‘Fake news' permeating Canadian media, experts warn

VANCOUVER (CUP) -- "Fake news" may not be as prominent here as it is in the United States, but many media experts believe that Canadian television media outlets are guilty of running prerecorded public relations segments as authentic news programming.

“We know that these [video news releases] are slickly produced,” said Alan Cassels, a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria. “What we don't know is how much of the VNRs are actually being put onto news programs in cable networks across the country.”

Cassels was unable to cite any numbers as to how frequently these segments are being run in Canada, but said he was in the process of creating a proposal that would allow him to study the issue.

Everything to this point, he said, has been anecdotal.

Video news releases (VNRs) are press release new segments made by PR companies and distributed to TV news stations. Subject matter varies, but the most popular stories tend to be in the field of consumer reporting.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a media watchdog in the United States, an average of 10,000 to 15,000 VNRs are created every year.

The group released a report in April that revealed 77 local TV news stations in the United States ran a series of 36 VNRs. In some cases, the study said, news programs were running entire VNR segments untouched.

“It's anti-journalism,” said Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy and co-author of the report, which created a media maelstrom and a subsequent investigation by the Federal Communications Commission. “It's the antithesis of journalism.”

Farsetta said these unedited news segments set a dangerous precedent for journalism because in most cases, the source of the video isn't disclosed.

It is “an inherently deceptive public relations technique” that misleads viewers to think its genuine impartial reporting, she said.

While most of the research Farsetta has done has focused on the U.S., she said that there are VNRs that are put out in Canada. Many of the public relations firms, she said, offer them in Canada.

Ira Basin, a CBC radio producer, can attest to that. While working on a documentary that involved VNRs, he stumbled across a CBC employee who used to work for Global in Calgary.

“She was my whistleblower,” he said. “She spilled the beans about how they used to just take stuff from drug companies and use it on the air.”

Canada News Wire (CNW), one of the largest suppliers of VNRs, claimed that most news stories contain, on average, 22 seconds of VNR footage, said Basin.

But this statistic isn't meaningful because it doesn't clarify what portions are provided by PR companies and what parts are original.

“It's a slippery slope and we're starting to go down that,” he said.

David Beers, editor of the Tyee, an online publication, attributed the tightening of the purse strings in TV newsrooms to the growth of the industry.

“In the television industry, and in other corporate media settings, there's ever-increasing pressure to exact more profit from the operation,” he said. “News is just seen as another business . . . and what's being eroded is the connection between the labour-intensive reporting and audience building.”

If a VNR clip is going to be run, it should be sourced, he noted.

“Put a disclaimer on it and it makes everyone wonder about it,” said Beers, adding that this also happen in print media. Advertorials, full-page advertisements that are designed to look similar to the stories in that particular magazine or newspaper, are used frequently and can be deceiving without a disclaimer.

Douglas Simon, the president and CEO of DS Simon Productions, a PR video firm based out of New York, said VNRs are nothing more than information that is provided to viewers. While most of its business is U.S.-based, the company has provided content to Canadian media in the past.

Simon wasn't sure why these videos created such a controversy but said “any content that's provided to stations goes through journalist gatekeepers before it makes it on the air.”

“VNRs can't substitute as real news, for the very simple reason that they are not news,” he said. “They don't become part of a new story until a journalist decides that it adds value to its viewers.”

Gregg Carmichael, assignment producer for CTV news in Vancouver, vehemently denied that CTV uses uncredited VNRs. If VNRs are used, he said, it is always attributed to the respective companies.

“The video may be incorporated into a story we do but it's clearly identified when the video comes up,” said Carmichael. “We would go into that story on that subject and maybe there is some footage of video that we could not obtain when we did that story.”

Diane Collins, a news director for Channel M, a multicultural station in Vancouver, echoed Carmichael's thoughts.

“Nothing would go on unfiltered,” she said. “Not a snowball's chance in you-know-where.”

Basin, however, disagrees, saying the videos wouldn't be made if they weren't used.

“It makes no sense that they [PR companies] would do it if people didn't use it.”