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The Walt Disney Co. said Thursday evening that it still wants the University of Washington to retract “an inflammatory and misleading” press release concerning “Baby Einstein” and other baby DVDs – a demand that was categorically rejected earlier Thursday by the school’s president.

The Disney Co. said it believes the press release was “developed to gain media attention, and contradicts and distorts the study’s own carefully limited and hedged findings.

“The Walt Disney Company is currently exploring next steps in this matter,” the company said in a tersely worded statement.

A Disney spokesman earlier in the week had refused to say if the company had contacted its lawyers and might sue.

On Thursday morning, University of Washington president Mark Emmert told Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive and president, that not only was the press release valid but so was the work of the three University of Washington professors whose study about baby DVDs and videos came under sharp attack by Disney.

Emmert said he reviewed the press release about the paper published by the professors in the Journal of Pediatrics and also conferred with one of the paper’s co-authors.

He said that as a result of the review, the school unequivocally stands behind the work of professors Frederick Zimmerman, Dimitri Christakis and Andrew Meltzoff, who co-authored the study.

“The Journal of Pediatrics is a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal. Papers submitted to this journal undergo a rigorous review by experts in the field before they are accepted for publication,” Emmert told the Disney president. “This process ensures that the work represented in the paper meets the high standards of scientific inquiry required by the editors of the journal and its editorial panel of distinguished scientists.”

The study found that the videos not only don’t benefit infants 8 to 16 months old, but they may actually be harmful. According to the press release, the researchers found that for every hour each day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants understood an average of six to eight fewer words than babies who didn’t watch.

“The paper set out to test the association of media exposure with language development,” Emmert said. It did not purport to establish a causal relationship, as the authors explicitly state in the article, he added.

Emmert said that it was the obligation of the university to make the findings of its study public.

Although the university doesn’t view the study as the last word on the influence baby DVDs have on child development, the findings were considered significant enough to report in a major journal, Emmert noted.

“… As a public institution, we feel duty-bound to make the public aware of these findings,” Emmert added. “As we say in the release, more research is required, particularly to examine the long-term effects of baby DVDs and videos on children’s cognitive development.”

As far as the press release summarizing the study — called “Association between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children Under 2 Years” — the university rejected Disney’s assertion that it was “just plain wrong.”

“The authors of the study and I believe the news release reflects the essential points made in the research,” Emmert said. “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.”

The brainchild of Denver-area schoolteacher Julie Aigner-Clark, the videos — with names such as “Baby Einstein,” “Baby Mozart,” and “Baby Bach” — were so successful that Disney bought Aigner-Clark’s Baby Einstein Co. in 2001.

Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.