The Public's Right to Know
Filed in archive Social Enterprise by Miche on May 03, 2007

Between the press being censored by the government, and so-called news on the television being flooded with fake news, there really isn't anywhere to turn - except the blogosphere.
There's another problem with the press too, on the matter of ethics and money. More and more publications are losing or dropping their investigative reporting budgets to near zero, if not eliminating it altogether. It's just not profitable, it seems, with a public that is so willing to just accept whatever passes their nose.
Like with the fake news - video news releases. They're just "pre-packaged broadcast segments designed to look like television news stories, that are funded by and scripted for corporate or government clients," as defined by the Center for Media and Democracy in their report on these VNRs. Here's one example of how low they will go:
WTOK-11 in Meridian, MS, aired without disclosure a VNR titled, "Global Warming: Hot Air?" The segment ridiculed claims that increased hurricane activity is related to global warming. The VNR was funded by TCS Daily, a website then published by the PR and lobbying firm DCI Group, which counts ExxonMobil among its clients.
The royalties on internet radio are going up on May 15th too, which is going to push a lot of programs off the air. There's even a rumor floating about that NPR will be going off the air. SaveNetRadio.org is making it easy for you to help stop this from happening - but I don't see a solution for the mainstream news outlets.
Whatever happened to the press's social bottom line? Where did they go wrong? If we can find that out, we may have found the key to sustainable social enterprise.
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