Is there "good" fake news?

On February 2 and 3, some 180 people attended the True Spin Conference in Denver, Colorado, billed as "a PR conference for progressives." The event was organized by Jason Salzman, who runs Cause Communications, a small Denver PR firm. At the conference, Diane Farsetta from the Madison-based PR Watch, insisted that progressives should not use video or audio news releases, unless they are labeled. Of course TV and radio stations desire these releases because they use them as "real" news. Farsetta says we must do better than just emulate the right's successful, but underhanded PR tactics. It's an interesting topic. Here's Farsetta's take:

In my presentation, I cautioned against progressive groups trying to replicate the U.S. political right's approach to communications (which David Brock detailed in "The Republican Noise Machine" and CMD's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton addressed in "Banana Republicans"). While effective in the short term, many of these tactics undermine the integrity of news media and the quality of public debates -- both of which are integral to achieving progressive social change.

After describing recent examples of obviously deceptive tactics -- PR firms engaging in pay for play, creating "astroturf" groups, undermining legitimate opposition, and otherwise giving misleading impressions of their (usually corporate) clients -- I turned to fake news. Unfortunately, more progressive groups seem to be using audio news releases (ANRs) and video news releases (VNRs). For example, the U.S. Green Party issued several VNRs in response to Bush's State of the Union address this year.

According to academic studies, industry monitoring, and anecdotes from media personnel -- in fact, according to all accounts, with the exception of PR executives' Senate testimony -- television newsrooms airing VNRs rarely disclose their source to news audiences. I explained that, in order to honor the public's right to know where its "news" really comes from, CMD calls for mandated disclosure of all broadcast material provided by third parties.I urged progressive groups putting out ANRs or VNRs to ensure the public's right to know by including disclosures within the broadcast material itself. In the case of VNRs, this could be done by displaying the organization's logo and / or the words "footage provided by X" throughout the video. Their groups' goals are lofty and important, I told the audience, but the PR tactics used to further those goals must also be principled.

The audience's response was polite but unenthusiastic -- perhaps because they weren't expecting media ethics to be addressed in a workshop titled "Do Progressives Suck at PR?" The other panelists, two media critics writing for print outlets and the director of a public interest media center, mostly focused on the do's and don'ts of contacting reporters. As the first panel speaker, though, I was able to nudge the discussion slightly towards potential clashes between progressive values and PR tactics.

In one-on-one conversations, a few conference attendees said that their groups use VNRs. "But we put out the good VNRs," one videographer told me. When I responded, "The only good VNR is a labeled one," he countered, "But the TV stations like to pretend it's their own reporting." He's right -- but so is CMD.

Progressive groups desperately trying to publicize important information, analyses and policy proposals through compromised news media do have to make tough choices. But there are options -- including working with independent, alternative media -- that received little attention at the conference.