This has been bugging me for a while.. I live in SW Ontario and I don't have cable or sattelite so I just get broadcast....
The news I can get is VERY poor (of course I use the 'net, but sometimes it's nice to see footage of stuff, you know??)
I read a piece about how often US news stations use corporate or government funded VNRs to fill out broadcasts, most often in the "health" section of the program, and that there were some problems with odd practices on the part of the broadcasters.. stuff like not airing the "side effects" section (required in all releases of such nature) of new "wonder drugs" and, very often, either neglecting to identify the the speaker as a corporate/government spokesperson, or even going so far as to identify such paid PR flaks as actual reporters for the news agency in question....
I am going to see if I can't get some sort of action started against this practice, as CH news and Global news (in this area at least) are,from what I can tell from my experience, guilty of all the offences I mentioned and likely more..
I used to just think it was a crappy practice, but with the rise in propaganda in so many sectors of our lives I think that it might be time to actually get started fixing the problem before it is too engrained to even mention without being called a "conspiracy theorist" (missed the boat on a lotof other stuf, that way, can't let it happen this time)
Does anyone know if there are any laws or anything specifically related to this?? Or who one could contact, in what manner, in order to get SOMETHING done about this??
Anyways, just wanted to toss this out here, and I'm curious to read the thoughts of others about this phenomenon
The news I can get is VERY poor (of course I use the 'net, but sometimes it's nice to see footage of stuff, you know??)
I read a piece about how often US news stations use corporate or government funded VNRs to fill out broadcasts, most often in the "health" section of the program, and that there were some problems with odd practices on the part of the broadcasters.. stuff like not airing the "side effects" section (required in all releases of such nature) of new "wonder drugs" and, very often, either neglecting to identify the the speaker as a corporate/government spokesperson, or even going so far as to identify such paid PR flaks as actual reporters for the news agency in question....
I am going to see if I can't get some sort of action started against this practice, as CH news and Global news (in this area at least) are,from what I can tell from my experience, guilty of all the offences I mentioned and likely more..
I used to just think it was a crappy practice, but with the rise in propaganda in so many sectors of our lives I think that it might be time to actually get started fixing the problem before it is too engrained to even mention without being called a "conspiracy theorist" (missed the boat on a lotof other stuf, that way, can't let it happen this time)
Does anyone know if there are any laws or anything specifically related to this?? Or who one could contact, in what manner, in order to get SOMETHING done about this??
Anyways, just wanted to toss this out here, and I'm curious to read the thoughts of others about this phenomenon
