Is not accepting free videos for schools because it might harm corporate sponsorship corruption?

Question

What do people here think of this? Corruption or legitimate concern?

"The producers of An Inconvenient Truth have offered to supply American classrooms with 50,000 copies of the movie free of charge. That offer has been rejected by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the nation's leading science education teachers group, citing a risk to funding from key financial supporters."

http://consciousearth.blogspot.com/2006/11/inconvenient-truth-squeezed-from.html

Answer 1

The article you linked certainly raises a question, in my mind, of how and why, exactly, this association relies on support from ANY private companies to the extent that they'd base decisions upon their fear of reprisal from such supporters. However, I do think it's a valid point that, if they were to accept these videos, they'd be setting a precedent; how could they then, say, NOT accept other videos? You could argue that they could determine which videos to accept based on the scientific validation of each video, but I'm guessing this association is pretty happy doing whatever it already does, and is not looking to change course and get into the business of validating scientific content in videos.

Answer 2

Donations are sometimes intertwined with corruption for free advertisements of the sponsor.