Latest VNR Fine Again Shows FCC Wants Material Disclosed Even When Stations Not Paid
The latest and one of the FCC few video news release fines on a 2006 complaint purporting to show widespread use of VNRs on broadcast TV again demonstrates stations must disclose who provides the material even if it is aired during news programs and no money changes hands. A News Corp. unit was fined $4,000 Friday by the Enforcement Bureau for not telling viewers of KMSP Minneapolis that the station didn’t get on its own 12 different shots of General Motors convertibles used in a segment on that type of car that didn’t mention autos from any other carmaker. The bureau disagreed with Fox TV Stations that it’s entitled to use such material without identification because KMSP wasn’t paid for running the VNR and because the outlet paid another unit of News Corp. to use the material through participation in a news service.
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The fine comes after many stations either changed disclosure practices or educated all staff about existing rules so they'd be consistently followed in the wake of scrutiny, said a lawyer for one of the complainants and an attorney representing news directors. The complaint five years ago by Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy led to few actual and several proposed fines. Another station that also got a $4,000 proposed penalty the same day as KMSP paid the forfeiture on April 20, a commission spokesman said. Access.1’s WMGM-TV Wildwood, N.J., showed a VNR during a health segment about the Zicam cold remedy. An executive at that station didn’t reply to a message seeking comment.
Many stations made sure they were following the letter of the law in recent years, said Free Press Policy Counsel Corie Wright and Kathleen Kirby, counsel for the Radio TV Digital News Association. RTDNA opposed the bureau’s proposed fine to KMSP (CD March 25 p6) because it interferes with free speech. The bureau’s forfeiture order Friday said it’s not revisiting an earlier conclusion that such fines don’t run afoul of the First Amendment. A Fox spokeswoman declined to comment. The company must pay it by July 18 or face a possible lawsuit if the commission persuades the Department of Justice to pursue the penalty in court.
It’s a “slippery slope” of “government making a decision on editorial content,” Kirby said. “The Fox fine troubles me because the government is having a look at how Fox took video from a source that is really the video equivalent of a paper press release. There would be no problem with a newspaper doing that. And the FCC is making a determination going to how the newsroom gathered their content,” added Kirby, a lawyer at Wiley Rein. RTDNA advises members to identify all VNRs, and after the complaints were made five years ago many stations reiterated to employees that it’s “the right thing to do,” she said. The group’s guidelines for such situations are at http://xrl.us/bkzgw9.
"Contrary to Fox’s argument, the Bureau did not impermissibly scrutinize the content of station KMSP-TV’s news broadcast or dictate what that news programming must include, as explained in detail in the notice of liability,” the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bkzgxd). “The Commission’s investigation and enforcement action do not prohibit Fox from using the VNR material or require Fox to do anything more than make the required sponsorship identification announcement for the use of VNR material in this case."
The fine to Fox is “low” yet “notable” because the commission didn’t back off after the company challenged the proposed penalty, Wright said. “The heat and the publicity around it, exposing what for many people is a pretty shady practice, I would like to think has had some impact on how broadcasters are operating,” she said of the group’s complaint on VNRs. “It is still happening, and the practices are certainly still questionable,” though they may be less frequent, Wright said. She and others noted that last month’s report on the future of media noted the source of VNRs isn’t always disclosed.