The headline says Drug ads row snares Cronkite.  Walter Cronkite remains the most trusted source of news among senior Americans.  According to his version of events, he thought that he had signed a contract to make educational programs about new treatments, and later found out via the New York Times that the company he’d signed up for made promotional infomercials,  sponsored by drug companies. So Cronkite is being sued by the marketing company for pulling out.

However, this isn’t the first controversy about what’s educational promotion and what’s hucksterism.  Several articles like this one and this one examine celebrities not revealing that they are being paid to promote drugs in medical segments on shows like The Early Show, 48 Hours and CNN. Some networks actually produced a code of practice about this last year.

Of course there are similar controversies about the way that pharmaceutical companies promote to physicians. A Harris poll earlier this year showed that this isn’t  a big concern for too many patients yet, although 55% believe that drug company marketing to doctors is either "a little" or "much" "too aggressive." What is clear is that the very sophisticated and not always transparent ways that pharma companies use to market their product will be used as a weapon to bash them when they oppose re-importation, collective buying by state programs, or even (take a deep breath here, pharma folks) price controls.