A message to newspaper editors, TV and radio
news directors and other media professionals.
OA's Eleventh Tradition states: "Our public
relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion;
we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press,
radio, films, television and other public media of communication."
OA is a Fellowship founded in 1960 and
patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous, except that it deals with
compulsive eating rather than drinking. Thanks to stories in
the public media about our recovery program, OA has attracted
thousands of compulsive overeaters who were without hope and
have now found recovery in OA.
Like AA, OA's most valued tradition is
personal anonymity at
the public level. This means that the Fellowship itself is not
anonymous, but its members are. Media professionals have established
a great tradition of their own in helping members of the two
Fellowships preserve their anonymity.
We hope you will continue to avoid identifying
OA members in your articles and interviews and will maintain
your coverage of the recovery program. We ask that in your reporting
on OA, you use only first names or pseudonyms (indicated as such)
of OA members and that you obscure the faces of those who identify
themselves as OA members in on-camera interviews. Please contact
us for any further information and materials you may need
regarding the OA program and Fellowship.
Please note that we provide a meeting search engine on this Web site for use only by those who desire to stop eating compulsively. We ask that you help us protect the privacy of the meeting contacts listed by refraining from using their contact information in any way. |