Holy Sh#3 of the week... Fake news widespread

[igor]

This is from Autobloggreen.com

Fake News promotes ethanol - Democracy Now! reports

Posted Apr 22nd 2006 7:15PM by Sebastian Blanco


Democracy Now!, a daily news program with Amy Goodman, recently took a look at Video News Releases (VNRs) put out by corporations and government agencies that local news programs often run as normal reporting. VNRs are biased, one-sided pieces of fake news that get passed off as reporting done by local reporters. What caught my ear is that the first clip Democracy Now! played from a VNR promoting ethanol production.
Democracy Now! was looking in depth at a recent Center for Media and Democracy study called “Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed.” Democracy Now! reported that at least five TV stations used the ethanol fake news/VNR from Siemens (produced by the PR company Medialink) in January. The VNR promoted Siemens’ automation systems used at ethanol plants around the country. Medialink used publicist Kate Brookes acting like a reporter to “report” the story. I have zero tolerance for this type of corporate malarkey. Using ethanol in automobiles is a promising technology, and citizens need real reporting to learn about the issue, not ventriloquist dummies saying whatever the highest bidder tells them to say.
PR Watch has a good round up of the ethanol VNR, along with the videos of the original VNR and its use on the local stations here. You can read more and watch the Democracy Now! show here

HERE ARE THE LINKS:
Autobloggreen.com:http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/04...y-now-reports/
DemocracyNow: http://www.democracynow.org/article..../04/06/1432239
PR Watch: http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

This thing is unvelievable... no wonder I prefer reading Reuters online to any other news... WOW

BTW this is semi auto related since Ethanol plants and GM are some of the authors of the fake news. ... so feel free to move it to OT if you think it not related enough

Igor

[Foc]

Makes you kinda wonder exactly how much of this is going on...and what really is REAL news?

[p0sitivevibez]

The radical left wing conspiracy is at work here

[igor]

Interpretation of this report is leftis conspirasy thinking..

the report is scientific and true... and disturbing.. and if we soud say, it is right wing conspiracy, since all the clients are corporations.

Igor

[Mr-914]

The sad truth about ethanol is that the planet has enough arable land to make transport fuel or food, not both. Unfortunately, that truth is never reported in TV stories. I just watched one of these last night on CNN. The reporter was suggesting that we could be like the often-sited Brasil and run 40% ethanol in all of our cars. What the reporter failed to mention was the surplus of crops in Brasil. Here, we can only afford to burn a little extra corn off (and even then, only subsidised corn...oh wait, does that blow it as a left-wing conspiracy?).

The second sad truth is that journalists are as lazy as the rest of us. Why do research when you can just sit back and receive the story?

[whynotthinkwhynot]

Originally posted by Mr-914
The second sad truth is that journalists are as lazy as the rest of us. Why do research when you can just sit back and receive the story?

Great point
".. and where apathy is the national disease there is no end in sight"- Pennywise
"The Democrats are on the inside what the Republicans are on the outside."- Jello Biafra

Video New Releases seem to be the latest corporate attempt to quell public fears that the tree hugging leftist communist eco-terrorist movements could have a good point or two. I guess the "feel good" commercials aired by oil companies and pharmaceutical companies just weren't getting the message across. It would shame me to live in a country where the sort of things we accuse the rest of the world of doing are the things we do- but that's humanity for ya. On that note, I'll save my shame for when I actually see something like this- not that I don't think it's happened, but I have to see things for myself.

It would be logical for us to take a good luck at alternative fuels especially when terrorists organizations who have sworn to kill every last American are funded by each and every one of us every time we fill up at the pump. Logical and US government in the same sentence? For that I quote someone more well known and less of a lefty.

"You can always count on the United States to do the right thing...


....after they have exhausted every alternative option."- Winston Churchill


Wanna see some really scary stuff Igor... go read some right wing blogs, columns, articles. etc. One FF showed me a slide show of a vote registration march where a girl wearing a Hardee's shirt was said to be a communist. I think there's a lot of people who would like to see the fear of anything out of the "norm" inflame our society like it did during the McCarthy era.