Why Am I Not Surprised?
When I turned on the radio, I was surprised to hear the authoritative voice of a woman I thought to be a news anchor introducing a scientist, a qualified individual I was led to believe, who declared that fears of global warming were unfounded and assured listeners that such phenomena were merely part of the Earth’s natural cycle. When the clip ended I learned that I had just been listening to a VNR.
In November of this year, Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price released a report for the Center for Media and Democracy entitled “Still Not the News: Stations Overwhelmingly Fail to Disclose VNRs.” This is a follow-up report to their original finding that 46 television stations in 22 American states were airing video news releases, fake news reports provided by PR firms, without disclosing their nature, source, or sponsorship. This information is shown on VNRs before the main content, but television stations frequently edit it out. News anchors introduce the subject and speakers of VNRs then seamlessly cut to the story. The viewer is left to think that this is a news item like any other and will view it with the same confidence in its veracity and impartiality.
The truth is that the information given in VNRs can be misleading or even wrong, and they are anything but impartial, being funded by and scripted for corporate and government clients. Included in the report are 33 VNRs with sponsors such as General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, and General Motors. Take the VNR that I heard on the radio, for example. It was entitled “Global Warming and Hurricanes: All Hot Air?” and was released in June 2006 by the broadcast PR firm Medialink Worldwide. They declined to mention that their client was a website published by Tech Central Station, which was at the time a project of the Republican lobbying and PR firm DCI Group. Exxon Mobil is a DCI Group client and has made generous donations to Tech Central Science Foundation for its support on the issue of climate change. The VNR speakers were two scientists who, in contradiction to the scientific community at large, purport that global warming is a “hoax” and have profitable relations with corporations which seek to propagate and legitimize this opinion.
This doesn’t relate to rights exactly (though a few corporations named in the report complained that it was an affront to their freedom of speech) but I think that it exposes an important issue. Farsetta and Price aren’t calling for the censorship or banning of VNRs, only that their use be clearly and fully disclosed so that viewers can make a critical assessment of their content. I want to say that we have the right to know the truth, but I don’t think that the charter actually covers that one, so we’ll have to leave it up to journalistic integrity.
Read the report summary and highlights and watch VNRs:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews2/execsummary
tag: last301
In November of this year, Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price released a report for the Center for Media and Democracy entitled “Still Not the News: Stations Overwhelmingly Fail to Disclose VNRs.” This is a follow-up report to their original finding that 46 television stations in 22 American states were airing video news releases, fake news reports provided by PR firms, without disclosing their nature, source, or sponsorship. This information is shown on VNRs before the main content, but television stations frequently edit it out. News anchors introduce the subject and speakers of VNRs then seamlessly cut to the story. The viewer is left to think that this is a news item like any other and will view it with the same confidence in its veracity and impartiality.
The truth is that the information given in VNRs can be misleading or even wrong, and they are anything but impartial, being funded by and scripted for corporate and government clients. Included in the report are 33 VNRs with sponsors such as General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, and General Motors. Take the VNR that I heard on the radio, for example. It was entitled “Global Warming and Hurricanes: All Hot Air?” and was released in June 2006 by the broadcast PR firm Medialink Worldwide. They declined to mention that their client was a website published by Tech Central Station, which was at the time a project of the Republican lobbying and PR firm DCI Group. Exxon Mobil is a DCI Group client and has made generous donations to Tech Central Science Foundation for its support on the issue of climate change. The VNR speakers were two scientists who, in contradiction to the scientific community at large, purport that global warming is a “hoax” and have profitable relations with corporations which seek to propagate and legitimize this opinion.
This doesn’t relate to rights exactly (though a few corporations named in the report complained that it was an affront to their freedom of speech) but I think that it exposes an important issue. Farsetta and Price aren’t calling for the censorship or banning of VNRs, only that their use be clearly and fully disclosed so that viewers can make a critical assessment of their content. I want to say that we have the right to know the truth, but I don’t think that the charter actually covers that one, so we’ll have to leave it up to journalistic integrity.
Read the report summary and highlights and watch VNRs:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews2/execsummary
tag: last301
posted by Serena at 10:50 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for posting this. Interesting issue. It concerns all of us and the way we are going to assess the news sources... Journalistic integrity... hmmm... I think that should really be put into questioning from what we see here. There is hardly any from what the global warming issue coverage in the media is telling us...
Thank you for your kind words Serena. I also found your blogs, and class comments, interesting and thoughtful!
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