Shocking! Shocking, I say!

Old news to some of the more observant citizens, but glad to see outfits like The New York Times start to pay attention to this stuff.

Many television news stations, including some from the nation’s largest markets, are continuing to broadcast reports as news without disclosing that the segments were produced by corporations pitching new products, according to a report to be released today by a group that monitors the news media.

Television news directors have said that the segments, known as video news releases, are almost never broadcast, but the group assembled television videotape from 69 stations that it said had broadcast fake news segments in the past 10 months.

Democracy Now! did a good feature on this report prepared by the Center for Media and Democracy, as well, including a good interview with one of America’s finest public servants today, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. The fact he is not a majority member on the commission is yet another one of those sad indictments of the ‘victory’ of George W. Bush in the 2004 auction, uh, er, I mean election.

Read the full report Here