Published 1 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a619
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a619

News

German soap opera has thinly veiled references to branded drugs, regulator says

Annette Tuffs

1 Heidelberg

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A dispute has arisen in Germany over accusations of surreptitious advertising of prescription drugs in a television soap opera set in a hospital.

The German Council of Public Relations has accused the makers of the drama of failing to make adequate changes to certain episodes, after they admitted accepting payments in return for mentioning specific products.

The amended programmes were broadcast again recently on regional television channels.

The council says that although drug names have been eradicated or changed to fictional ones, the original storylines were kept, and thus the audience could still identify the products. The television company says that the changes were sufficient.

The popular soap opera, "In Aller Freundschaft" ("In All Friendship"), is made by a production company owned by the east German television station MDR, itself part of the association of federal state television stations, ARD, which broadcasts some programmes across the whole of Germany and . . . [Full text of this article]


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