THE MANAGEMENT of Ocean FM have expressed amazement after the radio station’s branding appeared in an international promotional video for the Church of Scientology.
Footage of an interview in a studio with an Ocean FM logo was used as part of the promo for Scientology’s ‘Truth About Drugs’ campaign, screened at a conference in Florida.
However, the station – which broadcasts to south Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim – has said they had no involvement in the clip, calling their inclusion “bogus” and saying that it is being investigated. A statement reads:
The studio is NOT that of Ocean FM, and the ‘presenter’ conducting the interview is not known to anyone at Ocean.
As the promotional footage plays, a voiceover highlights the campaign’s success in Ireland, saying:
With Truth About Drugs spokesmen hitting national airwaves, from Ocean FM to BBC Radio, and thereby impacting nearly 270,000 listeners [...], that’s how the Mission of Dublin accomplished an 85 per cent drop in drug related crime.
Speaking on Ocean FM this morning, a representative of Scientology Ireland said the footage – first highlighted in Ireland on Broadsheet.ie – had been a “re-enactment” of an interview on the station.
Sabrina Shortt said her brother Kristian Shortt – a well-known anti-drugs activist in Donegal, and a member of the Truth Against Drugs campaign – had been interviewed by the station last summer about his own experiences with drugs, and the footage was a recreation of this. She said:
We’re not in the habit of recording every interview that we do, so we decided to do a little promotional video. The video was a re-enactment.
She added:
What I would definitely like to apologise for is, we definitely should have gotten permission that we were doing a re-enactment.
Sabrina Shortt said that the video was not primarily about the Church of Scientology, but was intended to highlight the work of the Truth About Drugs campaign.
Other clips show Truth About Drugs volunteers delivering leaflets to various locations in Dublin, and to Carndonagh garda station.
