The PBS ombudsman found no reason to believe that underwriters influenced The Mysterious Human Heart but said "the perception problem is real" with some viewers. A section discusses implantable defibrillators and was partially funded by a maker of similar devices. (Publicity photo showing an implant: PBS.)
Do ‘inappropriate’ funders damage PBS credibility?
PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler last month cited a recurring problem with underwriters: “the seeming inappropriateness of funders for a number of programs and the residue of doubt that leaves in the mind of some viewers even though one may not see or sense any hint of influence.”
The recent WNET doc series The Mysterious Human Heart “once again put the spotlight on what has been a continuing source of viewer questioning and complaint about several PBS-supported and promoted programs,” he wrote in his Oct. 26 [2007] column on PBS.org. He pointed to four other such instances in his two years as ombudsman. “The perception problem is real,” Getler told Current.
The Mysterious Human Heart, which aired Oct. 15 and 22, explains how the heart works, details advances in heart research, follows people suffering from heart problems and discusses lifestyle choices that can promote heart health.
Two of the series’ major underwriters were Medtronic, a company that makes medical devices for various heart conditions, and AstraZeneca, which makes drugs for cardiovascular problems. The third corporate underwriter, Mars Inc., has invested millions to develop and market “heart healthy” CocoaVia chocolate snacks.
Series producer David Grubin, a prize-winning star producer for PBS, says the funders had no editorial influence over the heart series.
“The Mysterious Human Heart was never meant to be an investigation of the pharmaceutical or medical device industry,” Grubin wrote in response to Getler’s column. “Put simply, it is an effort to dramatize for our viewers how the heart works and how best to take care of it. ... Nowhere do we advocate medical devices or drugs or procedures that are not in accord with the most stringent medical guidelines. And, of course, nowhere do we even mention, let alone trumpet the virtues of any corporate brand.”
But viewers who wrote Getler were skeptical about pubcasters’ ethics. One wrote: “In Episode 2 of the series, viewers are told that the best treatment for certain potentially deadly heart arrhythmias is an implantable pacemaker. Who’s the leading manufacturer of such devices? Medtronic, of course.”
Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a persistent watchdog on PBS funding issues, wrote, “We believe that the involvement of these two heart-related commercial entities illustrates disturbing flaws in the PBS underwriting guidelines. PBS programming should not be supported by any concern that has a stake — either financially or politically — in the editorial content of the show or series.”
“In short, this program was a commercial for the underwriters, with all the weight of the integrity of PBS and WTIU behind it,” wrote an Indiana viewer whose letter was quoted in Getler’s column on PBS.org last week. “I’ve worked in media all my life and I understand how this works.”
In addition to pacemakers and defibrillators, the program discusses cardiac electrophysiology — a field in which Medtronic makes equipment, too.
The program happened to air while about Medtronic was fresh in viewers’ minds. The day before the series’ premiere, Medtronic recalled a faulty wire component in its implantable defibrillators. AstraZeneca has had bad press, too. In 2005, the FDA released warnings about the side effects of its cholesterol drug, Crestor.
“Overall, even if you assume that producers and PBS have the best intentions to make sure there’s no influence by sponsors,” Getler told Current, “I think it really has a considerable ability to diminish ... PBS credibility with viewers.”
In his column, Getler called Heart “an intelligent, informative and well-presented update on where things stand.” In such cases, he told Current, there is “no obvious reason to not accept the word of PBS and the producers that there was no outside influence at all on the film.” But because viewers might perceive a conflict of interest, he still thinks PBS, Grubin and WNET should at least have been more transparent about funding sources, beyond simply naming the underwriters.
“Somehow,” he says, “there clearly were ways to alert viewers to this, so that the PBS credibility remained solid.”
Getler thinks Human Heart could have used its website to post info about funders. He envisions an on-air statement that points to website info about sponsors. The website could have said, “two of our sponsors have been in the news recently, and here’s what’s been reported and here’s what they have to say about it.”
Alicia C. Shepard, a media critic recently named NPR’s ombudsman, says public TV should not have accepted the funding [for the series] in the first place. “In journalism, all we have is our credibility. It just seems to me that anyone at PBS, in their heart, knows they shouldn’t have done this.”
The audience knows
Getler noted the “seeming inappropriateness of funders,” as he calls it, for several other productions:
- The issue came up earlier this year with the doc The Marines, which Getler said was a “well done testimonial and recruiting film masquerading as a documentary.” It was funded by the Alfiero Family Foundation, and Sal Alfiero, a former Marine, is a major funder of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
- An American Experience history of Las Vegas was underwritten in part by the city’s tourism bureau (Current article, Sept. 19, 2005).
- The controversial program The Armenian Genocide was funded in part by Armenian-Americans (Current article, March 6, 2006).
In his recent column about the heart doc, Getler expresses concern about this pattern. “It may be that this problem is never going to be resolved,” he adds, “until some different funding scheme for public television is arrived at.”
In a letter to Marcia Diamond, senior director for program underwriting policy at PBS, Getler asked about the timing of the program with the Medtronic recall, as well as evidence there had been earlier reports to the government about the faulty device. “Was PBS aware of the long-standing problems and, if so, what was the reasoning to accept funding from Medtronics?” Getler asked. “What would allow firms with a clear product stake in a subject to be funders?”
Diamond responded: “This program has been in the works for about 5 years. AstraZeneca and then the Medtronic Foundation made their underwriting commitments to this project in 2002 and 2003.Two more funders were secured after that, The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, and Mars in 2006. PBS set the schedule for Heart five months ago. Neither WNET nor the funder had any part in setting the air date.”
PBS reps chose not to discuss the issue for this article. Spokeswoman Jan McNamara pointed to Diamond’s and Grubin’s responses.
Shepard says she believes Grubin when he says the editorial content was not compromised. But, she says, funding influence is not always obvious, even to creators. When you accept funding, “What you worry about is what kinds of decisions were unconsciously or subtly made to exclude something because it might annoy the donor. You sometimes leave things out . . . or you bend over backwards and attack the donor to prove your independence.”
Jeffrey Dvorkin, Shepard’s predecessor as NPR ombudsman and now an adjunct professor of journalism at Georgetown University, says perceived bias is a problem in pubradio, too. Dvorkin remembers when NPR took underwriting from the State of Kuwait six years ago (Current, article, March 26, 2001). “People were very anxious . . . that there was sort of undue influence, especially on Middle East coverage,” he says. “So it was decided that NPR wouldn’t take money from a government source, although it would take money from a tourist office, for example.”
“The more transparent we in public broadcasting can be about where the money comes from, how it’s used, what the firewall is between underwriting and programming, then the higher the level of trust from listeners and viewers,” Dvorkin says.
Getler thinks viewers ultimately expect to be able to trust PBS, whether a program is straight-ahead public affairs or lighter doc fare. The PBS editorial standards, updated in 2005, are strong but also leave room to rationalize a variety of funding relationships, he says.
He was surprised to find an underwriting situation resembling that of the Human Heart series used in the PBS document as an illustration of an unacceptable relationship:
“A nonprofit organization whose mission is to eradicate heart disease or to raise money for leukemia research could not fund a program designed to educate the public about these respective illnesses,” says the PBS document, laying out its example. “Again, even though the program may not contain controversial subject matter, and even though there might be few who would criticize the goals of these organizations, a reasonable segment of the public might readily conclude that the program was created solely to promote the interests of the funder.”
No perfect system?
The perception problem arises repeatedly because foundation as well as corporate funders have increasingly given grants or bought underwriting only when the expenditure will advance their formal objectives, whether it’s advocacy or a good bottom line.
Ideally, “one might find underwriters who are absolutely disinterested in the subject matter,” said Lea Sloan, PBS communications v.p., in Broadcasting & Cable magazine, but “it doesn’t happen very often.”
“Would Medtronic sponsor a piece on something they had absolutely no connection to?,” says Shepard. “Probably not.”
“It’s very uncomfortable,” comments Dvorkin, “for the station to turn down what looks to be a pretty good funding source. The problem is rarely, if ever, do these things come with unattached expectations.”
There’s no perfect alternative system for pubcasting to adopt, Dvorkin says. “I think the way public broadcasting operates in the United States, which is this mixture of some federal funding, some listener and viewer support and some underwriting is a complicated system that doesn’t exist in any other country in the world. As a result, it just needs to have more clarity [about] how it works”
Finding a range of underwriters is also important, says Dvorkin, “so that it doesn’t look like it’s a one-industry infomercial. That mixture of sources is probably a good step in making sure the public understands that [public broadcasters] can’t be bought.”
Web page posted Dec. 7, 2007
Copyright 2007 by Current Publishing Committee
In a letter to Current, Shepard clarified a remark quoted in the print version of this article.
