KNBC Admits Face-Cream Report 'Mistake'

KNBC Admits Face-Cream Report ‘Mistake’

By LEE MARGULIES

July 30, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

KNBC Channel 4 has acknowledged that a news report it broadcast about a cosmetic cream whose manufacturer says it can remove facial wrinkles failed to note that one of the users seen offering positive comments about the product was the president of the company that makes it.

After inquiries from The Times, KNBC News Director Nancy Valenta said that “we made a mistake” in the July 10 report by medical reporter Dr. Bruce Hensel. Management had not previously known of the error, she said.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. Aug. 1, 1990 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday August 1, 1990 Home Edition Calendar Part F Page 6 Column 1 Entertainment Desk 4 inches; 129 words Type of Material: Correction
Affiliations clarified--Because of mistakes in biographical material supplied by KNBC Channel 4, articles in Calendar last Saturday and Monday incorrectly stated Dr. Bruce Hensel’s affiliations with UCLA and Century City Hospital. Rather than a tenured professor, Hensel is an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, an unpaid position that allows him participation in some areas of the teaching process. Hensel serves as co-director of the Century City Hospital Emergency Department, sharing the responsibility for overseeing the emergency ward on a part-time basis with two other doctors. A KNBC spokeswoman blamed the errors on the station’s public relations department, which wrote Hensel’s three-page biography. She said that Hensel, who has served as a medical reporter at Channel 4 since 1987, was hired by the station before he secured either the UCLA or Century City affiliations.

Hensel appeared on the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts Friday with a “clarification,” advising viewers that a man who had extolled the benefits of the product in an interview, Jim Wood, “is the president of ImmuDyne, manufacturer of the wrinkle cream NAYAD--a point I failed to mention.”

In an effort to clear up what he called “possible misunderstanding about the use of NAYAD,” Hensel also said on the air Friday that state health officials are concerned that if NAYAD is used in conjunction with Retin-A, a medically approved wrinkle cream, “it could produce a toxic effect.”

Hensel, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA, had said flatly in his original report that the two products could be used together, even though he noted then--and reiterated Friday--that there have been no controlled studies done on the safety or effectiveness of NAYAD.

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For the record:

12:00 a.m. Aug. 1, 1990: For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday August 1, 1990 Home Edition Calendar Part F Page 6 Column 1 Entertainment Desk 4 inches; 129 words Type of Material: Correction
Affiliations clarified--Because of mistakes in biographical material supplied by KNBC Channel 4, articles in Calendar last Saturday and Monday incorrectly stated Dr. Bruce Hensel’s affiliations with UCLA and Century City Hospital. Rather than a tenured professor, Hensel is an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, an unpaid position that allows him participation in some areas of the teaching process. Hensel serves as co-director of the Century City Hospital Emergency Department, sharing the responsibility for overseeing the emergency ward on a part-time basis with two other doctors. A KNBC spokeswoman blamed the errors on the station’s public relations department, which wrote Hensel’s three-page biography. She said that Hensel, who has served as a medical reporter at Channel 4 since 1987, was hired by the station before he secured either the UCLA or Century City affiliations.