home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=94TT1027>
- <title>
- Aug. 01, 1994: Health Care:Ads They Refused to Run
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994
- Aug. 01, 1994 This is the beginning...:Rwanda/Zaire
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- HEALTH CARE, Page 19
- Ads They Refused to Run
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>By Nina Burleigh/Washington
- </p>
- <p> Health-care propagandists like Harry and Louise have become
- ubiquitous on TV lately, but not all the messages are getting
- through. In the Washington area, four network affiliates sparked
- a free-speech controversy by turning down a 2-min. ad, produced
- by a pro-Clinton group, which attacks the Pizza Hut company
- for failing to provide health coverage for all its workers.
- Pizza Hut, owned by TV advertising giant Pepsico, has been a
- foe of the Clinton plan's employer mandate.
- </p>
- <p> After Pizza Hut heard about the ad, its lawyers threatened the
- producers and affiliates with legal action on the grounds that
- the commercials conveyed false information. "They're not going
- to say this, but it's a worry about advertising," contended
- Robert Chlopak, a consultant to the Health Care Reform Project,
- which conceived the ads. But on Friday, Pizza Hut president
- Allan Huston appeared to back down from the company's threat.
- As a result, the reform project will try again to broadcast
- the ad.
- </p>
- <p> The networks have got entangled in a separate dispute. NBC,
- ABC, CBS and CNN have refused to air two half-hour G.O.P. advertisements
- against the Clinton plan, both paid for by billionaire Ross
- Perot. Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour
- finds this unfair, since last month NBC aired a two-hour, prime-time
- special on health care funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
- a nonprofit group with close ties to the Clinton reform effort.
- </p>
- <p> In their defense, the networks say they never accept advocacy
- advertising. For NBC's part, the network says the Robert Wood
- Johnson Foundation bought the air time, but NBC retained all
- editorial control over the program, which Tom Brokaw hosted.
- </p>
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-