When is TV news real journalism and when is it fake? According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), it’s fake when it’s nothing more than a “video news release,” or “VNR”:

Video news releases are public relations videos designed to look like television news stories. The vast majority of VNRs are funded by corporate clients to promote the company’s products or public image.

For example, the makers of Zicam, a cold remedy product, put together a VNR about the inconvenience of catching a cold while traveling. It was taped just like a news report, except that the surveys and reports it refers to are all company-sponsored, there are lots of Zicam product-placement opportunities, and their expert interviewee states, “in my research I found that homeopathic zinc products can shorten the duration of your illness.” You think you’re watching a report that includes unbiased scientific research, but it’s really just a clever commercial for Zicam.

CMD quotes a public notice from the FCC that states VNRs “must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material.” The problem is, there are many TV news programs using VNRs without ever disclosing that their source material is simply a PR video hawking a specific product. Worse, CMD shows examples on its website of stations that “disguise VNRs as their own reporting”:

Newsrooms added station-branded graphics and overlays, to make VNRs indistinguishable from reports that genuinely originated from their station. A station reporter or anchor re-voiced the VNR in more than 60 percent of the VNR broadcasts, sometimes repeating the publicist’s original narration word-for-word.

CMD identified over 100 stations that aired what they consider “fake news.” No Peoria stations were listed. However, the owners of most of Peoria’s commercial stations were represented on the list (the one notable exception being Barrington Broadcasting, owners of WHOI) because stations they own in other cities did misuse VNRs.

The FCC has taken notice, and recently levied a $4,000 fine on a Comcast cable channel for failing to identify a VNR they ran as a news story. This one was for an herbal remedy called Nelson’s Rescue Sleep. Comcast defended its use of the VNR material, saying, “The segments in question were chosen by journalists in the course of reporting, and Comcast received no consideration or benefit by using the material.”

Indeed, since these types of news releases are provided for free to stations and with no limitations on how they can be edited, some newsrooms find them to be an easy source of content for “news” reports. Neither CMD nor the FCC says TV stations can’t use VNR material in their broadcasts, only that the source of the material should be clearly disclosed so viewers can make informed judgments as to the claims of such material.