNR, often using one of their own newscasters and “sometimes repeating the publicist's original narration word for word.” Some stations added network logos to the film and changed the appearance of text shown on the film to conform with the text type used by the station.
One of the VNRs tracked by the centre was a promotional release about Exubera, a new inhaled form of insulin. Pfizer, the maker of Exubera, contracted with the PR firm MultiVu to produce the Exubera VNR in anticipation of its approval by the FDA. The promotional package included interviews with the medical director of a Texas diabetes clinic and a patient who participated in a clinical trial of Exubera.
On 26 January KAAL-6, an ABC station in Rochester, Minnesota, ran a 90 second story on Exubera that was taken entirely from the Pfizer VNR. There was no disclosure that Pfizer was the source. Tim McGonigal, news director for KAAL, told the BMJ, “We try to generate as much local news as possible.” He said, “It's good to avoid [VNRs].” If a station does run a VNR, “it's good to get the other side of the story,” he said. Mr McGonigal did not explain why the station ran the unaltered Exubera VNR without revealing the source as Pfizer, but he said that he has now told his news staff to “disclose the source of VNRs.”
KPIX-5 in San Francisco aired a “news” segment about Exubera on 27 January that included roughly one-half of the unaltered Pfizer VNR. Safety information about Exubera was cut to just eight seconds of the nearly three-minute broadcast that was otherwise laudatory. Dan Rosenheim, news director of KPIX, told the BMJ that the segment ran without a disclaimer identifying Pfizer as the source of at least part of the report. He said, “Our policy has been that [VNRs] should be labelled and if it wasn't labelled, our policy was violated.”
Pfizer spokesperson, Vanessa Aristide, said, “Transparency is very important to Pfizer in all information that is disseminated to the media, and Pfizer is clearly identified as the source on all VNRs.” Aristide did not respond to a question about whether the drug maker would take any action to stop broadcasters from using their VNRs without disclosing that Pfizer was the source of the “news.”