TV Charity Drives: Toys for Tots, Money for Stations

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

When WUSA, Channel 9, began its annual drive this fall to provide toys to underprivileged children, it enlisted the help of SunTrust Bank. The station has told viewers that the financial institution is a "sponsor" of its Toys for Tots campaign, which is promoted extensively in public-service-style TV commercials and during interview segments on its newscasts.

Similarly, WRC (Channel 4) found a partner and sponsor this fall in the D.C. Lottery Commission when the station began encouraging viewers to donate to Project Harvest, an annual drive to provide food to needy families around Thanksgiving.

Both campaigns raise money and other donations for deserving recipients. But in both cases, the efforts raise money for something else, too: the TV stations.

To become "partners" with WUSA and WRC, such entities as SunTrust and the D.C. Lottery pay the stations. The payments buy TV ads that tout the charitable campaigns and the companies' involvement in them. The stations, in turn, often feature their paying sponsors on news reports about the charitable drives, usually without disclosing to viewers that the station is receiving money from the ad buys.

Station representatives have said such "community outreach" drives are a winning proposition for all parties: The charity reaps publicity and public contributions, and the station and its corporate partners gain recognition and goodwill. "We're part of the community and should be active participants in it," said Darryll J. Green, Channel 9's president and general manager.

But critics have said the practice has troubling aspects. Other local stations said they resist turning sponsors into news because that might suggest that the sponsor has paid to influence coverage -- a violation not just of journalistic practice, but potentially of federal rules against payola.

"We're just not comfortable with it," says Duffy Dyer, general manager of WTTG (Channel 5) and WDCA (Channel 20). "We might involve a third party" in a station-run fundraising campaign, "but we don't accept any money ourselves."

As for WJLA (Channel 7), "We have a pretty strict policy . . . that we do not offer newscast time to advertisers," spokeswoman Kathy McGriff said.

A station's alliances with sponsors can take elaborate forms, meshing news, public service and advertising into one undifferentiated whole. Early this year, Channel 9 aired a 16-part series on its "Eyewitness News" offering weight loss and fitness tips. Half the 16 segments in the series, which was called "Lighten Up, Washington," featured interviews with doctors, nurses and other experts from Inova Health System, the Fairfax-based hospital chain. Other segments featured non-medical experts unaffiliated with Inova.

About the time "Lighten Up" aired, Inova bought ads on Channel 9 and its Web site promoting the series and Inova's new Heart and Vascular Institute, whose experts appeared in the program's news segments. And Inova's monthly newsletter promoted the Channel 9 series months in advance.

Inova was simultaneously a station advertiser, a key news source and a sponsoring "partner" of the series. Neither Channel 9 nor Inova spelled out to viewers the various relationships. During one interview segment, anchor Andrea Roane briefly introduced an Inova specialist by saying, without elaboration, that the hospital chain was "a sponsor" of the "Lighten Up" program. At other times, no mention was made of Inova's financial relationship with the station.

Candace Quinn, Inova's marketing director, acknowledged in an interview that the relationships might be somewhat confusing. "I suppose someone watching could say, 'What's going on here?' " she said. But Quinn defended the arrangements, which she said predated her arrival in March at the hospital chain: "There's nothing going on. We're advertising, they're reporting. They gave us a good vehicle to get the word out about our services."

WUSA's Green said there was no connection between Inova's sponsorship and the news coverage. Asked why only Inova's medical specialists were interviewed during the series, he said, "They are experts in this subject."

Quinn said that the hospital suggests stories to WUSA and supplies the station with patients and doctors to be interviewed, but that doing so is unrelated to Inova's partnership and advertising: "Inova is a preferred source for Channel 9 news. It's our pleasure to help them."

WUSA and WRC solicit the most paying sponsors for station-run community campaigns. WRC runs drives year-round. In a document aimed at would-be advertisers, WUSA makes clear that such "public service" campaigns are potential brand-building exercises.

"Many area businesses, like your own, have partnered with us and reaped enormous benefit with brand and image identification, as well as being recognized as a 'community-minded' company" by sponsoring such efforts, the station says in its "Community Outreach Opportunities" document.

The document lists such "opportunities" as sponsorship of Channel 9's school-supply and food drives and the Buddy Check 9 campaign, which promotes early breast cancer detection and awareness.

Green and Michael Jack, WRC's president and general manager, insisted that viewers are aware that advertisers that are referred to as "partners" or "sponsors" of a station-run fundraiser are paying the station to participate. "We clearly identify that by saying 'brought to you by' or 'sponsored by' or ' in cooperation with' or whatever the term is," Jack said. "So it's clearly stated in the spots. It's understood by those of us in the broadcast industry."

Both stations declined to say how much they charge advertisers to participate in such programs, and they said they never promise the sponsors news coverage. "There's full church-and-state separation," Jack said.

Asked for an instance in which a paying sponsor was not interviewed, Jack said he could not recall that happening. He added: "We interview all kinds of people who are involved in our events. [Sponsors] are obviously very engaged in the particular event" and therefore newsworthy.

Atlanta-based SunTrust has been one of the most active sponsors of station campaigns, supporting Channel 9's toy and food drives and Channel 4's winter-coat drive. Terri Copeland, SunTrust's senior vice president, declined to discuss how much the company spends on each partnership.

SunTrust has bought commercials promoting its involvement in the charitable efforts. At the same time, the stations' news departments have given the bank complimentary coverage. Top company executives, for example, were featured this past fall on "Eyewitness News" reports about Channel 9's school supply drive, Copeland said.

Copeland herself appeared on Channel 9's noon newscast Dec. 6, in an interview about Toy Drive 9, which the station runs in conjunction with the area's Toys for Tots program. Anchor J.C. Hayward spoke with Copeland exclusively for 2 1/2 minutes of the half-hour broadcast. During the interview, the station posted a slide about the toy drive that included SunTrust's logo and that of co-sponsor Wal-Mart.

"We here at Channel 9 would like to thank you, SunTrust Bank, for all your support throughout the years," said Hayward, who did not mention that SunTrust paid Channel 9 to be involved in the effort.

While ads promoting Channel 4's Project Harvest were airing last month, the station's reporters chatted up its sponsors in interview segments. Among those interviewed was D.C. Lottery Executive Director Jeanette A. Michael, who had appeared on the station in paid commercials about the pre-Thanksgiving event.

Copeland said that WRC's and WUSA's willingness to feature sponsors that way has "evolved." "We're in constant discussion with them about how we can all make it better," she said. "They'll propose and we'll propose. Someone will say, 'Let's have an interview on the 9 a.m. news,' or 'Let's run it during the 6 o'clock.' "

Copeland added: "There are things that Channel 9 will do that Channel 4 won't do. On Channel 9, you do get these live cut-ins or interviews, sometimes two. You'll get a camera crew to come to your branch and interview the president of the region. We'll do a taped interview and drop that into a news program."

Green acknowledged that his station's news department often covers Channel 9's charitable drives, but that it does so without prompting from the sales department. "There are times when the news department will decide on its own to push the charitable message," he said. "They can call [a sponsor] and schedule interviews when they want to."

An e-mail sent last month by one station executive to Channel 9's staff, however, suggests that advertising, promotion and news operations are highly coordinated. The e-mail, from Khalim Piankhi, vice president of community relations, notes that Channel 9 is again sponsoring the toy drive "in partnership" with SunTrust and Wal-Mart. The e-mail adds that the station has produced two full-screen graphics (with the sponsors' logos on them) and instructs the station's news department: "As often as possible, it is enough to just mention the drive with the [graphics] during our weather segments. We also would like to augment these 'mentions' with interviews with representatives of our partners." Piankhi declined to comment, referring a reporter to Green.

Channel 9 also has used one of its top anchors, Tracey Neale, to promote an advertiser's campaign. Neale appeared in commercials for the Children's National Medical Center "Get T.U.F.F." (Team Up for Fitness) program, which combats childhood obesity. A spokesman for the center said the hospital paid for the spots. Asked whether it was proper for a member of the news operation to endorse an advertiser on the air, Green replied: "Tracey wasn't promoting Children's; she was promoting the fight against childhood obesity. It's proper for her to get behind a program she feels passionate about."

One journalism ethics expert, Bob Steele of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Poynter Institute, said such coverage is "rife with ethical potholes and land mines" because it calls into question the stations' journalistic independence. News coverage "should not be unduly influenced by commercial considerations, or by developing revenue streams, or by maximizing ad dollars, or by pleasing our business clients," he said. "Those factors are illegitimate forces that will undermine journalistic credibility."

(A spokesman for The Washington Post, Eric Grant, said the newspaper sponsors events and accepts advertising from co-sponsors. "But we make it very clear that our sponsorship contains no promise of news coverage," he said. "At no time will we compromise our news coverage for the sake of a community event" or to favor an advertiser.)

Green and Jack said sponsors' purchases of commercial time provide the charity or campaign with additional publicity and promotion. The stations devote free airtime to the campaign, but the two executives said there is a limit to how much the stations can give away. Sponsors "enhance the message," Green said.

Jack said that if a sponsor doesn't step up to promote the station's campaign, the station will sell the airtime to a conventional advertiser. "Yes, we get some revenue," Jack said, "but the charity benefits, too."

Representatives of Channel 5 and Channel 7 said their stations do not sell commercials to promote station-sponsored fundraising campaigns because of the potential for viewer confusion (NewsChannel 8, the local all-news cable channel owned by the parent of WJLA, follows the same policy as Channel 7).

Dyer, of Channel 5, said that although his station's news department will cover events that the station is involved in, "we don't do it in exchange for anything other than whether it's good for the community. We try to approach these things cleanly." The other stations, he said, "have some disclosure issues that beg a little more conversation."

That is not exactly how some advertisers see it. Inova's Quinn compared station-advertiser public-service partnerships to infomercials or advertorials (print ads that look like news material).

"I think there is a blurring in how [advertisers] communicate these days," she said. "This is a way to reach people who are overwhelmed with noise."