Spin has become a multibillion dollar business and this series looks at some of the "spindustries" that have been spawned by our modern spin culture. Very few people these days are prepared to meet the press without receiving some kind of training on how to do it. It's not surprising that so many people are prepared to spend large amounts of money getting trained in how to best get their message out — one inappropriate remark or poorly-chosen word can sink the reputation of a company or an individual.

Jim Lukaszewski

Jim Lukaszewski

Some of them turn to Jim Lukaszewski, an expert in crisis communications and the president of The Lukaszewski Group based in White Plains, N.Y. If your company is caught dumping chemicals in the river, Lukaszewski is the man to call to help navigate the media storm. He is not a big fan of the modern media. He once wrote that "journalism today is relentlessly competitive, amoral, aggressive and negative. Survey after survey demonstrates the public's belief that reporters use deception and practise reckless reputation destruction." We had a long and sometimes combative discussion about PR and the press in his office in White Plains.

P. Diddy Party

Sean Combs speaks to media at the Sean John launch party in Toronto in March 2005

There are lots of different ways that people can get their story into the press these days. Earned media publicity that isn't paid advertising but stems from newspaper articles, radio stories, op-ed pieces and the like — is one of them. The March 2005 Toronto launch of the Sean John clothing line was an example of earned media at its finest. Sean John is the fashion line of rap star Sean (Diddy) Combs. Diana Robinson of Guelph, Ont., organized a two-day blitz, which culminated in a glitzy party at a swank Toronto supper club. The arrival of P. Diddy in Toronto was the source of dozens of stories in the local and national media. The total cost of the campaign was about $150,000. It generated 220 million "impressions" — meaning that is how many people saw it. To reach that many people through paid advertising would have cost $17 million. That is the power of earned media!

Fake News: an old story…

The issues raised over the dissemination of "fake news" are not new. They go back as far as the early days of public relations, when Ivy Lee, the founding father of public relations, began the practice of distributing press releases to generate publicity for his clients. Some reporters and editors at the time objected to the press release. They referred to PR people as "space grabbers" because they were using press releases, photo ops and other tools of the PR trade to get some free publicity, which they often called "free puffs." Some papers tried to ban stories that had been generated by press releases, but so important had the press release become to the functioning of journalism by the 1920s, that these attempted boycotts were short-lived.

For his part, Lee was mystified by the concerns over free publicity. He argued that any editor who tried to cut himself off from an important source of stories, such as those contained in press releases, should be "convicted of stupidity." Lee believed the key was disclosure and being honest with the reader. So long as neither the reporter nor the PR person was trying to hide the source of the information, there was nothing to worry about.

The modern version

Today, the issue continues to be disclosure. Many press releases now come on video and the reluctance of TV stations to identify where these images come from is a major concern. These releases are sometimes known as VNRs (video news releases) or "b-roll" or EPKs (electronic press kits). When produced for corporate clients, they will typically contain some background shots, like cars going through an assembly line, some interviews with corporate spokespeople and outside experts, and sometimes interviews with some "real" people as well.

PR companies that produce the VNRs will tell you that they expect TV stations to use only a portion of the material in their news reports. They are designed to supplement the material that reporters gather on their own. And in the vast majority of cases, that is exactly what happens.

But a good VNR will contain everything a time-starved TV reporter needs to assemble a two-minute "news" story. And research by the Center for Media and Democracy, a PR watchdog group based in Madison, Wis., has found that increasingly, under-resourced TV newsrooms are running stories based entirely on VNR material and not disclosing the source of that material to their audiences.

Diane Farsetta conducted the most recent study for the centre.

The Canadian Angle

Although this study only looked at U.S. television stations, and there is no comparable study in Canada, anecdotal evidence suggests that as local TV news budgets continue to shrink, we will see more and more of these abuses here. Video news releases are particularly popular with pharmaceutical companies. TV viewers love stories about new drugs and medical breakthroughs. But local stations often lack the time and the resources to do these stories on their own.

Advertising of prescription drugs in Canada is strictly regulated. There are limitations on what you can do and say in your ad. So drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "earned media," much of it coming in the form of VNRs. TV stations will take the material sent to them by the drug companies and run these stories as if they were news. The reality is that they are a two-minute commercial, the ultimate "free puff."

And just as in Lee's day, the key to solving the problem is disclosure. If TV stations would simply identify the source of the material with an on-screen graphic, audiences would be able to make up their own minds whether the information is credible. Otherwise, these reporters and editors are engaged in a process designed to hoodwink the audience, rather than inform them.

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