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ABC's "20/20" aired a report Friday night on a company called Metabolife International Inc., manufacturers of the phenomenally successful weight-loss pill that bears its name. The show questioned the herbal supplement's claim to safety and the past of the company's founder and CEO, Michael Ellis.

But before the program had even begun, Ellis struck first. A Metabolife commercial ran seconds before the segment. The no-frills spot -- white letters on a black background -- was jarring in its simplicity, like those mature-content warnings ABC provides before "NYPD Blue" (for those who live in fear of seeing Dennis Franz's ass). The ad both promoted the program and attempted to steal its thunder. "Watch the 20/20 report," said the ad, "and then sign onto the Web site."

There the curious could find a video and transcript of the full interview "20/20" reporter Arnold Diaz did with Ellis. Given the history of TV newsweeklies, Metabolife was expecting the worst: interview snippets taken out of context; glaring contradictions in research; footage of weeping, dissatisfied customers complaining of disastrous side effects. In a first-strike move that set ABC back on its heels, Metabolife and its damage-control publicist Michael Sitrick had put the interview online saying, Let the people decide. If the people cared to.

"Tonight we have a story that's causing all kinds of talk," Barbara Walters said in setting up the segment -- talk amongst journalists, that is. (ABC News VP Shelby Coffey set the tone when he told the New York Times, "We don't want other people attempting to get into and shift the journalism process.")

What if every individual and organization interviewed by the numerous TV news magazines took the same tack? Would it influence the interviews or reports? Would it defang the programs' supposedly ferocious investigative reporters? Or would it have no effect at all, as people became familiar with the tedious process reporters go through to obtain a good quote or two?

If Metabolife's site is any indicator, it might bore viewers to death first. Though the company claims more than a million visitors to the site in the first 24 hours alone, it's hard to imagine they stayed long. Due to the rather onerous language of the "user's agreement" I accepted to log onto the site ("Unless and to the extent otherwise expressly permitted in writing by Metabolife International, Inc., and regardless of the nature of your private activity, you will not access or use, or permit others to access or use, this website for (1) print, video or audio publication, broadcast, retransmission or any new media use," etc.), I can only paraphrase the full interview. You can watch it yourself in a variety of formats, or read the transcript (which features more footnotes than a David Foster Wallace story); you can even watch Metabolife's own edited version, containing some of the same highlights as the "20/20" show. (I'm waiting for the photo-novel.) Suffice it to say you can look at and judge the interview for yourself without any interference from media types like me. Which, as Metabolife publicist Sitrick will tell you, is the whole idea.

The 70-minute interview Diaz conducted with Metabolife's Ellis was represented by a total of three minutes of footage on Friday night's program -- a not-unusual ratio for reports of this nature. The full-length encounter is contentious, yes ("This was more like a deposition," Ellis told Newsweek), but also rambling and disorganized. If Diaz came in loaded for bear, he was packing the wrong buckshot.

The most damning bit of information -- that Ellis had been arrested in 1990 for conspiring to manufacture methamphetamine -- made it into the "20/20" report, but so did at least some of his mea culpa. (Ellis pled guilty to a lesser charge and claims his involvement was due to his fealty to a friend -- a friend who ended up on the board of Metabolife as well.)

This was the hottest stuff of the episode. Two doctors who worked on studies of Metabolife claim that their findings were misrepresented; another woman is suing the company, claiming Metabolife 356, as the product is known, gave her seizures and cost her the use of her legs. (The active ingredients in Metabolife are caffeine and ma huang, a Chinese herb that contains ephedrine. Ephedrine has some potentially dangerous side effects, according to many studies.)

That suit is still pending. It's discounted by Metabolife, which points to its millions of satisfied customers (22 million bottles sold this year alone). Diaz interviewed some doctors who claimed that their studies were misrepresented by Metabolife. Another downplayed the product's risks. (Though even he said, "Larger studies would be needed" to guarantee its safety.) So after a report that in some ways lived up to the worst of the company's expectations -- hospitalized victim, angry doctors and file footage of longhairs being busted for cooking speed in suburbia -- the report ended with something of a whimper.

"See a doctor first, before you take it," Diaz told Walters at the report's conclusion -- advice that could apply to everything from aspirin to acid. Maybe Metabolife's decision to put the unedited interview online (which Diaz called an "extraordinary and unprecedented move") had no effect on his final report. (He did not return my calls.) But it probably didn't hurt -- which brings us back to the question of advance publicity's effect on the news.

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