Still Not Necessarily The News

Rachel Joy Larris

November 15, 2006

Personally, I think the only outlets qualified to handle fake news are Comedy Central and The Onion , but in case you’re not getting your fill of press releases disguised as TV news, the Center for Media and Democracy and Free Press just released a report showing that local TV news stations are still using corporate-funded PR videos and calling them “reports.” Watching how smoothly fake news slides into so-called “real” local news seems to crack wide open the whole concept of what “real local news” looks like.

From the Center for Media and Democracy report:

Over six months, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented 46 stations in 22 states airing at least one VNR [video news release] in their newscast. Of the 54 total VNR broadcasts described in this report, 48 provided no disclosure of the nature or source of the sponsored video. In the six other cases, disclosure was fleeting and often ambiguous.

The last time the Center for Media and Democracy released their report that local TV news was filled with fake PR “reports,” it caused quite an uproar.

In August 2006, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an investigation of the 77 stations named. According to the FCC's April 2005 Public Notice, TV stations airing VNRs "must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material."

So its been nine months and apparently little has changed. The Center even reports that 10 of the same news stations are still guilty of using the videos. So readers in the markets of New York City's NY1 and WPIX-11, WDAF-4 in Kansas City, Mo., and WSYX-6  in Columbus, Ohio, have double reason to complain (And if you want to see if your local news is duping you, here’s the list of the 46 TV stations that used them).

But the interesting (or creepy) part of report is the Center’s website which has video footage of 33 video news releases, plus the television news segments that incorporated them.

A local news anchor even introduces one segment from a publicist by saying, “Did you ever wonder where the Jack-O’-Lantern came from? Mike Morris explains.”

What?! Did none of the local anchors wonder why they never saw this Mike Morris guy around the studio? At the Christmas party? Nope, just he's just your normal corporate shill there to sell Betty Crocker products on Honolulu station KHON.

It kind of makes me long for the intergrity of Ron Burgundy.