Does Fox’s Acceptance of Paid Product Placement Slant News Coverage?
Oy! This little squib from the Weekly Spin (as reprinted in the Las Vegas Sun) opens all sorts of ethics questions: product placement on newscasts = censorship of news? Maybe it would be better if we simply banned product placement on “objective” newscasts.
And look, the broadcaster is that champion of “fair and balanced” reporting, Fox News. Why am I not surprised?
“Two cups of
McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk” during Las Vegas station KVVU’s morning news show, writes Abigail Goldman. It’s a “punch-you-in-the-face product placement” that will last six months. KVVU’s news director says the “nontraditional revenue source” won’t impact his station’s reporting. But an executive with the marketing firm that negotiated the deal, Omnicom’s Karsh/Hagan, said “the coffee cups would most likely be whisked away if KVVU chooses to report a negative story about McDonald’s,” reports the New York Times. McDonald’s has similar product placement arrangements with “WFLD in Chicago, which is owned and operated by Fox; on KCPQ in Seattle, a Fox affiliate owned by the Tribune Company; and on Univision 41 in New York City.” Other stations owned by KVVU parent Meredith Corporation, “including WFSB, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, Conn., and WGCL, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta — are also accepting product placements on their morning shows.” The Writers Guild of America West recently urged the Federal Communications Commission to require “real-time disclosure” of product placements and to ban video news releases, calling VNRs “an attempt to trick the viewer to think that a paid advertisement is actually news.”
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Pingback by hartford fair — July 29, 2008 @ 9:29 am
I got a comment on the Plaxo page (this blog is syndicated to both Facebook and Plaxo) asking why this was any worse than running an ad. My reply:
Because it is *directly affecting the willingness of Fox to run negative stories on its funders*, according to the article I referenced. I’d have the same issue on the straight-ad side. And because when commercial material is presented as news, it distorts the viewers’ understanding of the truth. Product placement on the entertainment side, while still an issue, is much less of an issue for me than when it shows up in newscasts.
Comment by Shel Horowitz - Ethical Marketing Expert — July 30, 2008 @ 6:20 pm
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Pingback by Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Newsletters » Blog Archive » New on the Sites, August 2008 — August 6, 2008 @ 4:16 am
I don’t believe your comment policy had anything to do with the comment traffic, depending upon where you put it. The addition of a here to your comments policy within the comments area has no impact. Spelling out your comments policy with a lot of confrontational language within the comment form area can.
Comment by asus — August 14, 2008 @ 11:24 am