The Walt Disney Co. said Thursday evening that it still wants the University of Washington to retract “an inflammatory and misleading” news release concerning “Baby Einstein” and other baby DVDs – a demand that was categorically rejected earlier Thursday by the school’s president.
Disney said it believes the news 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.
“Baby Einstein” and similar videos were the brainchild of Denver- area schoolteacher Julie Aigner-Clark. Disney bought Aig ner- Clark’s Baby Einstein Co. in 2001.
On Thursday morning, University of Washington president Mark Emmert told Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive and president, that not only was the news release valid but so was the work of the three University of Washington professors who conducted the study.
Emmert said he reviewed the news 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, co-authors of the study.
The study found that the videos not only don’t benefit infants 8 to 16 months old, but may actually be harmful. According to the news 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.
