Rough+Draft

I wanted to put my rough draft on here because I do not know if I am going in the right direction or straying from a point that I could talk much more about. I am not asking for you to check the spelling errors because I will do that later but I was wondering if you could skim it and let me know if it is looking good so far.

VNR Rough Draft

Video New Releases (VNRs) have become a form of propaganda because newscasts are playing them without source disclosure. This is allowing companies to force information on viewers by promote their company and/or shaping public opinion to believe what they want without knowing who is providing the information. Many big companies use VNRs in newscasts to either promote their company’s products or to slander a competitors company. The government has also been using VNRs to promote their parties views since the Clinton administration. With VNRs being blatant propaganda, ethically, there is no reason VNRs should be legal. VNRs can also be a dangerous thing when people do not know who is disclosing the information “Because the source of the VNR material is rarely identified, news viewers regard VNRs as legitimate news…The audience is unable to judge the credibility of the news story without knowing the source.” (VNR PDF 2 pg221). If the audience is unaware that the information they are watching is gathered and produced by a third party with a vested interest in the company they are making the VNRs for, the message will come across as true and can persuade someone to change their opinion on something even though the information changing their opinion is skewed. An example of a government produced VNR changing public opinion would be a VNR produced by the Bush administration. This was one of the first times the public took notice to the government using VNRs. “ On March 13, 2005, the New York Times published a front-page exposé revealing the prevalent production of VNRs by government agencies and their “pervasive use” by broadcast licensees without disclosing their source” (VNR Usage pg223) The Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists to promote their parties views. One VNR that was talked about in the // New York Times //article was about the Medicare prescription-drug law that the Bush administration passed. “The purpose of the video reports was to praise the new Medicare prescription-drug law” (Faux, Maybe, pg26). This is our government trying to convince people to believe the way they want them to believe. To persuade people into believing the law to be the right thing for our government to do, the video featured footage of President Bush signing the law and receiving a standing ovation for doing so. The goal of this VNR in the Bush administration’s perspective was to get people to believe they made the correct decision in passing the law. Besides the fact that the government is using our tax dollars to advertise their parties views on newscasts, they are trying to shape the way we think about their party in a bias way which is unethical. An example of a company produced VNR would be Trend-Micro, a company that makes identity theft protection produces a VNR on Fox 25 News. The VNR is about fishing, the act to obtain identity theft, and how it is becoming an increasingly concerning problem in the United States. They make the VNR look like any other news story on the newscast and even have the anchors tease the VNR before it goes on air. At the end of the VNR, it promotes Trend-Micro’s product PCCillin Internet Security as a first line defense against fishing and explains how the product works. People who watched this VNR watched it as news, not as a commercial and they might be more inclined to by PCCillin Internet Security not because they want the product, but because the VNR scared them into buying it to keep their Identity safe. This is an unethical way to make someone buy your product because they did not know that the company that makes the identity theft product put the idea of the identity theft threat in their head to begin with. [] Another problem people have with VNRs is the ethics of VNRs. People consider VNRs to be propaganda but because most newscasts do not disclose the source of the information, people do not know what companies use VNRs. Another issue involved with this is whose fault is it for not disclosing the information the news producers or the companies creating VNRs. “The use of (VNR) footage operates in a grey zone between information and surreptitious advertising or hidden propaganda” (VNR Science mag pg870). There are many questions about whose fault it is why VNRs have disclosed information but the truth of the matter is that companies know that this is what happens and yet they still make VNRs knowing it is unethical. With the public becoming more aware of VNRs if they are not stopped, people might stop watching the news on TV to get information altogether. “…Increased knowledge about VNRs without source disclosure measures might harm messages that are not employing the tactic (“false positives”) and lead to a general distrust of all media” (VNR PDR 2 pg220). If people do not know what news they are watching is real or “fake” it will become increasingly harder to watch the news for informative purposes. VNRs are designed to be indistinguishable from other news reports in a TV newscast so although viewers may know they exist, they do not know which segments of their newscasts are actual news and which segments are VNRs. New studies have come out to examine whether or not people who know about VNRs take the news seriously. “How individuals learn to cope with messages relates to their knowledge about the persuasion context itself. The persuasion knowledge model (PKM) examines the general set of beliefs that lay people hold about how persuasion ‘agents’” (VNR PDF 2 pg223) VNRs are extreme cases of persuasion ‘agents’ and “PKM predicts that television news viewers who become aware of VNR practices will be more likely to believe that news is becoming commercialized” (VNR PDF 2 pg224). As the public is becoming more aware of VNRs newscasts are going to have to decide whether the money they receive from the companies is worth the risk of losing viewers due to the distrust they have in the news.