Wednesday, November 15, 2006
WTOK: A Beacon of Truth
On May 31, 2006, WTOK in Meridian Mississippi ran a news story on global warning. From the Center for Media and Democracy: WTOK-11 anchor Tom Daniels introduced the segment by saying, “Hurricane seasons for the next 20 years could be severe. But don’t blame global warming.” Viewers were not told that what followed was nothing but hot air, paid by and scripted for oil company lobbyists. In fact the report was a Video News Release (VNR): a propaganda tool that corporations, government agencies and non-governmental agencies use to push their agendas. VNRs are video clips that are indistinguishable from traditional news clips and are sometimes screened unedited by television stations without the identification of the producer or sponsor. The VNR WTOK ran was titled “Global Warming: Hot Air?” TCS Daily a website then published by DCI Group funded it. DCI Group is a PR and lobbying firm and one of its clients is ExxonMobil. So basically WTOK’s viewing audience was getting an infomercial from ExxonMobil. What gets me about WTOK’s action was that they took the original narration of the VNR and had the WTOK anchor rerecord it, making it look and sound like the staff at WTOK did this “news story” by themselves. You can see the original VNR and WTOK's version of it.
VNRs are a national problem. In April 2006 the Center for Media and Democracy issued a report that 77 local new stations were using VNRs. In August 2006 the FCC began an investigation of the 77 stations. The Center for Media and Democracy continued investigating the story and discovered that 46 stations were still using them. Most of these stations actively conceal the fact that these aren’t news clips. Now why would these stations take part in such an unethical and dubious enterprise? Here’s a shocker, BENJAMINS. The VNRs are free, instead of spending money to send a reporter and news crew to report a story; you can just put a VNR on and pretend like its news. There could be ideological reasons behind it too, but money is always the safe bet.
You might ask why I’m specifically writing about WTOK when there are other stations doing this. Well it’s because I’m originally from Meridian Mississippi, so when I saw that WTOK was involved, it really peaked my interest. There is a good chance your local station has run a VNR and you didn’t know it. How can we trust what the media is reporting to us? These last six years have really shaken my faith in the mainstream press. I'm sure your trust has been shaken too. With the NY Times helping the Bush administration lead us to war, to WTOK telling an audience that was badly affected by Hurricane Katrina that global warming is a joke and isn’t affecting our weather, well I think I’m sticking with the Weekly World News.
If you want to do something about this go to Freepress.
VNRs are a national problem. In April 2006 the Center for Media and Democracy issued a report that 77 local new stations were using VNRs. In August 2006 the FCC began an investigation of the 77 stations. The Center for Media and Democracy continued investigating the story and discovered that 46 stations were still using them. Most of these stations actively conceal the fact that these aren’t news clips. Now why would these stations take part in such an unethical and dubious enterprise? Here’s a shocker, BENJAMINS. The VNRs are free, instead of spending money to send a reporter and news crew to report a story; you can just put a VNR on and pretend like its news. There could be ideological reasons behind it too, but money is always the safe bet.
You might ask why I’m specifically writing about WTOK when there are other stations doing this. Well it’s because I’m originally from Meridian Mississippi, so when I saw that WTOK was involved, it really peaked my interest. There is a good chance your local station has run a VNR and you didn’t know it. How can we trust what the media is reporting to us? These last six years have really shaken my faith in the mainstream press. I'm sure your trust has been shaken too. With the NY Times helping the Bush administration lead us to war, to WTOK telling an audience that was badly affected by Hurricane Katrina that global warming is a joke and isn’t affecting our weather, well I think I’m sticking with the Weekly World News.
If you want to do something about this go to Freepress.
