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Fake News
Posted by Clare
(6698 views)      [E-Mail link]
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[News Media] |
| WBRZ airs 'fake' news, says media watchdog The Center for Media Democracy and Free Press, a nonpartisan media policy group, cite Baton Rouge's WBRZ as a culprit in a 10-month investigation of a national "fake news" epidemic. Specifically, the sting focused on corporate-sponsored videos passed off as news. Investigators found 77 TV stations, including WBRZ, actively disguising sponsored content from General Motors, Intel, Pfizer, Capital One and others to make it look like their own reporting. More than a third of the time, stations aired fake news in its entirety as their own, the report said. |
Channel 2 was among six stations airing an optimistic news feature on ethanol plants earlier this year. The video was funded by Siemens AG, a global engineering firm doing business with two-thirds of U.S. ethanol plants. According to the report, the Baton Rouge station "blended the story into their newscast, replacing all visuals with network-branded graphics and introducing (the reporter/publicist) as if she were on their news team." Chuck Bark, Channel 2 news manager, counters the report. He says the Siemens story was legitimate, provided information relevant to viewers and did not promote products. He says a story should be judged on its merit, and not be excluded just because it was generated by a corporation. But the media watchdogs disagree with the use of corporate information as news. "It's shocking to see how product placement moves secretly unfiltered from the boardroom to the newsroom and then straight into our living rooms," says Dianne Farsetta, co-author of the report. "Local TV broadcasts, the most popular news source in the United States, frequently air (video news releases) without fact-checking, conducting their own reporting or disclosing that the footage has been provided and sponsored by big corporations." |
(Jeremy Alford) - Daily-report.com |
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