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US television science news is sometimes public relations in disguise

BMJ 2006; 333 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.39041.373021.DB (Published 23 November 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;333:1089
  1. Janice Hopkins Tanne
  1. 1New York

    The science news broadcast by US television stations is sometimes not genuine reporting by a science journalist who works for the television station or the network. Instead it is prepared by a public relations firm for corporate or government clients, says a report from the non-profit making Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

    Video news releases are designed to look like news reports, but they present the point of view of the sponsor.

    This month's report is a follow-up to a document that the centre issued in April, entitled Fake News (www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary), which says that US television stations often do not divulge the source of prepackaged video information and broadcast it as news (BMJ 2006;332:919).

    Stations may delete information about sponsorship; may allow the corporate spokesperson in the recording to seem as if he or she were a staff reporter; and may sometimes have their own reporter rerecord the audio portion of the news release. The report in April named 77 US television stations that had used at least one of 36 video news reports that the centre had tracked over a 10 month period.

    The video news reports were prepared for corporate clients such as Pfizer, Exxon Mobil, General Motors, Intel, Siemens, General Mills, and Capital One, and also for the American College of Physicians and the American Dental Association.

    In August the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcasting, began an investigation of the 77 stations accused of using video news reports without disclosing the reports' sponsors. The commission's rules say that stations “must clearly disclose to members of their audience the nature, source, and sponsorship of the material.” The commission can fine stations for not disclosing sponsorship and can even revoke a station's licence to broadcast.

    The Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation asked the communications commission to halt its investigation. It said that failure to mention sponsorship was the exception rather than the rule. Stations often edited video news releases “to remove corporate overtones” or sometimes to point out third party sponsorship, the association said. Furthermore, it said that video news releases were often sources of newsworthy material that stations could not obtain by other means or, in the case of the dental association, provided useful information about new techniques without promoting products (www.rtnda.org).

    Daniel Price, coauthor of the media centre's report, told the BMJ that the communications commission investigation of the 77 stations named in the initial report was continuing. A new investigation of 36 stations named in the second report is beginning, he said.

    The Center for Media and Democracy's follow-up report this month says that “viewers are still routinely deceived by fake TV news. From April through October 2006, CMD documented 46 stations in 22 states airing at least one of 33 different video news releases. The total number of VNRs [video news releases] tracked for this study—109—represents just two percent of the estimated 5,000 VNRs offered to US television newsrooms over a six-month period.”

    The centre concludes, “In sum, television newscasts—the most popular news source in the United States—continue to air VNRs. Overwhelmingly, stations fail to offer any disclosure of the nature or source of the sponsored video.

    “When TV stations do make some attempt at disclosure, it is fleeting and often ambiguous. Broadcast PR [public relations] firms and TV stations appear to have done little to constructively address the serious problems documented in the Fake News report, even following the August 2006 launch of the ongoing FCC investigation into undisclosed VNRs.”