ABC Backs Anti-Tobacco Advocates' Push for 'R' Ratings for Movies with Smoking

The Disney movie ‘102 Dalmatians’ should be R-rated instead of G, two anti-smoking activists insist. Not because they antagonist was a demented woman bent on turning cute puppies into a fur coat. Nope. Cruella De Vil’s real crime was smoking.

“Movies that depict smoking are the single greatest media threat to children say two prominent doctors,” ABC’s Heather Nauert warned her “Good Morning America” audience.

Nauert’s October 10 story focused on two activists who call for the Motion Picture Association of America to automatically assign an R-rating to movies with any smoking in it. Yet in her story, Nauert left out how biased her sources were as well as failed to balance her story with any criticism of the doctors’ claims.

“Research found that in 2004, 75 percent of all G, PG, and PG-13 films showed characters smoking,” Nauert noted, pointing to a study by Stanton Glantz of the University/> of California/>, San Francisco/> and James Sargent, a pediatrician at Dartmouth/> University/>/>.

Yet in citing the study’s authors, Nauert failed to inform viewers that Glantz and Sargent are hardly dispassionate, apolitical scientists. In fact, they are celebrated by colleagues for their anti-tobacco activism.

For more, see my full article at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org