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It is no violation of journalistic integrity for a network news division to use its nightly newscast to cross-promote a newsworthy story being covered on one of its other programs. So Andrea Mitchell can legitimately cross-promote NBC's exclusive interview with Karl Rove as he promotes his book on Today. Chris Cuomo can legitimately promote ABC's exclusive homevideo of Jaycee Dugard on 20/20, showing the girl who was kidnapped and held captive for 18 years readjusting to family life with her daughters, mother and sister.
When cross-promotion undercuts the journalistic credibility of the network anchors is when they try with a straight face to treat entertainment as newsworthy. NBC's Brian Williams spent two weeks in Vancouver purporting to present the Winter Olympic Games as a legitimate story. Now Diane Sawyer misuses her network's Person of the Week feature a second time in order to drum up an audience for ABC's coverage of the Academy Awards ceremonies. A month ago she named The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow; now Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, the co-presenters, get the treatment. "It is a high wire assignment, all of us at home deciding whether they are funny or not, all of us thinking we know everything there is to know about movies"…all of us knowing that there is no journalistic purpose whatsoever being served by such free advertising for Disney's entertainment timeslot.
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