Nashville Station Shilling?
On March 1, 2006, WKRN-2 in Nashville, Tennessee ran a short news feature on the best ways to deduct charitable donations on your income tax report. The segment, which was introduced and read by afternoon anchors Bob Mueller and Anne Holt, featured numerous tax deduction tips and a lengthy soundbite from an accountant.
What viewers didn’t know is that the entire story was built from a video news release (VNR) from Jackson Hewitt, the second-largest tax preparation franchise in the United States. The imitation news story was created by Medialink Worldwide and reported in voiceover by publicist Kate Brookes. As a subtle promotion, the VNR featured over 30 seconds of soundbites from Jackson Hewitt CEO Mike Lister, and ended with a call for viewers to seek out a “qualified tax preparer.”
But:
Unfortunately for Jackson Hewitt, WKRN-2 trimmed over a minute of content from the original VNR, replacing Brookes’ narrative audio with the voice of Anne Holt and removing every mention of Jackson Hewitt. In addition to the loss of promotion, there was a full demotion for Mike Lister. Instead of being identified as the president of his own company, WKRN-2 merely billed him as an “accountant.”
Looks like they took the step of basically not running a commercial for them but they really report info compiled by corporations for the benefit of those corporations? I don’t take issue with that but I think it would lend to their credibility to disclose that sort of stuff.
I wonder if WKRN’s bloggers (linky and thinky) will chime in?
Update: Brittney responds in comments.
May 5th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
We talked about this one morning at the editorial meeting. Everyone got a big lesson about being aware of VNRs masquerading as legitimate packages sent down from the network. WKRN ran one VNR as news, but we were informed that other stations used several or many.
Either way, it’s bad. One time or twenty times.