Saturday, April 08, 2006
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Local news station WCPO has joined the ranks of television news centers broadcasting commercial advertisements and masking them as original news reports. This is particularly troublesome, as these corporate produced videos are designed to mimic legitimate news reports.
This story from the Center for Media and Democracy discusses the new cult of “video news releases”— which they define thusly:
Video news releases (VNRs, often referred to as fake TV news) are video clips that are indistinguishable from traditional news clips and are sometimes screened unedited by television stations without the identification of the original producers or sponsors, who are commonly corporations, government agencies, or non-governmental organizations.
Sourcewatch, a project affiliated with The Center for Media and Democracy, has published this document—detailing some VNRs to broadcast on WCPO. According to the Sourcewatch document, WCPO is known to have done this twice recently:
In the 5pm news bulletin on December 14, 2005 the station broadcast an edited and re-voiced video news release (VNR) produced by MultiVu for Steifel Laboratories promoting a new eczema treatment, MimyX cream. The station edited out the contra-indication information included in the original VNR which stated that it should not be used by people with “hypersensitivity to any of the components of the formulation.”
In the midday news bulletin on February 13, 2006 the station broadcast an edited and re-voiced video news release (VNR) produced by Medialink Worldwide for Flower MD on flower tips for Valentine’s Day. This story was also picked up by Democracy Now!, who received a statement from WCPO news director Bob Morford:
Another station that aired portions of this V.N.R. was WCPO Channel 9 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The station’s news director, Bob Morford, also declined to come on the program, but he did issue a statement to Democracy Now! He wrote, “I understand and share concern about the use of video news releases. They can be misleading, given that they are often created at the behest and expense of a company, an activist group, or a governmental agency. Therefore, we treat them carefully. However, we do not refuse to use them for the same reason newspapers do not ignore or fail to read and use written press releases.”
Bob Morford from WCPO in Cincinnati went on to say, “In the specific case to which you refer, [our] story ends with ‘Right now, Mimyx is only available by prescription.’ We feel this more than adequately covers the ‘contraindications’ concern. It’s the doctor’s job to know the problems and to warn the patient. It’s also a reasonable patient who asks the doctor about any possible side effects.” Morford’s comparison to text press releases is fallible. For example, print papers will use quotations from press releases in original stories. Here at The Beacon, we sometimes publish entire releases—but we label them as “Media Releases.” We do not push the material as original news content.
It looks like this video footage is not being used as part of another story, or presented as a corporate video release, but instead it gets pushed off as a story unto itself—one the station presents as original.
UPDATE: It is true that this story was tipped by Theo, who used the Tip Jar! feature at the top of the screen. I meant to credit him, but had to finish this column in a hurry as my son was asking me to come upstairs as I hurried to type the final paragraph. Sometime between soccer and a birthday party, I realized I had forgotten to provide the link—but this morning Theo has beat me to the punch. (Yes, I probably should have remembered when checking the comments last night, but gosh—things just get busy sometimes!) I formally apologize for not getting this posted in a more timely manner. All credit to Theo, and thanks for sending this along so our readers could learn the truth!
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