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NZ Herald and FuelStar - what's going on there?

In yesterday's column I suggested that the rising price of fuel would see a re-emergence of the numerous fuel-scams like those I've previously commented on.

A couple of eagle-eyed Aardvark readers pointed me to this NZ Herald story.

I've mentioned the FuelStar product before on this page, under the heading Tin Catalysts but the NZ Herald story incited me to do a little research, about the product and about the paper's strange willingness to publish such an outrageous press release in under the guise of news.

It seems that I'm not the only one who has opted to raise public awareness as to the dubious veracity of the claims being made for FuelStar either.

It's well worth spending a little time reading this excellent piece by Ian Mander.

That pretty much covers all the bases when it comes to challenging the claims being made by FuelStar and saves me the job of doing the same.

What I'd like to do today is look at why the NZ Herald is publishing what is obviously a blatant piece of marketing hype without a clear "advertorial" label.

The last time I saw this done so blatantly was when the Waikato Times seemed to be pushing the OctaFuel scam -- another Kiwi-based fuel-saving where the distributor himself was as much a victim as his customers.

To see exactly why the NZ Herald would disgrace its once good name by publishing this kind of advertising spiel disguised as news, I took a look back at the paper's history in respect to FuelStar.

A search of the NZH website turned up a number of very similar articles, all of which seemed to be FuelStar advertorials disguised as real news stories.

In April 2006 we were fed this FuelStar advertising: The green way to save fuel

Gosh, look at that -- exactly the same picture as in yesterday's advertorial.

A couple of months later, in June 2006, that picture and very similar claims pop once more when the NZH publishes what very much appears to be yet another press release from FuelStar in a "story" titled FuelStar claims new test success with catalyst.

Then, a few days later I see a story carrying the headline Some say a scam, others say a star and thought "hmmm... maybe some balance?", only to find that it very much appears to be simply an attempt to discredit the nay-sayers and once again run the pitch for FuelStar's alleged benefits.

In March 2008, we see that same photo re-appearing in the NZ Herald under the headline Eric Thompson: Catalyst cuts costly fuel where (yet again) we have an advertorial for FuelStar but this time they even include a contact phone number and website address!

So here we have a company flogging a dubious device which (like all fuel-saver scams) relies heavily on anecdotal evidence and testimonials to "prove" its efficacy and being given a huge amount of free press by the NZH.

What's going on here?

I know that news reporting standards have fallen to an all-time low but is the NZH now nothing more than an advertorial rag?

Do they not have a single journalist who could spend a few minutes on Google to try and find *any* truly independent, peer-reviewed scientific evidence to back up FuelStar's claims?

Clearly not -- or they'd have discovered that there is no such thing.

I suspect that the very few journalists still employed over at the NZ Herald are busy re-typing press releases and adding their byline, leaving them no time to actually engage in proper journalism and investigative reporting.

Yes, I can hear a few good journalists cursing at me under their breath right now. "How dare he say that?" they'll be saying. "The arrogant bastard".

Well to those journalists I say "get off your fat bums and do some real journalism rather than retype press releases for a change".

Challenge FuelStar's claims. Submit the product for proper scientific testing (which I might add has already been done and the product failed miserably) and report on those results.

Find out who is responsible for seemingly allowing press releases from FuelStar to be published as "news" when in fact they're nothing more than self-promoting advertising.

Perhaps the big story here is not FuelStar but what on earth is turning the NZH into a newspaper that can't tell the difference between news and advertising.

Does anyone in the MSM have the balls to pick up this ball and run with it?

I suspect not.

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