"LOS ANGELES--Truth in Advertising may never be the mantra of the entertainment industry but since Columbia Pictures has been caught repeatedly in the past two weeks using trickery in its publicity campaigns, even veteran Hollywood publicists have claimed to be shocked.

Shocked.

The first blow came when the Sony owned studio admitted that its advertising department had invented a critic named David Manning at the real-life Ridgefield Press in Connecticut (circulation 7,500) to praise such recent films as The Animal" ("another winner!") and "A Knight's Tale" (Heath Ledger touted as "This year's hottest new star!").

Then movie trade newspapers revealed that the studio had used its own employees to praise "The Patriot" in both a television commercial that featured man-on-the-street interviews last year and a radio spot for "A Knight's Tale" this year.

Sony suspended two advertising executives for their roles in the Manning fiasco and announced that it would abandon testimonial-style advertising altogether. But the gaffes are hardly isolated incidents. The industry commonly strains the limits of honesty in its zeal to create hype, and often shreds it when it comes to everything from movie budgets to net profit receipts to the ages of actresses.

Some industry insiders, most of whom are reluctant to discuss their marketing strategies or criticize competitors on the record, believe that Sony's blunders should serve as cues for all the studios to reexamine their publicity practices--such as routinely promoting movies by getting quotes from pliant journalists and pumping up obscure publications for use in ads.

Variety Editor Peter Bart says that what happened at Sony is just a worse version of what goes on in Hollywood every day. "I think it's lazy. It's the next step out from talking to someone at a TV station in Waco, Texas," and soliciting a quote: "This is the laugh riot of the summer!" Variety, an entertainment-industry paper, broke the story that Sony used two Columbia employees in a television ad about "The Patriot."

The industry's long-accepted practice of promoting movies that open on 3,000 screens across the country "with quotes from media outlets no one ever heard of is really stretching it," Bart says.

Meanwhile, at least three studios other than Sony acknowledged this week that they use paid actors, mixed in with actual moviegoers, in their testimonial ads. Officials at Universal said they used some paid actors in man-on-the-street ads for the movie "U-571," Artisan said there were actors in similar ads for Blair Witch 2 and 20th Century Fox said the same for "Anna and the King" Testimonials are generally used as a last-ditch effort to prop up movies that are not performing well.

None of those studios said it had used its own employees in the ads--what one rival marketing executive derided as "manipulation with arrogance dumped on top"--but moviegoers may be hard-pressed to see much of a distinction.

And one studio executive said that other studios have done the same. "For anyone to say 'We've never done it' is really problematic, because then you start catching people lying," the executive said. No one at those studios seemed to find the practice of using actors particularly dishonest, saying their dialogue was not written in advance.

But others in the Hollywood community said that what Sony did went far beyond accepted practices, and was unlikely to happen elsewhere.

"We've never been in violation of doing any thing erroneous in quotes or blurbs. We take them as we get them," says Terry Curtin who heads publicity at Universal. She says Sony was out of line for both the invented critic and the use of employees in ads. "I don't condone either of those practices, nor have I done either of those practices," she says.

For, the record, Sony has agreed, saying through a spokeswoman, "It's being taken very seriously, as it should be." But while studios may not invent phantom critics, they do commonly solicit favorable quotations from pet journalists who are invited on junkets to write articles about movies, with hotel and airfare paid by the studios.

Movie ads are filled with such blurbs. Witness an ad this week for the critically panned "Tomb Raider," which included prominent, glowing remarks from obscure journalists like Richard Reid of Northwest Cable News and Earl Dittman of Wireless Magazines. The latter calls the film "one unforgettable adventure of epic proportions, filled with unstoppable thrills and chills."

DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press says she tries not to use quotes from unknown journalists wined and dined by the studio, because she thinks moviegoers don't give them much credence.

"I don't believe in running Junket quotes" she says. "We've done it maybe two times, when we had absolutely nothing else, but as a rule we try not to run junket quotes because I don't think anyone reads this stuff." But, she adds, "we don't call up people and ask them to say things."

Other studios clearly do, however. A few years ago MGM was embarrassed I when a marketing memo leaked to the press with a list of suggested quotes for journalists, among them: "In three words, funny, funny, funny," and "4 big fat stars." Some of the quotes did turn up in ads for the Bill Murray elephant comedy "Larger Than Life."

Often, studio insiders explain, there is a struggle between the studios advertising and publicity departments, with advertising pushing for more favorable comments and publicity concerned with not angering journalists by quoting them out of context.

"The advertising department will call and say, 'Can you get them to say, "It's the best movie of the year?"' And you fight back," says the head of one studio publicity department. We fight all the time to not take a good quote out of a bad review."

When reviews are taken out of context, complaints usually follow and the publicity department, has to get the ad changed and handle the backlash. A similar embarrassment happened this month when Twentieth Century Fox misidentifled a rave review for "Moulin Rouge" as coming from the Hollywood Reporter, a trade paper, in stead of a little-known Web site, the Hollywood Register.

In the case of Sony, advertising executive Matthew Cramer concocted David Manning, a reference to a college friend from the University of Southern California, as a vehicle for favorable quotes. Publicists at Columbia said they were unaware that the fake critic had been inserted into the ads. Cramer and his boss, Josh Goldstine, were suspended for 30 days.

Meanwhile, as each day seems to bring another embarrassing revelation, Sony continues to review its advertising policies (while it also investigates the source of the multiple leaks). Columbia marketing executive Dana Precious, whose assistant Tamaya Petteway was in the ad for "The Patriot," notes that "perhaps this is a time for all of us in the business of marketing to review the practices that have become an industry standard and to rethink and redraw some boundaries."

But it's unclear whether other studios will do the same. With millions of dollars riding on every opening weekend in the blockbuster summer season, there's little incentive for the studios to change long-standing practices designed to boost the bottom line.

"I don't know," Press says when asked about it. "There's a lot of money riding on the opening of movies. And desperate times call for desperate measures." She paused a beat. "But sometimes a level of desperation is uncomfortable for all involved."" (Sharon Waxman, The Washington Post, June 20, 2001).