Here’s more followup to the Center for Media & Democracy’s report on the use of Video News Releases last week.
The LA Daily News picked up the story and reported that one of the culprit TV stations found to use VNRs is in that second biggest TV market in the country – KABC.
They reported: “Last September, Channel 7, the ABC affiliate for Los Angeles, aired a story during the 5 p.m. Tuesday newscast about a blood test to find allergies in kids. It looked like a legit news story, with interviews, graphics, cute kids and a voice-over by a Channel 7 news reporter. It wasn’t, though. The report was a canned video news release, or VNR, produced for and paid by Quest Diagnostics, a company that runs labs around the country that do this very sort of testing. There was no disclosure by the station that the piece was an advertorial.”
KCBS and KTLA in Los Angeles were also found to run VNRs without disclosing it.
In all, the report found 36 VNRs airing on 77 stations all over the country, and every newspaper in those cities should be telling the story, as the LA Daily News did.
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Why fact-checking is not enough to prevent the spread of misleading health care news...@HealthNewsRevu https://t.co/fzC2JbDYGV
Simply fact-checking an article "fails to capture questions of nuance and context that arise – or should arise – whenever evaluating medical evidence." https://t.co/HrYkGj12q1
We wrote only about efforts that label themselves as “fact-checking” projects. You’ll see that if you read the piece.
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like