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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Good point, alpha phi. The government is also paying journalists and talking heads to speak favorably about government programs. There was also the planted stooge at press briefings to lob approved questions to Bush or his press secretary.
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First off, the planted stooge wasn't a member of the press. That's entirely the administration's fault. The media is blameless there. In fact, the media exposed him for what he was.
Any journalist who accepts ANYthing to cover a story other than his company-provided paycheck should be run out of town on a rail. And I'm not just talking about the big payoffs. I won't even eat a donut if someone I'm covering offers it to me because I won't allow even the appearance of potential conflicts of interest.
As for VNR's I use them all the time. If I need video of, say, Bethesda doctors for a story I'm doing, I might grab a VNR, get that video, and use it in my story. I personally would not air a VNR unedited. At worst I would do my story around the VNR but I would go out and find the other side to whatever the issue is and include that in my piece.
But you are correct in that many stations run them unedited, and unverified. The reason is simple - they gotta fill that time slot and upper management is so chintzy with budgets that they simply don't have the staff to go out and get their own stories. It's wrong and it's disgusting, but it's a reality of the business.
Ethical stations will not do this - and if they do air a VNR they will make it patently clear who produced it.
I've actually been known to air VNR's as an example of something someone's complaing about - turns the objective of the VNR on its head
