Visa to Pull Print Ad Featuring CNN Reporter

A CNN news correspondent asked Visa to quit running an advertisement featuring him after learning that his boss felt it violated the cable network’s policy barring its journalists from most commercial advertisements.

The credit-card ad featuring CNN correspondent Jonathan Karl is already set to appear in magazines popular with the twentysomething set such as Rolling Stone, Vibe and Swing.

Visa spokesman Albert Coscia said Friday that Visa would comply with the request to stop placing the ad, although it was too late to stop it from running in some magazines.

Tom Johnson, the chairman and chief executive of the CNN News Group, had not been told in advance that Karl had sought and received permission from CNN executives to be in the ad, CNN News spokesman Steve Haworth said.

But Haworth said Johnson disapproved once he found out. The New York Times wrote about Karl’s appearance in the ad in Friday’s edition.

Johnson also directed Karl’s supervisors to make sure he didn’t report stories dealing with credit cards or financial services “for the foreseeable future,” Haworth said. As a general assignment reporter, Karl would not normally handle such stories anyway, Haworth said.

Karl declined to be interviewed about the ad, but Haworth said Karl on Friday asked Visa’s ad makers to quit placing the ad.

The episode gives critics more ammunition to argue that the media’s credibility is being eroded. A linchpin of credibility is that consumers can trust that media reporting has not been biased by advertisers.

Visa used Karl in a 3-year-old series of ads that feature young up-and-comers in an effort to get their peers to sign up for Visa cards. Karl is 29 and has worked at CNN since early 1996.

Haworth said Karl wasn’t paid for the ad. “He must have thought it would be good for exposure or name recognition,” Haworth said.

In a memo Friday to the CNN staff, Johnson said he had reprimanded the unidentified manager who gave Karl approval.