Ethics

Warnings About Video News Releases

Beware of efforts to influence the content of independent newscasts.

By Barbara Cochran

From the April 2005 issue of Communicator.

Is your newscast a no-spin zone?

In the past few months, there has been one revelation after another about attempts by government agencies to influence the news that Americans see, hear and read. The number of incidents reached such a level in February that the Government Accountability Office, the agency that acts as watchdog over the federal government, issued a warning to all federal agencies that the use of video news releases packaged like news stories to promote government policies could violate a government ban on using taxpayer funds for propaganda.

VNRs have been around for a long time. They come from corporations and nonprofit groups as well as government agencies. Often they contain video that would be difficult if not impossible for a station to obtain (for example, NASA animation of a space flight). Since the early 1990s, RTNDA has advocated a policy of clearly labeling the origin of any VNR material that is used in a newscast. But over the past year, it has become clear that newsrooms need to be more vigilant, ask more questions and disseminate policies on the use of VNRs more widely in the newsroom. Why? Because it is evident that government agencies are putting major resources into an effort to get their message through to the public via the medium they believe has the greatest reach and credibility—the local newscast.

The revelations began last year with disclosures that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services had distributed VNRs that looked like news stories to local television stations. The packages were narrated by people identified as Karen Ryan or Mike Morris, who would close by saying they were “reporting” on the policies. More than 50 stations used the VNRs as news stories. What the audience didn’t know was that Karen Ryan and Mike Morris were not independent reporters, but were employed by the public relations firms that prepared the VNRs for the government agencies.

Then in January, three columnists were revealed to have received federal payments for writing or speaking in support of government policies. Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 in Department of Education funds to promote the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind program, including through a series of infomercials with education secretary Rod Paige. Maggie Gallagher received $41,500 and Michael McManus received $10,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the president’s marriage initiative.

Why does the government do it? Because they appear to believe it works. The Bush administration has more than doubled its spending on contracts with public relations firms in the last four years, spending $88 million in fiscal 2004 compared with $37 million in 2001. In its first term, the administration spent $250 million, almost double the $128 million spent in President Clinton’s second term, in itself no small sum.

After the revelations about Armstrong Williams and the other columnists, President Bush said he expected all of his cabinet secretaries to make sure they don’t have supposedly independent journalists on the payroll. “We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda,” he said. “Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet.”
Even if payments to commentators are cut off, the use of VNRs is bound to continue because experience suggests they do get used. A study by Public Relations Review showed that 14 VNRs, most from federal agencies, were aired 4,245 times across the country. With that kind of track record, it’s no wonder state governments are thinking about adopting the same tactic. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration recently sent stations throughout the state a VNR about a proposal to end mandatory meal breaks for hourly workers. The move triggered an outcry and demands for investigation from Democratic opponents of the plan.

One federal agency wants to go even further. The Environmental Protection Agency is considering making grants to engage broadcast meteorologists and anchors in transmitting reports about water quality. The money would go to state, tribal and other public or nonprofit organizations, so long as they obtain a memorandum of understanding from “station managers and news directors to produce and broadcast eight to 10 national, local and/or regional (on-air stories).” According to the published request for proposals, the EPA’s mission is “to improve the delivery of environmental information to the American public by utilizing broadcast meteorologists and other on-camera newscasters (including station anchors) as messengers and transmitters of environmental information.”
What’s wrong with this picture? These efforts to influence the content of independent newscasts undermine the very credibility that makes the newscasts so valuable in the first place. The revelations about government payments to commentators, fake news reports that advocate one side of a policy issue and partisans posing as journalists further erode the public’s trust in news media.

That’s why RTNDA’s ethics committee, chaired by Brian Trauring, news director at WTVG-TV in Toledo, OH, decided it was time to expand on the VNR policy adopted in the early ’90s. The new guidelines will be released later this month at RTNDA@NAB. As drafted by Stacey Woelfel, news director at KOMU-TV in Columbia, MO, the guidelines urge news managers and producers to ask themselves these kinds of questions:

• Can the station obtain the video or audio itself or through editorial channels, such as a network news feed service? Is the video or audio essential to telling the story?
• If the video or audio is used, is its origin clearly identified?
• Did interviews in the release come from independent voices, or from employees of the source of the release? Were challenging questions asked?
• Are there other points of view that need to be included? Have the facts in the material been independently verified?
• Does this material add valuable insight or useful information for our audience?

If your newsroom doesn’t have a written policy about VNRs, it’s probably time to create one. We hope the RTNDA guidelines will be useful. You can find them on the RTNDA website shortly after the convention. Another useful idea is to initiate a discussion in the newsroom to gauge how well your policies are understood. News directors have told me that it’s particularly important to be sure that producers working the weekend or early-morning shifts understand the policies, since they are often in the position of having to grab a story to fill an unexpected hole in the newscast.

The VNR is just one way in which government, corporations and others try to influence the content of news, and this attempt to influence news content is not the exclusive domain of one political party. Journalists must keep a sharp eye out for practices that could undermine the independence of their reporting. Fake news has no place in real news.—Barbara Cochran is president of RTNDA. You can reach her at president@rtnda.org.