Fake News Stories Probed 299
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.""
Poltical, too. (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
No. Not 'enough said. (Score:3, Informative)
plenty of fake news for everybody (paid by you) (Score:5, Informative)
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]
A More Indepth Look at "Fake News" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fake newspapers? (Score:5, Informative)
Documented in 1995 by 'Spin' (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Baaaa..... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Baaaa..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah, this will go no where. (Score:3, Informative)
Don't blame the government for producing VNRs. Blame lazy news/program directors for airing them without any explanation.
Re:Jon Stewart Testifies, says he's sorry (Score:2, Informative)
See it here (Score:2, Informative)
"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."
Re:Baaaa..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Agitprop (Score:3, Informative)
I am a liberal and a skeptic (some might say cynic), if you are particularly interested.
Re:Colbert Report & the Daily Show (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:No. Not 'enough said. (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't hear that remark, but I did hear Fox News report that the woman:
Obviously, little or no effort was made to check these "facts" before they blasted this info around the world, and I heard no apology when it turned out that none of this was true. If this woman was in fact claustrophobic, she should sue the network for defamation of character for broadcasting such sensationalistic drivel
For Your Viewing Pleasure... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__3STe4jwU [youtube.com]
Re:No. Not 'enough said. (Score:4, Informative)
The first time I noticed this was when Johnny Cochran died (I don't actually watch Fox "News" very often since to any thinking person it is disgusting). I was reading the story and was looking for more information (specifically whether he knew he had a tumor and for how long) when I noticed the story on FOX News was virtually identical to the associated press story. In fact, 18 of 44 paragraphs in the FOX piece were copied verbatim from the AP article with no changes whatsoever. Most of the other paragraphs had extremely minor grammatical structural changes, but were essentially identical to the original AP content. The rest was political spin (innuendo) that really had no place in the article.
What really struck me most was that FOX News in the by-line claimed credit for the article. Under the title the article clearly said "Tuesday, March 29, 2005" followed by "FOX NEWS". The Associated Press was not mentioned until the very end where the article said "FOX News' Jane Roh and The Associated Press contributed to this report"; however, even this was misleading since as far as I can tell Jane Roh's function was nothing other than minor cosmetic editing (ie it should have said, Jone Roh edited the article).
This is just one of a great many actual example of journalistic hackery at FOX "News" that happen all the time. You can believe that it is "only their opinion shows" or that they have serious journalistic talent, but if so you are an idiot. Look I'm not trying to insult you with ad hominem... it would just take somebody pretty fucking dumb not to see the puppet theatre at Fox.
And no, all of MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC correctly attributed the article and did not add political spin to it as FOX did. They are not just as bad as FOX. Now the article does not even exist on FOX's site... much easier to get away with this crap when you sweep it under the rug. I have copies though of the "FOX POV" and original AP, if you doubt.
On the TV end... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Baaaa..... (Score:3, Informative)
This is what you saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZCQPtauDRU [youtube.com]
Re:Good on the FCC, now go get Fox (Score:2, Informative)
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 [thecorporation.com] 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.
Re:Agitprop (Score:4, Informative)
versus
Clinton budget surplus [cnn.com]