CRITIQUE: Serving the Elephant

NBC Correspondent Robert Abernethy led his guest into a topical conversation about classroom teaching. Casual viewers of the Today show might have assumed that some worthy pedagogue was being interviewed. Not at all.

The guest was duly introduced as Actor David Hartman, who plays a teacher on a new NBC entertainment program that the network was touting in September, and Newsman Abernethy was par ticipating in what amounted to a plug for the series.

That kind of disguised commercial is neither unique nor new. NBC Correspondent Jack Perkins recently inter viewed Actress Linda...

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