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The Raw Story
A study by a group that monitors the media reveals that, over a ten
month span, 77 television stations from all across the nation aired
video news releases without informing their viewers even once that the
reports were actually sponsored content, RAW STORY has found.
One "news report" that aired on three stations relied on a video
news release (VNR) produced by a PR firm on behalf of General Motors
which was even apparently based on a "false claim."
Center for Media and Democracy's Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed
is "a multimedia report on television newsrooms' use of material
provided by PR firms on behalf of paying clients," containing video
footage of the 36 video news releases (VNRs) cited in the report, plus
a map and spreadsheet of the stations cited.
General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One are among the
companies who produced VNRs with the help of three PR firms, and
"[m]ore than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR
in its entirety."
An Oklahoma City FOX station owned by Sinclair is pegged as the
"report's top repeat offender," airing five VNRs in full on its news
broadcasts, with "the publicist's original narration each time."
Three stations "not only aired entire VNRs without disclosure, but
had local anchors and reporters read directly from the script prepared
by the broadcast PR firm."
News broadcasts based on a General Motors VNR stand out in the
report as a striking example of "fake news," not just because they were
left largely unchanged when aired on stations in Louisiana and
Pennsylvania. "GM, who introduced the first manufacturer web site in 1996, has
recently lowered prices, in some cases by thousands of dollars, on all
of their models as a direct result of the customers' ability to
comparison shop on the Internet," Medialink's Kate Brookes "reported"
in all three broadcasts.
But the Center for Media and Democracy blasts GM's "historical claim" as "fake." "A simple dated search for "automotive web site" in the Nexis news
database revealed a press release from August 1995 in which Volkswagen
heralded the launch of their web portal," the report states. "It wasn't
until February 1996 that General Motors announced gm.com in their own
press release."
A comparison between the General Motors VNR and one of the news broadcasts can be seen at this link. Last year the New York Times published an article
called "Under Bush, a new age of prepackaged TV news" - written by
David Barstow and Robin Stein - which reported on the stealthy use of
VNRs created by government agencies that crept into network news
broadcasts.
The Times revealed that even though Radio-Television News Directors
Association's "code of ethics" specifies to "clearly disclose the
origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders,"
the Federal Communications Commission has "never disciplined a station
for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their
origin." Last June, Chris Baker at the Washington Times reported
that the Radio-Television News Directors Association "submitted a
13-page statement that said few TV stations air VNRs, and those that do
almost always identify the source" to the Federal Communications
Commission. The statement drew from an "informal survey of 100 members"
because, as the president of the Association told the Washington Times,
"concrete data" was "hard to come by."
An article in Thursday's Times by Barstow (New York Times registered link)
indicates that the Center "presented its findings yesterday to F.C.C.
officials, including Jonathan S. Adelstein, a commissioner who has
criticized video news releases." Impressed by the "scope of what they found," Adelstein told the
Times that it was a "disgrace to American journalism," and proof of
"potentially major violations" of F.C.C. rules. |
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