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Recently, we've been hearing a lot about the P.R. tool called the "video news release," or VNR. It's a sponsored module designed to look like real news, and distributed to TV stations in the hopes that producers will insert them into newscasts. But lately, some VNR producers are producing their own newscasts, and buying airtime so there's no doubt they'll run. Brooke talks to Broadcasting & Cable columnist Joe Mandese about the latest wrinkle in fake news.
The wonderful world of television could soon be getting more colorful. And we're not talking about dirty language. A company called Genoa Technologies has figured out a way to add cyan and yellow to TV's traditional palate of red, green and blue. The result? Instead of the current paltry 16.8 million colors, monitors will be able to display a trillion colors. A trillion colors!!!
For the past two months, one of the hottest prime-time attractions in Iraq has been a reality TV show called "Terror in the Hands of Justice." The show airs twice a day on the state-run Al Iraqiya, and features captured insurgents staring into the camera and confessing to their crimes. Financial Times Baghdad correspondent Steve Negus tells Bob about the show's impact on Iraqi society.
On March 31st, 2004, with Democratic drumbeater Al Franken behind the microphone, the openly abrasive, unabashedly liberal Air America Radio was born. Advertised as an antidote to just about everything else on the dial, the network's inaugural year was one of turbulent staff shakeups and near economic collapse - all captured intimately on hundreds of hours of tape and distilled into the new HBO documentary Left of the Dial. Filmmaker Patrick Farrelly tells Brooke how Air America survived, and CEO Danny Goldberg talks about its future.
Lest you thought Air America had a monopoly on liberal talk radio, tune in sometime to The Ed Schultz Show and you'll hear a self-described meat-eatin', gun-totin' pull-no-punches progressive, broadcasting from Middle America. Schultz is a former conservative who, after a change of heart, began preaching his own brand of political gospel in North Dakota. If you're not paying close attention, he sounds a lot like another radio talk-show host. Big Eddie tells Brooke what makes good radio and why Democrats need to get in the game.
The hundreds of government-produced fake news packages are part of a $254 million P.R. effort by the Bush Administration. But that money would be going straight down the drain were it not for the many local affiliates willing to air the spots in their newscasts. Brooke talks to Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio & Television News Directors' Association, about broadcasters' complicity in the dissemination of fake news.
If you rely on cable TV reporters for news, you're accustomed to taking their word for it. A new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that only a quarter of the stories on cable news channels contain two or more identifiable sources. That's compared with more than 80% on the front pages of newspapers. And the networks don't just ask viewers to trust them with sourcing. As PEJ's senior associate Dante Chinni tells Brooke, many TV reporters and anchors feel compelled to, well, opine.
We all know that TV is mind numbing. Try watching 12 at a time. For a week straight. OK don't. You might not have time for NPR, let alone meals. Also, you'd just be copying Jack Lechner, who wrote about his television immersion in the book "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You: One Man, Seven Days, 12 Televisions." Given Mr. Lechner's willingness to give up his life for the media, we at On The Media thought it would be interesting to ask Mr. Lechner to listen to 18 hours of radio taken from 1939. Caution: Your results may vary.
