CMD's 'Fake TV News' Report Fuels FCC Investigation

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The Washington Post reports, "The Federal Communications Commission has sent letters to 77 television broadcasters, asking whether their stations had properly labeled 'video news releases' ... before broadcasting them. ... The FCC inquiry follows an April study by the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy that found that 77 stations had aired video news releases without properly labeling them. ... The survey's 'fake news' spots, as the center calls them, were produced by corporations, such as Panasonic Corp. and General Motors Corp. and trade groups. ... '[T]he investigation is really important because otherwise stations won't take seriously the disclosure laws that are already on the books,' the study's co-author, Diane Farsetta, said in an interview. 'The current practice is such a flagrant breach of the disclosure laws, we're happy that it looks like the FCC is putting some teeth in them.'" The ongoing fake TV news scandal is being widely covered in print press such as Bloomberg, Reuters, Ad Age and others. (Maybe TV news outlets are waiting to receive a VNR about the FCC investigation?)