VNRs: What’s All The Fuss?
16th September 2006 by Eric Bergman, ABC, APR
I must admit that I’m having difficulty understanding what all the fuss is about when it comes to video news releases (VNRs). Last month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission mailed letters to owners of more than 70 television stations to ask about their use of VNRs.
In the land of constitutionality (and amendments thereto), I find it fascinating that a government agency would ask about information relating to an individual’s or organization’s desire to exercise its right to cover news in any way it sees fit. But, beyond that, I think the FCC is about 50 years too late.
If they were on time, they would have been chastising any news outlet that chose to publish a news release from any organization (including the FCC) verbatim. And any slaps on the wrist to news organizations (which were mostly of the print variety when the news release was polished up and taken over by PR professionals as an acceptable tool in the exchange of information) would have taken place … well, at least before the start of the second “war to end all wars.”
Who cares if a news organization uses video news releases to fill its time slots? I certainly don’t. Let’s face it, do you know who shot the footage for any items you see on the news? Do you know if that person has a particular bias for or against the organization featured in the news item? Do you believe everything you see on television? Was the reporter, camera operator or producer even an employee of the news outlet, or a freelancer used from time to time as a means of filling content without have to add bodies to the salaries line in the income statement?
The fact of the matter is that power and responsibility are shifting in the information age, from the sender of information to the receiver of it. People today are becoming sophisticated viewers, listeners and readers of information. To exercise their responsibility, it’s important that they take what they read, see and hear with, as the Romans would have said more than 2,000 years ago, a grain of salt. And that’s a healthy process.
It’s also a healthy process when the Center for Media and Democracy publishes a study entitled “Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed.” But, in my mind at least, we’re edging into unhealthy territory when a government organization demands to know where a news item comes from.
Consuming news information is a buyer beware issue the world over. If you don’t like (or don’t trust) the news you’re getting from one outlet, find another. Just as government has no place in our bedrooms, it has no place in our newsrooms either.
September 17th, 2006 at 5:03 am
But are audiences sophisticated viewers, that is judging the merit of what they see? Or are they looking for entertainment and the bottom line of ‘tell me what to think.’
Based on my own observations, audiences don’t appreciate the rigor of balanced and unbiased journalism in most media. If this same audience doesn’t question the source of a piece of information or a story, then the audience members are reduced to like or disliking individual items, based on subjective measures. So that every piece of data or item becomes engaged in a popularity contest. And with this intrinsic power of video images… It’s a scary world in the not-so-distant future.
That’s the fuss. As a people, we are losing our edge to discern, our curiousity to understand, our energy to question. That receptive state combined with fake news of any variety, but which has a tremendous power on TV, leads to an unhealthy society.
September 18th, 2006 at 6:20 am
Good thoughts, Judy.
I agree with you. I don’t think audiences appreciate the rigor of balanced journalism. But they are starting to sort out the truth from the half-truths and outright lies.
In that environment, those media that help them, regardless of from where the information originated, will thrive.
That’s the issue we need to focus on in today’s world of buyer beware; not where an item originally came from.
Thanks for contributing.
September 19th, 2006 at 5:11 am
While I agree most viewers are not savvy enough to evaluate news for themselves, we also have to accept that in the U.S. news market there are very few journalists left, in any meduim. Younger viewers have not had the experience of viewing TV news prior to the era of “pretty faces” reading whatever is put in front of them.
Having a government agency trying to control what the news readers introduce is just one more indication of our current administration’s attempts to filter information through their lenses. VNRs are just a blip compared to the other sources of information we need to take with a grain of salt.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:27 am
The truth is that unbiased journalism doesn’t exist anymore — and nowhere is that more true than TV news. The notion of the public airwaves and “equal time” have gone the way of the dinosaur. It seems to me that in attacking VNRs, the FCC is trying to find a scapegoat for its own inadequacies.