A leading foundation active in health care has purchased a two-hour block of prime time on NBC television and has asked the network's news division to fill the slot with an ambitious examination of health-care reform.
The special program will be broadcast without commercials on Tuesday, June 21, from 9 to 11 p.m. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will pay NBC $2.5 million for the air time, a figure that both sides said represented fair-market value. The foundation will provide an additional $1 million to promote and advertise the special.In turn, NBC News will assume all costs of the production itself and will have complete independence as to its content, said Andrew Lack, the president of NBC News.
While foundations and corporations frequently underwrite programs on public television, Lack said that no one at NBC had ever heard of an entity buying a network's air time and turning it over to the network's news division.
He said the foundation had not asked for coverage of particular aspects of health care and had no say in who at NBC News might participate, though Lack said the network's chief anchor, Tom Brokaw, would surely be involved.
But some Republican officials voiced unhappiness on Tuesday because, they said, the foundation had participated in Hillary Rodham Clinton's task force on health care and its impartiality could be questioned.
The foundation has not been publicly identified with a stand on the health-care debate, and foundation officials said they wanted only to inform the public on all sides of the issue.
For NBC News, the arrangement will offer a chance for in-depth scrutiny of a public issue that is increasingly rare at the ratings-driven broadcast networks. "This kind of block of time will allow us to do the kind of complex examination this issue deserves," Lack said. "This is the kind of television that network news is criticized - and justly so - for not doing enough of."
The foundation said that it had approached another network with the same proposal at the same time, but that NBC had responded swiftly and enthusiastically. The foundation would not identify the other network, but people close to the arrangement said it was ABC.
Lack said NBC initially had some concerns about the idea but "we looked closely at the foundation and we're comfortable about the fact that they will have no influence at all on our production, and the fact that they have no political agenda."
Tony Blankley, the press secretary for Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House Republican whip, said the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation "is a player in the political circus, and to suggest they are a disinterested party is simply off base."
Blankley added: "If a journalist won't accept a lunch from a congressman, why accept $2 million from an interest group? It's a interesting subject for a journalism seminar. Which is worse: something like this or Time magazine cropping an old picture of Bill Clinton?"
The magazine was criticized recently for using a months-old picture of a troubled-looking President Clinton on its cover to illustrate an article on the Whitewater affair.
Lack said the Republicans ought to have "enough respect for NBC News" to know that the program will be balanced. "Newt Gingrich and other voices with his point of view will be amply represented on the broadcast," he said, "and any concerns he has should end once he sees the special."
Lack said he was unaware of the Johnson foundation's involvement in Hillary Clinton's task force, but he said he did not think the group had a political agenda. "Newt Gingrich would say that the Central Park Zoo has a political agenda," Lack said.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, begun in 1972 by the heir to the Johnson & Johnson health products company fortune, spends more than $150 million a year in grants on health-related issues. Frank Karel, the vice president of communications for the foundation, said that though the organization advocated the general notion of overhauling the health-care system, it had taken no political stand on the debate over health care.
He said: "We have spent 22 years trying to improve health care in this country. National polls show people are almost totally confused by the complex issues involved. They need to understand the issues and what's at stake."