MMMM # 495 -- Journalism? Or Advertising? Or Just Made Up?

     Journalists traditionally want to build a wall between the news they gather and present, and the advertising that the station sells.         
     The Boston Globe reported on a blurring of that wall at a CBS owned station in Boston. 
     They air segments air inside the news that appear to be interviews, but are actually more product placement. I suspect most viewers can tell the difference between real news and the paid-for content, but maybe not.
    Than there's the Chocolate Diet story that some stations ran without doing any checking. If they had they would have found the "Institute" behind the research was no more than a web page, and the lead researcher a made-up expert. 
     The more transparency we offer viewers, the better our product will be. If the Boston TV station's segment was introduced with the mention that it IS paid programming, it would be fine.
     The host of a new BBC show about the BBC News operation that premiers tonight in England says that's what his show is all about.

Through a purpose-built screen, I can show you everything that is inside the BBC News machine - video reports, raw footage, live feeds, internal briefing notes, news wires, agency stills, social media, correspondent deployments, the works. It’s in real-time and, yes, what you'll see is real too. If I press the wrong button, the wrong thing comes up.

                                                               Ros Atkins, host of Outside Source on the BBC

And Bill Schieffer hosted his final Face The Nation program on Sunday. One interviewer asked if he was really being pushed out instead of leaving voluntarily. He laughed at the though of being pushed out after 46 years. Enjoy your less frantic pace, Bill.


[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com ]