The readers’ editor on … sponsorship of roundtables
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Version 0 of 1. “A mother’s diet during pregnancy and in the first few months post-birth is vital for her child’s development and wellbeing. So why isn’t the message getting through to everyone?” Thus ran the subheading on a feature published on 22 April based on a debate at one of the Guardian’s regular Roundtables, which are sponsored by companies. On this occasion the sponsor was Danone Nutricia Early Life Nutrition. Well, the basic message is sound enough but some readers felt that a different message was “getting through”. This complaint was from a mother of three: “I’m deeply concerned that the Guardian was fooled into believing that allowing Danone to host a discussion about this important subject could be impartial. Obviously Danone have vested interests because they are the parent company manufacturing and selling products promoting baby formulas and feeds. Please correct the imbalance and make known the error and misinformation about Danone’s impartiality. Mums have a hard enough time with breastfeeding without confusion being created from a normally secure source of information ie the Guardian.” Mike Brady, the campaigns co-ordinator of Baby Milk Action, also wrote to the readers’ editor. The organisation says it is part of a global network, acting to stop misleading marketing by the baby-feeding industry and to “protect breastfeeding and babies fed on formula to prevent unnecessary death and suffering”. Brady said the Guardian had a conflict of interest in that it was taking sponsorship from a company that broke international marketing rules for baby milk formulas. “The Guardian claims to retain its journalistic independence, but this case demonstrates the risk of inherent bias. “There is a clear conflict of interest in having Danone sponsor an event on nutrition in the first 1,000 days from conception … The article promoted the company’s objectives by suggesting nutrition for successful breastfeeding is complex and not well understood, that complementary foods should be introduced earlier than Department of Health recommendations and that “collaboration between government and the food industry” was necessary to educate parents and parents-to-be … it fits with its business objectives of diverting criticism of marketing practices that violate national and international rules and portraying itself as a source of nutrition information.” The Guardian Roundtable began life in the now defunct Public magazine, which was launched for public sector managers in 2004. It was subsumed into the Guardian’s Society section when the magazine moved online 2009. In the early days of the feature at least half of the sponsorships came from public bodies but that area of sponsorship dried up in 2010. For many years there have also been Society and Education roundtables on a wide range of topics. Those features, commissioned and produced by Guardian Creative, now the Studio, were published in the G3 supplements. They only moved to the main paper when the G3s closed. There were more than 80 roundtables sold last year and they cover business and global development topics as well as education and society. Would-be sponsors can suggest a subject but don’t control the title of the debate, the guest list or the copy, which is written by a journalist separate to the chair of the debate, also a journalist. This is the only complaint of its kind, although there have been consistent complaints that the panels should be more diverse, which organisers accept and are trying to change. On this occasion the guest list included a critic who refused to attend but who contacted Baby Milk Action. Brady said he wrote to the Guardian before the conference took place to complain of the Danone sponsorship but received no reply. He also makes a broader point: “Baby Milk Action is concerned about the business model the Guardian has introduced of sponsored content, sections and debates. The benefits to the sponsor are clear: an opportunity to shape discussion of a topic to its own agenda, the kudos of being associated with a leading paper such as the Guardian, and an opportunity to divert attention from negative business practices … At the very least, the Guardian must strengthen its conflicts of interest safeguards for any sponsored content or events. When it hears from invitees that there is a conflict of interest with its chosen sponsor, why not listen to their concerns rather than pressing on regardless?” He says the benefits for the reader are less clear but colleagues who work within the commercial professional networks argue that sponsors want to be associated with being part of the debate, not to sell things. There is no point beating around the bush. Serious journalism is time-consuming and expensive if it is done properly and commercial colleagues are under a great deal of pressure to find income at a time when all newspapers are suffering from falling advertising and circulation revenues. I think it is naive to imagine that any company would sponsor content unless it was in the company’s interest. However, is that an interest that is compatible with the readers’? I am not against sponsored content providing it is clearly labelled for the reader – roundtables are – and it is interesting for the reader. But each deal should be decided on a case by case basis looking at every aspect of a company’s record and stated intentions. Baby milk is the hottest of hot topics. The anti-baby-milk campaign (initially anti-Nestlé but now anti all of them) has been going on for decades, so trouble on this issue was inevitable. The campaigners are highly critical of scientists funded by the formula milk industry and fight pitched battles at the World Health Organisation, which stated as far back as 1981 that babies should be breastfed until the age of six months. According to Baby Milk Action, Danone has breached Advertising Standards Authority guidelines on six occasions in the past five years and it has been widely criticised in the press for the way it markets follow-on milk that may be given to a baby from six months, by which time most are weaned. Zoe Williams reported from Jakarta, Indonesia, in the Guardian on 15 February 2013 on the way in which Sari Husada, a subsidiary of Danone, built up relationships with midwives, which led to increased sales of baby milk formulas. Danone denied there was any connection with giving gifts to the midwives and the sales of formulas. While this issue is about Guardian processes, I summarised the concerns of the readers to Danone. I asked a spokeswoman what it hoped to achieve by sponsoring the roundtable. She said: “We are passionate about the importance of nutrition in the first 1,000 days [of a child’s life] and take our responsibility as one of the UK’s largest manufacturers for this age group seriously. We have a long history of proactively engaging on early life nutrition policy issues. With a general election this year, the roundtable offered a timely opportunity to consolidate views on the last government’s achievements on early life nutrition and to highlight recommendations to its successor as part of a shared goal to make early life nutrition a public health priority. “We are genuinely interested in the future health of UK children; this was not an opportunity to promote infant formula. We didn’t and wouldn’t talk about our products at the roundtable. The feeding choices that parents make were discussed by the participants as part of a wider conversation but we don’t ‘own’ the conversation or try to control it. Promoting infant formula or our products in this way is against our own strict internal governance procedures and UK legal requirements. “We chose to sponsor a Guardian roundtable because this forum ensures that issues are talked over in depth from different angles through a process which is transparent and independent of the sponsor. It brings together experts who may not have previously engaged with one another and welcomes the opportunity to debate opposing views, with an independent editorial write-up post event. The Guardian network approach enables a targeted and engaged audience to be reached.” The wider issues of sponsored content has led to the setting up of a sponsorship governance group at the Guardian, a weekly meeting of editorial and commercial managers who discuss ethical considerations and any potential conflicts of interest. The Danone sponsorship should have gone to that group, a fact now accepted by the editors who were involved with the roundtables. I agree with the readers and think it was a mistake to go ahead with the Danone sponsorship because the subject of the debate could be interpreted as being too close to the subject of the controversy that has surrounded the company. |