Stealth Ads, Covert Propaganda: The Press's VNR-eal Disease

On the news late one night, a story comes on about the horrors of eczema (must be a slow news day). After a brief description of the disease, the reporter brings a doctor on to describe a new treatment: an ointment called MimyX. The report ends, the anchor signs off, and you flip to something more interesting--not realizing that the news report you have just watched was an advertisement by the makers of MimyX skin cream which was planted, exactly as though it were a real news story, right in the middle of your local news broadcast.

And how could you realize it? Throughout the "report," the station's logo appeared in the lower right-hand corner. The station's health reporter introduced the segment as though he had researched it himself. And at no time did the anchor clarify that this was an advertisement--a video news release, or VNR.

From June 2005 to March 2006, the Center for Media and Democracy traced the use of thirty-six such VNRs on newscasts throughout the United States--a sample which "represent[s] less than one percent of the VNRs offered to newsrooms each year," according to the CMD. Sadly, a station that I watch from time to time--KOKH-25 FOX in Oklahoma City--used six of these thirty-six VNRs during the ten months of CMD's study. That means that KOKH may use more than a dozen such clips a week. (How do they find enough newscasts in which to insert them all?)

A few of the more nauseating VNRs:

1. The largest provider of VNRs is the PR firm Medialink. In January 2006, this firm made a VNR in which "two industry experts, an ethanol plant builder, and a local corn farmer" all sing the praises of ethanol fuel. Five TV stations in five different states aired the segment without ever pointing out that it was made by Siemens AG, a firm which provides important equiment for two-thirds of all US ethanol plants. In fact, CMD provides a nice picture of the same "report" with three different station identification text overlays.
2. In March 2006, the same PR firm released a VNR which claimed that General Motors "introduced the first [car] manufacturer web site in 1996." Actually, Volkswagen had one in August 1995. None of the three news stations who aired this VNR in the week of its release pointed out the false claim (all any reporter had to do was a routine Nexis search), and all three treated it as original reporting--even though, of course, it was paid for by General Motors.
3. In December 2005, a VNR financed by a firm called Biobérica asserted that the supplement chondroitin sulfate works very well at relieving knee joint pain. Guess what supplement Biobérica supplies in huge quantities to a number of different countries? Unfortunately, this "report" misrepresented how effective chondroitin sulfate really is according to clinical tests. Still more unfortunately, no one at the Syracuse, NY station which aired the segment bothered to fact-check it before airing it.

And so on. Numerous TV stations aired one of the 36 VNRs which the study tracked, and several more (including KGUN-9 ABC in Tuscon and WSYR-9 ABC in Syracuse) aired two--which means that these stations may air more than four VNRs per week, or about one every other day.

I decided to write a letter to the FCC in order to stop this nonsense, and I advise you to do the same. But if you thought that stealth ads like this were the worst thing on your local news, think again.

On the news late one night, a story comes on about US successes in Iraq. A little American girl of Iraqi descent tearfully tells the camera "Thank you, Bush. Thank you USA." The report ends, the anchor signs off. This is an ad, too, but it wasn't paid for by GM or Biobérica or Siemens AG: it was paid for and put together by the Bush administration. And, as you can see here and here and here and here and here, this ad is just the tip of the iceberg.

And you thought the media was liberally biased!

Click here for the CMD's full report.

Or here for a list of still more outside links on this issue.