US: Black Media Target Big Tobacco

Source from:  The Buffalo News  01/22/2014

Black media outlets want the nation's tobacco companies to run court-ordered advertisements in their publications as part of a lawsuit charging that the industry lied about the dangers of smoking.

In a brief in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ahead of a hearing today in the case, the National Newspaper Publishers Association and National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters argued that the ads should be disseminated through their outlets because the black community has been disproportionately targeted by tobacco companies and harmed by smoking. The groups are asking the court to consider adding its outlets to the list of newspapers, TV stations and websites where the so-called corrective statements are to be published. The statements also are to accompany cigarette packages.

Also on Tuesday, Fox Broadcasting Corp. filed a brief with the court asking that the corrective statements also be aired on its network.

The statements are part of a case the government brought in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled in that case in 2006 that the nation's largest cigarette makers concealed the dangers of smoking for decades and ordered them to pay for corrective statements. The companies involved in the case include Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc., owner of the biggest U.S. tobacco company, Philip Morris USA; No. 2 cigarette maker, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., owned by Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Reynolds American Inc.; and No. 3 cigarette maker Lorillard Inc., based in Greensboro, N.C.

The tobacco companies and the federal government reached an agreement last week on the details of publishing those statements. The court must still approve the agreement.

Under the agreement with the Justice Department, each of the companies must publish full-page ads in the Sunday editions of 35 newspapers and on the newspapers' websites, as well as air prime-time TV spots on CBS, ABC or NBC five times per week for a year. Enditem