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Fake News Stories Probed
An anonymous reader writes "From the article: "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has begun an investigation of the use of video news releases, sometimes called "fake news," at U.S. television stations.
Video news releases are packaged stories paid for by businesses or interest groups. They use actors to portray reporters and use the same format as television news stories.""
It isn't just corporate and interest groups that are doing this. What concerns me much much more is that the Bush administration is doing this, too, to advance their agenda. And it's paid for by US taxpayers.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
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Fox News is a legitimate news organization. This becomes apparent upon reading their print material or watching their actual news reports. Like all the other cable news outlets, if you're watching the interview shows like O'Rielly you're not getting hard news - it's all opinion. But watch the news and -- while it's most definitely slanted toward the administration and Republicans -- it's also factually accurate news. *shrug* Like all TV news it's watered down and of little factual value. If you really want hard news, you must read it.
Bush White House Used Taxpayer Dollars To Create Fake News Programs To Promote No Child Left Behind; Also Rated News Stories Based On Favorability
Ketchum Produced Fake News Reports to Promote No Child Left Behind. The Department of Education contracted with Ketchum public relations to produce and distribute "news" stories featuring a fake reporter announcing the availability of tutoring under No Child Left Behind. According to the Associated Press, the Administration paid $700,000 to Ketchum for the segment. The video includes a story featuring Education Secretary Rod Paige and ends with the "journalist" saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." [AP, 10/10/04, Washington Post, 10/15/04; People for the American Way Release, 10/11/04]
Department of Education Also Paid Ketchum to Code Media Stories Based on Favorability of Coverage. According to the Associated Press, the Department of Education used taxpayer dollars to devise a rating system to score news coverage of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The system rewards points to news outlets that air reports that, among other things, say that President Bush and Republicans are strong on education. The news rankings also rank individual reporters on how sympathetic they are to the Administration's program. [AP, 10/10/04]
Bush Administration Paid Armstrong Williams $240,000 To Promote No Child Left Behind
Armstrong Williams Paid By Bush Administration To Tout NCLB. USA Today revealed that the Department of Education paid political commentator/talk radio host Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative on his program and to other African American commentators. During these efforts, Williams failed to disclose his contract with the government. [USA Today, 1/7/05]
Taxpayer Dollars Also Used To Create Fake News Programs For Bush Medicare Plan
Bush Used Taxpayer Dollars to Stage Fake News Stories To Promote His Medicare Bill. Bush's Health and Human Services Department also contracted with Ketchum to promote the president's Medicare drug benefit. Using the same public relations consultant, Karen Ryan, Ketchum produced a series of video news releases that included scripted interviews and pictures of Bush receiving a standing ovation as he signed the legislation. During the first two months of 2004, the pieces aired 53 times on 40 stations in 33 major media markets. [New York Times, 3/15/04; Atlanta Journal Constitution, 3/15/04; LA Times, 3/16/04; Lexington Herald Leader, 5/19/04]
* GAO Found Bush Administration Guilty. On May 19, 2004, the General Accountability Office (GAO) released its investigation findings into fake news segments produced by Medicare to promote the Bush Medicare bill. The segments, video news releases, were distributed to local television sessions to be run as part of the station's news programs. The segments contained no identifiers that they were produced by the government, which the GAO found violates the propaganda prohibitions of the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003. The GAO concluded, "Because [Medicare] did not identify itself as a source of the news report, the story packages, including the lead-in script, violate the publicity or propaganda prohibition." [GAO, Decision in Matter of Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services - Video News Release, 5/19/04]
Here's an article from the Center for Media and Democracy that gives a lot more information about this practice and also provides video examples for your viewing "pleasure."
This isn't an issue about infomercials with the disclaimers you mention, nor is it about humorists. Those obviously wouldn't warrant an investigation. The issue is about "news reports" that are created by government and/or corporate organizations which are sent to "real" news producers, who then put them on the air without disclosing their source. It's a way for those producers to fill time in their broadcasts without spending any money and the creators of the segments get to spread their message to the public through a medium which that audience [probably foolishly] trusts. I posted this link in a message down a bit further, but it probably bears repeating.
Check out the 1995 documentary 'Spin' to see some early examples of this type of fake news being broadcast during the run-up to the 1992 election.
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You are misunderstanding what's being probed here. These are essentially commercials that are taking place DURING the newscast. Anchor A will say "And now over to Correspondent B in City C for a report on Topic X that you'll find truly startling!" The camera will switch over to the "correspondent" who will then proceed to give their spiel, which is really just a purchased promo spot for some product or research study. The screen will still have the Channel XX logo in the corner with the correspondents name in the same news font as the rest of the newscast. This is because this is actually part of the newscast. That is what's being investigated. Not a full page ad in the newspaper (which, by the way, says "paid advertisement" in small type at the top of the page).
This guy's the limit!
My high school had a radio station. I worked there from 1996-1999. We got many PSAs from various government agencies phrased as audio news releases. It's not just government that does this: a lot of nonprofit organizations will happily offer "News from your community" type things for broadcast.
Don't blame the government for producing VNRs. Blame lazy news/program directors for airing them without any explanation.
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Really, not very funny. The problem under investigation is "news" stories being produced by, for instance, the White House (using taxpayer money) and then aired by local and national television stations as though the station produced it, as though it were actual news, and as though the Bush administration did not ask them to run it while hiding the identity of those who produced it. This free advertising and mis-use by the government of what are supposed to be trusted sources has been very successful in its propaganda aims. For instance, look up how many Americans still harbor the delusion that Iraq had some involvement in 9/11. Bush, of course, did not invent this. Look up how many Americans believe marijuana produces harmful medical effects. (It does not.) There are actual Federal laws against the Federal government using taxpayer money to advocate for a particular political position in these propagandistic ways. However, when large amounts of money can be made by certain private industries by having the government support their positions (even surreptitiously), these laws are too often ignored. Witness the military-industrial-congressional complex and the war on some drugs as but two examples.
Cosing; as a matter of fact here is it in full. From the page:
"Artist Brian Springer spent a year scouring the airwaves with a satellite dish grabbing back channel news feeds not intended for public consumption. The result of his research is SPIN, one of the most insightful films ever made about the mechanics of how television is used as a tool of social control to distort and limit the American public's perception of reality."
Try watching The News Hour on PBS. Interesting, unbiased, fluff-free. Follow up with 'Frontline' (also on PBS) for some of the best investigative journalism/documentaries anywhere. There is still quality stuff out there, but you may need to get away from the commercial networks to find it.
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Not always, by any means. There are certainly plenty of corrupt Dems out there, but far fewer than Republicans (especially in my state, for what that's worth) from what I can tell, and obviously the executive branch, being all Republican, means the most prominent ones now are also Republican.
I am a liberal and a skeptic (some might say cynic), if you are particularly interested.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
I truly hope you're kidding. A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that the FCC covers cable/satelite. It doesn't. The only reason the FCC was ever given any power to censor what is shown was because (a) the communication spectrum is limited and (b) as the government took it upon themselves to divide it up, they decided that those who broadcasted would have to meet a "code" for the public good. Because of this, CNN, FNC, and Comedy Central are all quite secure from any sort of punishment by the FCC; though I've heard some Congressmen that have been interested in trying to magically make cable under FCC control. Hell, all three could show lots of nudity any time of the day (so long as it wasn't obscene). The simply don't because it's not as profitable (people would drop their cable subscriptions before using a v-chip; and why give it away for free when you can sell it by the hour?).
Personally, I think we're at the point that we could divide up TV and radio broadcasts sufficiently, with digital broadcasts, that there's little reason for the FCC to exist except back to insuring that communications are capable of being properly transmitted without interference. But good luck pushing that position. Just remember, it's not a crime in itself to lie to people. So long as your program has a sufficiently indirect means of payment, it's also not fraud. That's probably why most news channels (broadcast or not) have yet to be shut down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__3STe4jwU
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I'm a television producer, mostly of commercial spots, but I've always been a very strong advocate of keeping news and advertising away from eachother. Unfortunately, the industry doesn't tend to agree. Promotions and other advertising schemes have been spilling into news in greater and greater quantities. This is especially true for soft news, or morning news, which is virtually a marketting team's playground. The Today Show did this whole "Wedding Giveaway" promotion, where they chose a couple to help fund their wedding, in exchange for them using certain advertisers, and following them through their wedding preparations. So my local station decides to do the same thing, on a local level. I must say, as a whole, it turned out quite well, but it made me feel icky having to make news packages that had contracts sitting behind them. I raised a lot of complaints to the general manager, the sales manager, and the news director about this, and none of them actually wanted to do it, but had basically convinced themselves that they had to do it for the company to stay alive.
In another incident, one of our clients weasled her way into using some of our news footage for her commercial, and she pushed the general manager (who does some production) more and more, until he actually ended up using video of one of our anchors doing a tag, which goes against some of our basic principals. When the anchor found out about this, she was furious, and forced them to retract the ad. I went down to my boss and basically asked him, "What the hell were you thinking?" And the response was basically that he knew it was wrong at the time, but he couldn't figure out what to do, and added that the station was going to be pushing the envilope more and more just to keep afloat. I don't buy it for a second. I don't know what the hawks up at ClearChannel corporate have been feeding everyone, but there are other methods of advertising that work just as well. To appease the client (and at the same time, give her a big, "fuck you"), I setup one of our side rooms as a news studio, with a totally different backdrop, and one of our sales team as an anchor... and made it OBVIOUSLY fake. I did everything possible to keep it from looking anything like our news: I went as far as coming up with my own news color scheme, with lower thirds and over-the-shoulders to match... anything to keep this fucking ad away from looking like our news. Since this is a small town, and everyone knows the anchors, it would be immediately obvious that this was fake. Our client was furious. "What happened to the lower thirds? Why isn't it in the newsroom? What happened to the over-the-shoulders?". She didn't want to come out and say it, but she was wanting our news image to help sell her service.
I'm not as concerned with actors posing as reporters, what I'm more concerned with, at this point, are reporters that are forced into the position of advertising as part of their news.
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This is what you saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZCQPtauDRU
Ludwig Wittgenstein
To be fair, this incident was a LOCAL station and not Fox News Channel. However, the station is owned by Fox and not an affiliate.
They were a CBS station before some purchases had affiliations jumping around all over the dial IIRC, and part of the news cast remains. They do have a decidely biased slant on their reporting and some really asinine op ed pieces, but then again they also have a pretty damn good weather department and "Skytower HD Viper" which is nice here in Florida I suppose.
The Corporation also had a bit about this incident and along with the decidely smug segment that aired during the news broadcast about the "victory" in court. Of course, there was no mention of any sort of lying or attempt at altering the original piece, but that's pretty much to be expected.
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