Watching RTÉ last Thursday, I was taken aback to see the logo for drug firm Pfizer prominently associated with the station's health programme, The Health Squad writes Mary Raftery.
In one of those peculiar coincidences, Pfizer popped up on the News a few moments later, claiming that its arthritis drugs were perfectly safe. The report dealt with the shock withdrawal from the market of Vioxx, an arthritis drug produced by Merck Sharp & Dohme, due to side effects which increased the risk of stroke and heart disease.
RTÉ has a long history of allowing commercial sponsorship for some of its programmes. Generally such sponsorship has been unexceptional, with sponsors at one remove from the editorial content of the programme. Aer Lingus sponsoring ER, Kodak for the holiday programme or even Renault for the Late Late Show are sufficiently distanced from content to be unlikely to cause any editorial conflict.
However, can the same be said for a drug company sponsoring a health programme? When taken in conjunction with the prominent display of the Pfizer logo all over RTÉ's health website, serious questions now need to be asked about RTÉ's new stated push to increase the numbers of programmes to be sponsored.
We are not allowed to know how much Pfizer pays RTÉ for having its logo prominently displayed at the beginning and end of The Health Squad. That is commercially sensitive information, RTÉ says. However, we do know that RTÉ made it available to the market during the summer for a figure of €95,000. RTÉ also points out that the Pfizer sponsorship does not breach its guidelines.
Pfizer is the world's largest drug company. It has nine plants in Ireland and is generally regarded as a good employer. Like many other pharmaceuticals, however, it has been involved in its fair share of controversy. It is connected for instance with the organs scandal, with its subsidiary Pharmacia having received pituitary glands from dead patients through a number of Irish hospitals.
It was Pfizer which brought 60 doctors on a trip to France where they attended a Heineken Cup Munster rugby match. This was laudably highlighted by another RTÉ programme (Prime Time, which, according to the station's guidelines, is off-limits for sponsorship). Dr Tom O'Dowd, professor of general practice at TCD, held that for drug companies to take doctors away "on those kind of expensive trips is bribery".
Crucially, in the context of the current news about Vioxx, it is Pfizer which stands to gain most, at least in the short term. It makes similar arthritis medication, to which doctors may now turn as an alternative to Vioxx. Leading pharmacological expert Prof Garret FitzGerald has said, however, that questions now need to be asked about the safety of all of these drugs, known as Cox II inhibitors.
None of this is to say that Pfizer is any worse or better than most other large pharmaceuticals. It is merely to point out that drug firms have a long track record of being involved in controversies surrounding the medications they produce. In the light of this, it would seem foolhardy to associate a television health programme with a drug company in return for money.
To be fair to The Health Squad, it is not the sort of programme which investigates drug companies or the problems associated with particular medications. What it does do, however, is provide advice to people suffering from a range of common conditions. Were arthritis to be examined, it would certainly be appropriate to deal with patients' worries about medication.
The alternative for The Health Squad would be to ignore arthritis, hardly a reasonable option for RTÉ given the widespread and painful nature of the condition. The bottom line here is the risk that the programme's sponsorship will become a factor in the editorial decisions taken about its content. And it is precisely this which the RTÉ sponsorship guidelines, at least in spirit, seek to prevent.
RTÉ and other media organisations invariably claim that sponsorship does not affect their editorial decisions, and this may very well be true. But the point is, how can we be sure, when the sponsor may be in a position to benefit directly as a result of the editorial choices made by the progamme makers?
In the interests of openness, I must declare an interest here. While working for RTÉ as a producer on Check Up, a health programme broadcast in the 1990s, I argued against proposals to have it commercially sponsored. My opposition was not to sponsorship per se, but rather that I viewed health programming as too sensitive to risk the perception that its editorial integrity might be compromised.
Over the years, RTÉ has deservedly earned the confidence of its viewers and listeners in the independence of its editorial content. That relationship of trust with an audience is priceless to any broadcaster, most especially to one which is funded by public money and whose business is public service. It should not be sold for €95,000 or even 10 times that amount.