Council for Media Integrity on Entertainment Tonight
By CSICOP On-line
January 30, 1997

On January 30, Entertainment Tonight featured CSICOP's new Council for Media Integrity. John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine and member of the Council, spoke about the entertainment industry:

John Rennie (Scientific America):

"They shouldn't be leading their audiences to believe things that they themselves know are not true. [...]

Television is a business, and so they go where the money is. And the money is in them thar aliens! [...]

A lot of programs that pretend to be documentaries are in fact really fictional instead."

Steve Allen, co-chair of the Council, also made an appearance, and urged television producers to make a clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction programs.

On the other side of the fence, ET interviewed Dan Aykroyd, host of the television program The Psi Factor. The Council awarded Aykroyd its "Snuffed Candle Award" as a way to recognize him "for encouraging credulity, presenting pseudoscience as genuine, and contributing to the public's lack of understanding of the methods of scientific inquiry." This award was presented at a Council for Media Integrity Press Conference held January 9th in Los Angeles. Although invited, Aykroyd did not attend the press conference.

Aykroyd claimed that in many cases scientists have to "back down" when confronted with the data he has assembled, because "the evidence is overwhelming".