Fake news segments are being used across the United States. The Center for Media and Democracy found that 77 local TV stations were slipping corporate video news releases (VNRs) into their regular news programs and pretending that one of their reporters had produced them as original news.
VNRs are videos that promote commercial brands and products. The big corporations that have been doing this include Sinclair Broadcast Group, Clear Channel Communications, News Corp/Fox TV, VIacom/CBS and the Tribune Company.
The Center for Media and Democracy has called this unethical practice "a breach of trust between local stations and their communities. By disguising advertisements as news, stations violate both the spirit and the letter of their broadcasting licenses, which obligate them to serve the public interest."
In three instances, for instance, TV stations not only aired entire VNRs without disclosure, but substituted the voices of their anchors, reading from a script prepared by the Broadcast PR firm.
This is immoral and the people concerned should be tried, and if found guilty, jailed.
This is what comes of unregulated Wild West Capitalism!!!
Can you imagine what the bible-thumpers would say if it were liberals in charge of the media? Hannity, Coombs, Limbaugh and paid hacks of the super-rich pontificating on TV, radio and in the papers that come into out homes would be apoplectic. This simply exposes the lack of personal ethics in the media and all who tolerate this sort of stuff.
“This is immoral and the people concerned should be tried, and if found guilty, jailed.”
Absolutely. Accountability is the hallmark of a responsible political system. Take comfort though: the Pentagon has graciously decided to shut down the rent-a-general game (aka Bush TV shills) from masquerading as independent thinkers. Now THAT requires punishment (not capital, of course).