Although Video News Releases, or VNR’s, seem to have been around at least since the early 90s, their use seems to have increased in the last five years. Sure, President Clinton, a savvy marketer, used them. But we shouldn’t underestimate President Bush’s skills in this area, nor should we suppose that the blurred line between objectivity and advocacy — as evidenced by Karen Ryan, Alberto Garcia, Mike McManus, Maggie Gallagher, Armstrong Williams, and Jeff Gannon — was somehow unintentional.
While I’ve watched with bemusement, awe, and just a bit of outrage over the years as print advertisers have perfected the art of mimicking news, a syrupy sweet “article” extolling a new diet has nothing on a seemingly live news broadcast extolling everything from government policies to Chevrolet trucks. I balk at being expected to discern advertising from reporting when the former is being read by T.V. reporter Tish Clark Dunning as part of her regular broadcast.
The long festering problem was exposed to the world at large in last week’s New York Times article. Both corporations and the government have cottoned on to creating advertising clips that fit seamlessly into regular news reports. Distribute one of these clips via Reuters without it being labeled too clearly, and voilá, free advertising in the guise of news. Sometimes reporters even help by reading the script themselves.
If you like drug war conspiracy theories, the trouble could be said to have its beginnings back in 2000, when The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) filed suit with the Federal Communications Commission, complaining that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was smuggling anti-marijuana messages into news broadcasts. At this point, it appears that video news releases were still just a twinkle in the ONDCP’s eye. Having been authorized by Congress to buy discount advertising time from the networks, ONDCP came up with a brilliant idea. They offered stations the advertising time back if they would insert their own anti-drug messages (approved by the government, of course) into regular broadcasts.
In its slap on the wrist ruling, the FCC referred back to the Radio Act of 1927, which required sponsors to be identified, and admitted that “the basic purpose of such requirements has not changed since that time: ‘listeners [and viewers] are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded’” (insertion in original text). However, rather than focusing on the “the news networks are liars” issue, they focused on Section 317 of the Communications Act of 1934, which says, “All matter broadcast by any radio station for which service, money, or any other valuable consideration is directly or indirectly paid … shall … be announced as paid for, or furnished … by such person.”
In the ONDCP case, the FCC limply declared that “sponsorship identification is required and we caution the Networks to do so in the future.” However, they apparently were not too worked up over the issue since they imposed no sanctions. Their reasoning relied heavily on determining what networks had received in return for allowing the government to rewrite their scripts, a rather complicated tradeoff, the “complexity” of which seems to have befuddled the regulatory agency.
“What then,” one might ask, “would be wrong with just perpetrating a simple old fraud on the public if no ‘service, money, or any other valuable consideration’ is paid for it?” Thus, in my retelling, was born the ONDCP’s next brilliant idea, the Video News Release, otherwise known as the “prepackaged news story” or “covert propaganda.” These labels were given by the unpopular-with-the-administration Government Accounting Office. The GAO, earlier this year, gave the thumbs down to the ONDCP on its VNR’s produced and distributed since 2002. Oops.
However, President Bush doesn’t quite agree, and got the Justice Department to overrule that other department. (It should be said that the current Comptroller General, David M. Walker, was appointed in 1998 for a 15-year term, and hence probably is not as concerned as Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez about what Bush wants.) Anyway, the Justice Department issued its own guidelines that, according to Bush, say VNR’s are fine,“so long as they’re based upon facts, not advocacy.” As contributor Andrew Blackwell details this month, reporters hired by the government don’t necessarily doctor the news. They do go out looking for a certain type of news — that which is supportive of the American position — while avoiding other types, a process combining fact and advocacy. A process which would be seen as biased in a journalism ethics class, but which the Justice Department seems to suggest is not only not illegal, but does not, in fact, exist. In the Justice Department’s book, fact and advocacy are apparently diametrically opposed.
So, according to the Justice Department ruling, as long as a government agency “provide[s] accurate (even if not comprehensive) information,” even if it smuggles that information into a news broadcast that does not identify the government as the author of the “news,” everyone is good to go. Our tax dollars at work.
Since nothing is going to happen to government agencies or the companies like Medialink Worldwide who create VNR’s, the focus has to be on the news agencies who never learnt about plagiarism in school. Shouldn’t they be embarrassed to be the government’s shill without getting anything in return?
Perhaps there is still time before the Senate votes on The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 (The Janet Jackson-inspired bill that ups the fines paid by stations broadcasting material deemed “obscene, indecent, and profane,” yet to be agreed upon by both houses, continues to float around D.C.) to elaborate a bit on the bill’s definition of decency.
So humor me, Michael Powell, before you step down as head of the FCC. Assume fact, truth, and authorship to be considered sacred ideas, and profanity “marked by contempt or irreverence for what is sacred.” Would it be too far a stretch to find that, whether or not a station receives moola or moola-substitute, it is wrong and indecent to broadcast fake news?
If the FCC doesn’t act, we can rely on news directors’ discernment in these matters. In The New York Times’ March 13 exposé, David M. Winstrom, the director of Fox News Edge, is quoted as saying “If I got one [a VNR] that said tobacco cures cancer or something like that, I would kill it.”
If not reassured, I recommend investing. Medialink Worldwide’s stock price has risen 20 percent since December.
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