Category: media relations

Feds investigate ‘fake news’ (aka VNRs)

In a move that could spell trouble for purveyors of video news releases (VNRs), the Federal Communications Commission is investigating 77 TV stations about whether they “failed to tell viewers about the sponsors behind corporate video releases presented as news, a practice criticized by watchdog groups who say showing ‘fake news’ is an illegal breach of trust with local communities” (Mediaweek story, via FlackLife, who doesn’t like VNRs).

Jonathan Adelstein of the FCC says: “The public has a legal right to know who seeks to persuade them so they can make up their own minds about the credibility of the information presented. Shoddy practices make it difficult for viewers to tell the difference between news and propaganda.”

So where does the fault lie? With the news organizations, or with the PR agencies and offices that send them out? We’ve used VNRs a few times, but with mixed results. Small-market TV stations that don’t have the staff to travel the 60-100 miles to our campus to cover an event appreciate the footage. Big-city stations will have nothing to do with them.
These days, we don’t even try. We’ve concluded that VNRs just aren’t worth the time and energy they require. When we send out news releases to TV stations and have some video available, we let them know. But usually if they want to do the story, they send their own crews.

Over the past year, we’ve been setting up accounts and posting promotional video on all the high-profile video sites (YouTube, MySpace, Google Video and Current TV) and on our video website.
How about you? How do you get video out to the masses?

Web 2.0 on the agenda for CASE conference

As co-chair for next month’s CASE Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals, I’m thrilled with the lineup of web 2.0 topics on the agenda.

Those of us who do PR and marketing for colleges and universities need to pay more attention to how web 2.0 is changing the nature of our jobs. So I’m glad to see CASE (that’s the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) taking web 2.0 issues seriously.

My co-chair (Lynette Brown-Sow of the Community College of Philadelphia) and I have worked hard to recruit some of the top experts in online communication and marketing for this conference. The faculty for the three-day session (Sept. 13-15 in Philadelphia) include:

  • Karine Joly of the popular blog on marketing, PR and the web, collegewebeditor.com. Karine is also a web editor for a liberal arts school on the East Coast and writes for University Business magazine. She’s taken time out of her busy schedule to do a couple of sessions during the conference.
  • Joe Hice, associate vice president of marketing and public relations for the University of Florida. Joe and his staff at Florida are doing some creative things with marketing and the web, and he brings a corporate marketing background to the job. He’ll be co-presenting with Karine Joly on some web 2.0 stuff and also sharing some marketing lessons from the corporate world.
  • A couple of real live bloggers from the Philly area: Daniel Rubin, a Philadelphia Inquirer journalist-turned-blogger who writes about pop culture, politics, technology and anything with a Philadelphia connection in his Blinq blog, and Dave Ralis, another refugee from journalism who blogs about sports for Phillyburbs.com, contributes to the community blog PhillyFuture, and occasionally posts at his personal blog. I’ll be joining these two guys for a fun panel discussion about the morphing of blogging and journalism.

Those are just a few of the folks who will be presenting. We’ve also got great speakers on marketing (such as Larry Lauer of Texas Christian University), crisis communications and the Solutions for Our Future initiative to promote the value of higher education.

This promises to be a terrific conference, with lots of time for discussion, interaction and learning from each other as well as from our presenters. If you haven’t already signed up, you should do so now. Or if you have any questions about the conference or any of the sessions, feel free to email me: andrew DOT careaga AT gmail DOT com.