On April 6, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released an interactive report that discusses newsrooms’ widespread use of video news releases (VNRs)—pre-packaged ‘news’ segments and additional footage created by PR firms, or by publicists within corporations or government agencies—and satellite media tour (SMT) “interviews” during news programs. According to “Fake News: Widespread and Undisclosed,” which documents the use of 36 different VNRs and SMTs over the past ten months, at least 77 different television stations, reaching more than half the U.S. population, have aired corporate advertisements under the guise of news.

According to a January 2006 Harris poll of 2,985 U.S. adults, 77 percent of U.S. adults say they watch local broadcast news, and 71 percent say they watch network broadcast or cable news several times a week or daily. As the CMD report’s authors note, “The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public's ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies.”

“To reach this audience—and to add a veneer of credibility to clients’ messages—the public relations industry uses video news releases,” the report’s authors explain. “Without strong disclosure requirements and the attention and action of TV station personnel,” however, “viewers cannot know when the news segment they're watching was bought and paid for by the very subjects of that ‘report’.” Indeed, in not one of the cases surveyed by the CMD did a station disclose to its viewers that a VNR had been aired. One station in Virginia provided partial disclosure by naming the PR firm that created the VNR, but said nothing of the sponsor. Other notable findings from the report included:

• VNRs air to TV markets of all sizes – both small and large cities are fair game.  
  
• In every VNR broadcast that the report documented, the station altered it by including its own graphics, etc. in order to make the VNR indistinguishable from the station’s own reports.
• Stations rarely verify or supplement VNRs’ claims.
• Of the VNRs tracked by the report, 47 out of the 49 clients behind them were corporations that stood to benefit financially from the fake news coverage.

The CMD report also includes a map showing the locations of the stations throughout the United States that aired fake news, as well as a spreadsheet listing the names of the stations, by state. In addition to this, the report features information about the VNRs and SMTs themselves, including the clients that funded them, which stations aired them, and the deceptive techniques that newsrooms used to disguise the clips as actual journalism.

In Texas, stations in Odessa, San Angelo, Lubbock, Dallas, and Tyler are listed among those guilty of airing fake news. Corpus Christi's own KZTV-10 is fingered as airing propaganda on behalf of Cadillac. According to the report, KZTV-10 “created a 45-second edit of the VNR, inserting station-branded graphics and replacing [the fake reporter’s] narration with the familiar voice of their own reporter.” The VNR aired on a 6 a.m. news bulletin on January 24, 2006.

Although Turning the Tide emailed KZTV-10 to ask the station to comment on the use of the VNR, we have not received a reply. Meaningful democracy requires media transparency and KZTV-10 owes its viewers an explanation.

More is at stake than just media transparency, too: As FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein explained on the April 6 broadcast of Democracy Now!, federal law requires that stations inform their viewers about the sources of VNRs. Failure to disclose this to the public is a federal offense, and can be subject to criminal penalties of up to a year in jail.

For more information, visit the Center for Media and Democracy website at:

• http://www.prwatch.org/

The report may be found at:

• http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary/

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