UW stands by baby video news release

The University of Washington turned down The Walt Disney Co.'s demand that it retract a news summary of research on baby videos, rejecting the company's claims that it "blatantly misrepresented" the underlying research.

On Monday, Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger asked UW President Mark Emmert to pull the news release, calling it "grossly unfair" and "just plain wrong in every conceivable sense."

Disney subsidiary Baby Einstein was named in the UW release along with Georgia-based Brainy Baby. The release said overuse of baby videos could slow learning of vocabulary in children between 8 and 16 months old.

On Thursday, Emmert defended both the research and the summary.

"The researchers find no inconsistencies between the content of the news release and their paper. They believe the release accurately reflects the paper's conclusions and their commentary," Emmert wrote in a letter to Iger.

Emmert reached this conclusion after the research paper's three authors, Frederick Zimmerman, Dimitri Christakis and Andrew Meltzoff, reviewed the release with Joel Schwarz, who wrote the summary, and senior members of the media relations staff Wednesday.

Emmert's letter didn't end the fight.

On Thursday afternoon, Disney repeated its demand.

"The Walt Disney Co. stands by its request for Dr. Emmert and the University of Washington to retract what we believe to be an inflammatory and misleading press release, which was developed to gain media attention, and contradicts and distorts the study's own carefully limited and hedged findings," the company said in a statement.

Emmert said more work is needed on baby videos and DVDs. "We do not view this study as (the) last word on the subject of the influence baby DVDs have on child development," Emmert wrote in the letter.