FCC wakes up and smells the coffee re: Fake News

One station was a Fox affiliate, the other an NBC affiliate. From SaveTheNews.org:

The FCC fined a pair of television stations for airing commercials masquerading as news segments. These video news releases (VNRs) are advertisements produced to be virtually indistinguishable from news stories and distributed to television news departments, and they violate the FCC’s longstanding “sponsorship identification” rules when they are aired without disclosing their origins. 

The fines came in response to a 2006 complaint filed by Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy, which exposed the rampant use of PR firm-generated VNRs disguised as news programming. The groups filed a follow-up report and complaints in 2007, further detailing the trend. Overall the groups cited the use of over 100 undisclosed VNRs.

Jesus, it took them a while to act on this crap wouldn't you say? The fines were minuscule of course, Four grand each.

The stations used the propaganda as if it was actual news. The violation they ran afoul of was disclosure:

The FCC imposed the fines against the licensees of Minneapolis Fox affiliate KMSP-TV and South New Jersey NBC affiliate WMGM-TV for violating FCC rules that requires broadcasters to disclose a sponsor in a broadcast in which “money, service or other valuable consideration is directly or indirectly paid, or promised to or charged or accepted by the station.”

Hopefully this trend by the FCC will continue, as I am quite sure those two stations are not the only ones using this brand of fuckery to dupe their audience. Moving at a snails pace however gives these assholes plenty of time to continue showing infomercial-like pieces as valid news.

Obama Admin backs another Bush Admin position.

Holy-fuckamoly...when will the Obama Administration stop supporting many of the bullshit moves and beliefs of the Bush Administration? From an Editor & Publisher article:

In a surprise move, the Democrat-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Wednesday defended changes to media cross-ownership rules adopted in the George W. Bush administration that loosened somewhat the ban on same-market common ownership of a newspaper and broadcast station.

Under Chairman Julius Genachowski and with a 3-2 Democratic majority, the commission had been expected to take a hard line on media cross-ownership policy.

But in a filing with the U.S. appeals court that had put those rules on hold, the FCC affirmed agency’s 2007 decision under former Chairman Kevin Martin and the Republican majority on the agency that modified the 35-year-old ban to allow newspapers in the biggest markets to own either one radio station or one television broadcast station, but not the top-rated outlets.

But Michael Copps, an FCC member and Democrat was none to happy with this latest fuckery:

“Rather than bemoan what has happened today, however, I intend to redouble my efforts to move this issue to the commission’s front burner where it deserves to be,” Copps said.  “We should have changed our media policy by now.  We change it in the months just ahead,” he added in the statement, which put the word “must” in bold italics.

Three cheers for Mr. Copps...get em dude! Hold them accountable!  Read the entire article here at E&P.