Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Three Los Angeles TV stations are fingered in a Center for Media and Democracy report out today critical of news operations that package video releases from sources and PR agencies as "news."
* 9/27/05 - KABC incorporated a two-minute fake news story from Quest Diagnostics about a new allergy test for children. Every fact and frame of the story came from the makers of the allergy test in question. http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/vnr2* 11/9/05 KTLA's "CyberGuy" Kurt Knutsson lifted a software company VNR and passed it off as his own investigative report. Worse, Tribune
aired it in multiple cities across the US. http://www.prwatch.org/ fakenews/vnr4* 1/27/06 - KCBS ran a story about a child-safe search engine that was secretly funded by the makers of the search engine itself.
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/vnr17
Co-author of the study is Daniel Price, previously known to LA Observed as the author of Slick, a pretty funny L.A.-based send-up of Big PR and the media that eat it up. The novel describes the creation of fake news via video, and you might remember that in 2004 Price himself set up a fake website and group, Independent Publicists of Los Angeles, to make a point and promote the book.