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David: Well, maybe there is some hope elsewhere. The FCC has fined local TV stations for airing
fake news, and when I say fake news, we've all seen it. When you watch the local news
and there's one of these packages that comes up where it's a reporter from out of town
that's not... if you're in Boston, Massachusetts and it's a report from elsewhere, it's a prepackaged
piece of news. Now, it may be coming from, if it's, say, a CBS affiliate, may be something
coming from CBS, but corporations put out these, they're called VNRs, video news releases,
all the time, OK? And they are essentially advertisements, but they're virtually indistinguishable
from news stories, and they're given to TV news departments.
Now, they violate the FCC's sponsorship identification rules when it's not being made clear who has
produced it, that this is an ad. And the FCC fined two stations for airing these things
as if they were news. And again, they're not news, and the local news budgets, as always,
are being slashed, so local stations end up having to run prepackaged VNRs, and they get
fooled many times. It's this stuff that comes from companies.
The fines were first reported in Communications Daily. They came in a response to an '06 complaint
filed by Free Press, who's right down the road from us, and the Center for Media and
Democracy. KMSP, it's a Fox-owned affiliate in Minneapolis, aired what appeared, to some,
apparently, to be a news report on increased consumer demand for convertibles in the summer.
The video was sponsored by General Motors, and it was riddled with multiple shots and
favorable descriptions of GM products. No surprise.
Louis: Right.
David: This stuff is constant. Corporate news would be almost empty without these video
news releases. The other one is WMGM-TV, it's an NBC affiliate in southern New Jersey. They
aired a segment on how to treat the common cold, that's the type of thing you would see
on your local news. Well, the station said the piece was sponsored by a local hospital,
actually, it was paid for by Matrix Initiative, they make that Zycam zinc cold remedy, and
the segment features everybody's using zinc products as a way to treat colds, it's focused
on Zycam's product. People need to know, people deserve to know, that they're watching paid
propaganda, not news. So these fines should continue where appropriate.
Louis: Yeah, it's great that the FCC is going after these small local stations, but it's
a pretty big difference... there's a pretty big difference between these and Newscorp.
I mean, they're not...
David: There is, but... yeah. The other thing is this, though, it's not illegal to produce
the VNR and to send it around, so you can't really go after the company that produced
it for doing anything.
Louis: Right.
David: The question is the stations have to be discerning, they have to be honest, and
it's advertising, it's just, it's no different from advertising. I hope it continues. And
really, the scariest part is many people watch, I know a lot of people who watch local news,
they're not even making the connection that it goes from a local anchor covering a local
topic and all of a sudden it's a national topic, somebody in Nashville, for example,
talking about something, and that it may be propaganda, it may just be news coming from
the network, but it may be one of these paid pieces. It's just not on a lot of people's
radars, and that's the scariest part, because they don't identify it, you don't have your
guard up the way you do when you know something is an ad.
Louis: Right. And the fines are good. I mean, on one hand, I think... I hate to use the
word "bullying", but I mean, is the FCC just bullying small stations? I mean, is this going
to change...
David: It's the law. It's against FCC regulations to not have identification of something that
is an advertisement. It needs to be clear if something is a paid advertisement. And
they're enforcing that.
Louis: Well, more power to them, I guess.
David: On the bonus show, we'll be talking about a link between Facebook and narcissism,
we'll talk soccer hooligans, a U.S. death squad. www.DavidPakman.com/membership, and
a special going on, because of our ongoing campaign to go and broadcast to you from Netroots
Nation, www.DavidPakman.com/netroots for a special offer on membership. We'll take a
break, we'll come back and we'll talk to Matt Lewis about the Newt Gingrich Libyan flip-flop,
so much more. Stay tuned, back after this.
Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com.
Transcript provided by Alex Wickersham and www.Subscriptorium.com. For transcripts, translations,
captions, and subtitles, or for more information, visit www.Subscriptorium.com, or contact Alex
at subscriptorium@gmail.com.