Is It News Or Snake Oil?

It would make a perfect 60 Minutes segment. A company hires famous TV journalists to anchor health-related videos — paid for by the businesses whose drugs and products the "newscasts" cover. The company puts the videos on public television. Viewers think they're watching the news. But they're really watching-- newsvertising! Tick-tick-tick-tick...

Sounds like a job for Morley Safer — if he weren't one of the rent-a-journalists involved. According to the New York Times, Safer taped presentations that were repeated in hundreds of such videos made by WJMK Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company, appearing on a news-show-like set and introducing two-to five-minute segments titled American Medical Review. CNN's Aaron Brown and retired CBS anchor Walter Cronkite also recently signed up with the series. WJMK said the AMR segments were not ads, but the health and drug companies provided sources for the reports and, according to the Times, maintained editorial control. The segments do not say that the companies paid for them, which may violate public-TV disclosure laws. In an emailed statement, WJMK president Mark Kielar disputed the Times story and said, "AMR with Walter Cronkite and Aaron Brown does and will meet the strictest of public-television standards and practices."

But Cronkite and Brown, as well as Safer, later severed their ties with WJMK, each saying he had been led to believe the spots were educational. And they were. They taught us that before an anchor agrees to read a script, he needs a little more information than whether the check will clear.