NEWS RELEASE
For More Information Contact: Robert Weissman (503) 235-8012
For Immediate Release: July 22nd, 2008

Commercial Alert Letter on Product Placement in Newscasts

The New York Times reports that anchors on KVVU, a Fox affiliate in Las Vegas, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on their desks during morning news show. Executives at the station have acknowledged that the McDonald’s coffee is part of a six-month promotion. In response, Commercial Alert sent a letter to Paul Karpowicz, president of Meredith Broadcasting Group, urging him to end the promotional agreement with McDonald’s. Commercial Alert is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that seeks to limit excessive commercialism in society.

Following is the text of the letter:

Dear Mr. Karpowicz,

I am writing from Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, that is concerned with excessive commercialism in society.

We are appalled by your decision to enter a promotional agreement with McDonald’s that requires the placement of McDonald’s iced coffee on the desks of your news anchors.

It is Journalism 101 that commercial influence should be kept as separate as possible from news broadcasts. Your decision to use news anchors to hawk McDonald’s coffee undermines your newscast and the integrity of your programming.

Product placement advertisements on news shows inevitably threaten to bias reporting. It will be harder for Meredith news programs to run stories critical of McDonald’s thanks to the deal. The ad agency which brokered the McDonald’s deal even acknowledged it “would expect that the station would absolutely give us the opportunity to pull our product off the set” if a negative McDonald’s story were to be aired.

Local TV news broadcasts are a crucial means of news and information dissemination. Viewers develop relationships with local news personalities, and rely on them as figures they can trust. Product placement hidden advertisements exploit this trust relationship, deceive viewers, and ultimately will undermine viewers’ remaining ability to rely on local news.

We strongly urge you to end the promotional arrangement with McDonald’s, remove the coffee cups from your set, and adopt a new blanket prohibition on product placement hidden advertisements on your news programming.

Sincerely,

Robert Weissman, Managing Director
Commercial Alert