The Center for Media and Democracy today released its latest report on TV news programs' use of corporate-sponsored video news releases--promotional segments designed to look like objective news
reports that disguise their true source from viewers.
Examples include promoting lobbyists' efforts on WTOK in Meridian, Miss., which aired a segment called "Global Warming: Hot
Air?" The VNR, which ridiculed claims that increased hurricane activity is related to global warming, was funded by the PR lobbying firm DCI Group, which has ExxonMobil as a client.
In April of
this year, the organization's original report led the FCC to launch an investigation into 77 stations. The new report shows that VNRs continue--and that eight of the stations under investigation
continue to air them without disclosing their origins to viewers.
Ten television stations named in this study had previously been cited in the April "Fake TV News" report for undisclosed VNR
broadcasts, including major market stations NY1 and WPIX-11, WDAF-4 in Kansas City, MO, and WSYX-6 in Columbus, Ohio. Only two of the 10 stations previously cited--Philadelphia's KYW-3 and
Cincinnati's WCPO-9--provided disclosure of their more recent VNR broadcasts.
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"The problem of undisclosed VNRs continues, even though the FCC has an ongoing investigation into the matter," says
Diane Farsetta, senior researcher for the Center for Media and Democracy and co-author of the study with Daniel Price. "It's more evidence that VNRs are very entrenched, and that the status quo needs
to change."
Other instances showed stations in Honolulu, San Diego and elsewhere, using PR publicists on-air as if they were staff reporters. Twelve stations actively denied disclosure to
audiences by editing out on-screen or verbal client notifications that were placed in the original VNRs. WMGM in Philadelphia, for example, aired a VNR in its entirety, using its own reporter for the
voiceover who read from the same script almost exactly--only deleting the verbal disclosure at the end.