Television Stations Found Broadcasting Fake News

Progressive Review

The Center for Media Democracy and Free Press reports that scores of local stations slipping commercial “video news releases,” or VNRs, into their regular news programming. The new multimedia report includes footage of 36 separate VNRs and their broadcast as “news” by TV stations and networks nationwide, including those in the nation’s biggest markets.

“It’s shocking to see how product placement moves secretly unfiltered from the boardroom to the newsroom and then straight into our living rooms,” said Dianne Farsetta, a senior researcher at CMD and co-author of the report.

Investigators captured 77 television stations actively disguising sponsored content from companies including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One to make it look like their own reporting. More than one-third of the time, stations aired fake news stories in their entirety as their own reporting.

Approximately 80 percent of the stations snared in the investigation are owned by large conglomerates. The list of the worst offenders includes Clear Channel, News Corp - Fox Television, Viacom - CBS, Tribune Co. and Sinclair Broadcast Group - whose Oklahoma City affiliate was caught airing VNRs on six separate occasions.

“The evidence suggests a strong connection between media consolidation and the broadcast of deceptive, pre-packaged propaganda,” said Timothy Karr, campaign director of Free Press.

The public interest groups want all VNRs be accompanied by a continuous, frame-by-frame visual notifications and verbal announcements disclosing their sources. They also recommended broadcasters be required to file monthly public reports detailing their use of government or corporate-sponsored material.

The organizations claime that instances of fake TV news documented by CMD likely represent less than 1 percent of VNRs distributed to local newsrooms since last June.