Public Service or Public Relations?
March 19, 2004
With many Democrats steaming over revelations about the White House's efforts to get its Medicare overhaul approved last fall, media watchers this week were also wagging their fingers at the Administration's subsequent effort to take its Medicare message to the people. At issue is a government-produced "video news release," in which a script prepared by the Department of Health & Human Services was packaged to look like a regular news report. Brooke examines the controversy, and the mechanisms by which the VNR made its way into newscasts on 40 local stations.
