Fake TV News - Center for Media & Democracy (2006)

This is a report released by the Center for Media & Democracy on April 6, 2006 detailing widespread use of fake corporate promotion on local tv news in America.More than three-quarters of U.S. adults rely on local TV news, and more than 70 percent turn to network TV or cable news on a daily or near-daily basis

In Brief

Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms' use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)—a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population. The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients' messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety.

Their media watch site is:
http://www.prwatch.org

The detailed summary is:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

The videos of the fake news reports:
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/findings/vnrs

A list of all the stations implicated in this report: http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews_station

A map of the stations:
http://www.prwatch.org/map/TV_Stations