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Should Finance Experts disclose deals?

So which is worse? Perving on Miranda Kerr or not fessing up that your company has a commercial deal with a network?

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There’s been a fair bit of scrutiny recently when it comes to those financial experts talking to the News.

Last week’s Seven News cross in which a Macquarie Bank broker was seen checking out Miranda Kerr made news around the world.

Today the Sydney Morning Herald raises the question of commercial deals between banks and networks.

Under ACMA’s Code of Practice networks are required to disclose such commercial arrangements but some in the media and financial sectors are questioning a lack of disclosure.

Television access for financial experts to represent their employers is said to be worth up to $10m over three years.

“The station gets the credibility of a big name while the bank gives its uncontested views on the markets in prime time,” notes the newspaper.

“Given the prominence of the bank’s logo in the segment, the frequency of appearances and the length of time on air, the true value of such spots to the likes of CommSec and Macquarie is much higher, say advertising experts.”

A spokeswoman for Macquarie told the newspaper, ”We entered into an advertising arrangement with Channel TEN for our Macquarie Edge product … It [the on-air segments] was offered to us as the Commonwealth Bank’s contract [to supply commentary] came to an end, but that was not part of the commercial deal.”

Commsec declined to comment on specific deals with Sunrise. Nine declined to comment and Sky said it took no money for contributions to its finance segments.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Photo: whatsonthetube

8 Responses

  2. I’ve seen a couple of news stories on Ten and Seven about NAB that I thought were a bit dodgy. It featured the same woman being asked “Why is NAB is so great?”

  3. there was a caller on 3AW the other morning asking if Tom Petrovski wears a wig? Nice to see 3AW tackling the serious issues, although its sister newspaper at least seems to be 🙂

  4. It’s interesting that you’ve brought this up – I’ve known these things were essentially paid ‘advertorials’ since reading an article about it in the Australian last year, but I’ve never made the connection between that and cash for comment – they should have some sort of “paid presentation” disclaimer really!

  5. There are many dodgy things that go on with TV. When TV channels get rights to sports like AFL a certain amount of that is in contra. I believe certain channels contra is doing favourable stories on those sports in their news bulletins.

  7. The ABC also crosses to finance companies for its news. There was an item on Mediawatch last year about the prominence of the company logo, which was made smaller after Mediawatch got involved.

  8. When the banks get into bed with the commercial TV and Radio networks, it means the networks are less likely to give banks a bad name, meaning less argument when banks increase unfair fees and interest rates on us customers.

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