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May 19, 2009, 12:55 PM ET
NPR And 'The Soloist'
National Public Radio needs to do a better job of avoiding an appearance of a conflict of interest with its sponsors, writes Alicia C. Shepard, the nonprofit radio organization’s ombudsman.
In her blog, Ms. Shepard writes that listeners may have had concerns about NPR’s relationship with a movie studio. Morning Edition and All Things Considered, NPR’s morning and evening shows respectively, recently dedicated 19 minutes of programming to the movie The Soloist, and Dreamworks Pictures, which produced the movie, also bought airtime, known as “credits,” to promote the film.
NPR requires that credits do not air near a story that mentions a sponsor. Morning Edition moved the Dreamworks promotions away from The Soloist stories, but All Things Considered did not. The show’s executive producer said he didn’t move the credit because he never saw the list of sponsors.
Ms. Shepard writes that NPR has failed to move credits on at least two other recent occasions.
“It shouldn’t happen and it’s easy to fix. But the shows do need an established process, and not to do it on a haphazard basis,” she writes. “A top editor from each NPR-show should make sure to check the funding credits each day against that day’s show’s schedule of stories and rearrange any conflicting funding credits. This would reduce the appearance that NPR is doing stories only to satisfy a funder.”
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