Credibility on the High Seas

Depending on which direction their thumbs go, Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper can inspire or discourage people from shelling out $8 for a movie. Those thumbs, when pointing up, are worth millions to the studios. Ebert and Roeper are so popular that fans ask them for autographs. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the studio that owns “Ebert & Roeper and the Movies,” Disney’s Buena Vista Television, is taking its franchise on vacation--sort of.

Inaugurated last year, the Film Festival at Sea aboard the Disney Wonder is a chance for movie aficionados to pay $524 to $1,014 for a three-night cruise, which left for the Bahamas on Thursday and returns to Cape Canaveral, Fla., today. Film buffs get to meet Ebert and Roeper, and get a sneak peek at some of this year’s coming releases. The cruise is advertised online with a composite photo of Ebert and Roeper smiling with the Disney mouse ears behind them on the ship’s funnel.

Last year, vacationers watched Disney-owned Miramax’s “In the Bedroom,” Warner Bros.’ “The Dish,” MGM’s “The Claim” and Disney’s 1988 animated “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” This year, they will see Disney’s “Monsters, Inc.,” Miramax’s “Stolen Summer,” HBO’s “Real Women Have Curves” and Fox Searchlight’s “One Hour Photo.”

But the cruise raises some questions about whether journalists and critics can navigate the tricky waters of cross-promotion and still avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. “Ebert & Roeper” is perhaps the highest-profile television show featuring print journalists and one of the few entertainment-related shows that still includes movie criticism. Some say Disney’s aggressive cross-promotional activity as well as the decision to hire Roeper, a reporter who had no background in film criticism, has dealt a blow to the show’s credibility.

“They already have a problem in that they work for a company that owns the movies they are talking about,” said Michael Josephson, president and founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Santa Monica. “The more they are willing to associate themselves with Disney, the less credibility they have in criticizing movies for Disney. When somebody plays the role of critic, it is really important that we believe it is their most honest and objective professional opinion. We invest something in the credibility of that person.”

Ebert agrees that media conglomeration has made everything more complicated.

“We are in an age of cross-ownership. Where could we go where we wouldn’t have a conflict?” he said in an interview before he underwent surgery last month to remove a malignant tumor of the thyroid. Ebert is expected to make a full recovery, according to his publicist. He strenuously denies that the cruise gives even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

“I’ve been a movie critic since 1967, and my record stands for itself,” he said, adding that his reviews of Disney’s summer blockbuster “Pearl Harbor” and teen hit “The Princess Diaries” were scathing.

Indeed, no one is accusing Ebert or Roeper of altering their reviews because of the show’s studio sponsorship. Rather, the questions raised are more about the appearance of fairness in reviews--and the larger topic of critic credibility.

Certainly the topic of credibility among critics has become an issue of late. Last summer, Sony was caught using a fictitious critic, named Dave Manning, to hype its movies. The incident also raised questions about the use of little-known or disreputable critics--known in the industry as “quote whores”-- in blurbs for movie advertisements. In addition to the critic scandal, Sony admitted having hired two employees as “fake fans” for a television spot promoting “The Patriot.” Other studios soon admitted using actors in these “testimonial” TV spots.

The industry’s cutthroat competitive environment has led studios to take these desperate measures in their marketing and publicity campaigns. And as Ebert pointed out, another layer of complexity is added when massive media conglomerates gobble up studios and entertainment publications.

For instance, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns 20th Century Fox, owns part of TV Guide. Entertainment Weekly and Time are owned by AOL Time Warner, which owns Warner Bros. “Entertainment Tonight” is owned by Paramount, while Access Hollywood is owned by NBC; Disney owns ABC.

Even news reporters have become involved in cross-promotional activity. ABC news anchor Charles Gibson can be seen in Disney’s upcoming film “The Rookie” introducing a fictitious story, with the ABC News backdrop, about the movie’s main character, played by Dennis Quaid.

“This is the continuing nightmare of synergy in the media business,” said Charles Fleming, author and professor of entertainment reporting at USC’s Annenberg Center for Communication.

“With so many media/information and entertainment companies merging, it’s almost impossible for any journalist to be sure that the parent company of the parent company won’t create possible ethical conflicts,” he continues. “But the conflict is avoided as long as the person does his job. Going on a cruise might not be strictly part of the job.”

However, Roeper said the cruise is an important part of promoting the show, which is part of their jobs. “We are not putting on Mouse ears or participating in launch parties,” said Roeper, who replaced the late Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel in 1999. “[The cruise] does not appear to me to be a conflict.”

“I have much more to lose than Disney has to gain,” added Ebert. “If anybody perceives that I’m not telling the truth as I see it, I’m out of business.”

The show began as a public television series before it went into syndication in 1981 as “At the Movies.” It now carries a lot of weight in the movie industry. “They have one of the most well-known names with the broadest audiences of moviegoers,” said Jeffrey Godsick, executive vice president of Fox publicity and promotion.

The television show was purchased from Tribune Co. (which owns the Los Angeles Times) by Buena Vista in 1986 and renamed “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies.” When Siskel and Ebert accepted Buena Vista’s deal over Tribune, it caused some controversy at the Chicago Tribune, according to Siskel’s colleagues at the time and Larry Diekhaus, producer of the show from 1987 to 1997.

Eventually, Siskel left the paper. He returned soon after but wrote a weekly column on film and was no longer the paper’s main film critic.

By 1990, Siskel and Ebert were doing more than just a weekly show at a local Chicago station. They were hosts of specials with live studio audiences from Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Audience members were given free passes to Disney World after the show, according to Mary Kellogg, senior vice president of current programming for Buena Vista Television. But by 1996, Kellogg said, they stopped doing live shows because it became too complicated to find air time.

“I look at synergy as a positive, not a negative,” she said. “I have all these wonderful assets within the company, and it’s my job to figure out how to make it work for my shows without making it overworked. It has to feel organic.”

In addition to the cruise and live shows at Disney World, Buena Vista has found a way to tap into the show’s popularity to get attention for other Disney-related products. The show continues to air on some Disney-owned ABC affiliates around the country, including KABC-TV in Los Angeles, where it has been airing early Sunday evenings for many years. The Ebert & Roeper Web site, www.ebert-roeper-movies.com, has direct links to partners such as Disney.com, Disneystore.com, ABCFamily.com and Buena Vista Entertainment.

Kellogg acknowledges there is a danger of “over-hyping” the show, but that she is protective of Ebert and Roeper. “They have a reputation, and I would never jeopardize that reputation,” she said. “Those thumbs are worth a lot of money. [Ebert] has been offered millions of dollars for those thumbs to be used to endorse products, and he has only used them for movies.”

The show’s ratings have decreased slightly since Siskel’s death, going from an average of 2.6 million weekly viewers in 1997-98 to 2.2 million in 2000-01, according to Nielsen Media Research. Known not only for their pithy, intelligent remarks about film, Siskel and Ebert were also watched for their fireworks.

When Siskel died in 1999 of complications from earlier brain surgery, dozens of candidates tried out for the show. Eventually Buena Vista executives and Ebert decided on Roeper, who was a general-interest columnist for the Sun-Times. The decision garnered some heat because of Roeper’s lack of film criticism experience. Some say he was selected for his good looks and youth.

“Television criticism is all but gone; it’s all been replaced by entertainment gurus,” said David Poland, an Internet entertainment industry analyst who tried out for the show. “The decision to hire someone who is not a film critic is a shame. It is the second most powerful position in the country--in terms of criticism--and he is not a critic.”

Walt Disney Cruise Lines was billing the event as an opportunity to “screen films with two of the most respected movie critics in the business.” Ebert, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for film criticism, defends the decision to hire Roeper, saying that Roeper is a true movie lover who has written several columns about film.

“It’s not like being a CPA or a dentist where you have to have the right shingle on the wall,” said Ebert, who added that he had no experience in film criticism when he started as a critic at the Sun-Times in 1967. “How do you become a critic? You appoint yourself. You start calling yourself a film critic. You start writing reviews. You network and try to get a job.”

Roeper, who was featured in People magazine’s 50 Most Eligible Bachelors issue last year, still hesitates to call himself a critic.

“I would not have applied for the job [of critic] at the New York Times,” Roeper said by telephone. “My concern is doing the best possible show with Roger and whether it connects with the audience. I consider myself the co-host of a show that critiques movies.”

In Hollywood, the definition of a real critic has always been murky, according to cultural historian and author Neal Gabler. In addition, the relationship between entertainment columnists/critics and the studios has always been incestuous, he added. For example, Clark Gable built a bathroom for gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and producer Darryl F. Zanuck gave columnist Walter Winchell an office on the Fox lot. Even today, some entertainment reporters are flown out by the studios to promotional movie junkets. Movie critics who work in a popular medium like television cannot be seen as overly analytical or critical because they will lose their following, Gabler added.

“You have to understand the relationship between the audience and the critic,” he said. “Critics will give a favorable review of a film that they think is going to be popular because they don’t want to alienate their audience.”

Not having the right credentials and using cross-promotional activity too aggressively could backfire, said Keith Woods, director of the Poynter Institute, a media watchdog group based in Florida. Already, the public is skeptical about the media’s objectivity. According to a 1998 national journalism ethics surveys completed by the Radio Television News Director Foundation, 8 out of 10 viewers believe advertisers have undue influence over news content.

“The public doesn’t always make the connections [of ownership],” Woods said. “All it takes really is for one thing to happen on [Ebert and Roeper’s] watch for the public to take that next step and say ‘Aha!’”

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Lorenza Munoz is a Times staff writer.