‘Y2K’ Ad Doesn’t Comply With White House Policy

In its zeal to promote the movie “Y2K,” NBC is airing an ad featuring news footage of President Clinton, despite a White House policy prohibiting such use.

The commercial--which first ran Wednesday during the White House-themed drama “The West Wing”--showed the president in a speech last week saying the government is Y2K ready, followed by script saying “What If He’s Wrong?” and scenes from the movie showing all hell breaking loose.

White House spokesman Jim Kennedy said attorneys would likely ask NBC to cease running the ad. “Typically, what happens is, we send a letter to whoever is using the president’s likeness in an unauthorized way for a commercial purpose,” he said.

The NBC thriller will air Sunday and is being shown during the rating sweeps--an important period to TV stations, which rely on those results to negotiate advertising rates. Several groups have complained to NBC about stoking public fears with the movie, which will carry a disclaimer stressing it is a work of fiction.

A similar dispute arose in 1997, when the Clinton administration criticized the Warner Bros. film “Contact,” starring Jodie Foster, for manipulating the president’s image in a way that was “fundamentally unfair” and violated White House policy by using the president to promote a commercial enterprise. In that film, footage was used to make it seem as if Clinton was commenting on contact with an alien intelligence.

An NBC spokeswoman noted that the network’s ad was completely in context and the spot is just one of several being used to promote the film.

NBC was also attacked during the last ratings sweeps in May over “Atomic Train,” which speculated about a nuclear disaster in the U.S. In a last-minute switch, references within the miniseries were changed from “nuclear waste” to “hazardous materials.”