Faux News

May 31st, 2006 at 18:04 Björn Hallberg

Sploid sums up the FCC investigation into Video News Releases (i.e. fake news or commcerical / political messages packaged to look legit) on US television. VNRs, guerilla marketing, where will it end?

The Federal Communications Commission is investigating dozens of television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations as normal, ‘real’ news.

Fake news segments being examined include items which talked up the illegal Iraq war, and supported the criminals who started it.

The FCC is acting on a report by the non-profit Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations acted as corporate and government shills, by broadcasting the sneaky propaganda (known in the business as Video News Releases – VNRs) as ‘real’ news, without informing viewers of its origin.

“We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them,” said CMD’s Diana Farsetta. “I would say it’s pretty extraordinary.”

She continued, “The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air.”

One VNR produced by the Bush Administration sneakily suggested to American viewers that Iraqi-Americans were grateful to the White House for starting the war. In it, an Iraqi-American in Kansas City is seen saying “Thank you Bush. Thank you USA” immediately after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. This footage was actually produced by the State Department, hardly an objective source of news.

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