A fresh development in the Karen Ryan saga today, courtesy of NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen: The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) today issues a statement referring to the Medicare VNR narrated by Ryan, and recommending “that organizations that prepare VNRs should not use the word ‘reporting’ if the narrator is not a reporter.” Doing so, according to PRSA, “can be considered misleading or confusing.”
In case you missed it, PR executive Ryan got in trouble last month when the New York Times uncovered a video news release made on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services that touted the contentious Medicare prescription drug legislation. The video, designed to resemble a complete news segment and featuring a voiceover saying, “In Washington, I’m Karen Ryan reporting,” ran as “news” on at least 50 television stations across the country. Campaign Desk sniffed around, and revealed Ryan’s involvement in scores of other Video News Releases (VNRs), many of which pitched phramacueticals like Excedrin and Ciprodex.
The statement by PRSA, which bills itself as “the world’s largest professional organization for public relations practitioners,” was first published this morning by Rosen on his website, Pressthink. It came after Rosen, following up on Campaign Desk’s reporting, had criticized the PR industry for failing to publicly condemn the Bush administration (as the American Society of Newspaper Editors, among others, had done) for employing a PR representative (Ryan) to pose as a reporter.
PRSA also took the opportunity to outline two other aspects of its policy on VNRs: When a VNR is provided to TV stations, the organization that produced it should clearly label it, and disclose who produced and paid for it. And TV stations should, in turn, identify VNRs, and their source, to viewers. In theory, those aren’t new standards for the PR industry, but it’s significant that PRSA is now on record as endorsing them.
PRSA’s statement comes on the heels of CNN’s changes to its own VNR policy. After Campaign Desk revealed CNN’s involvement in the Ryan episode — as a paid middleman providing the footage to local stations on its satellite feed — the cable news giant announced that it would ensure that stations hereafter receive VNR footage separately from genuine news segments.
It’s too early to tell if these changes will actually reduce the number of VNRs that end up running as news — or even eliminate the practice of using PR reps to impersonate reporters. But it seems safe to say that hereafter, PR companies, government agencies, and corporations will proceed with a little more caution in using this particular tactic.
–Zachary Roth
Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.