It is the holidays. Just before you buy your significant others those Tivos, in hopes to allow them the opportunity to eliminate annoying white noise advertising from their lives, a luxury that likely pays high mental health dividends, know that advertising might be finding its way into your daily servings of information, without your knowledge.

Whenever I get information that is sourced by an activist organization like the Center for Media and Democracy (a.k.a. prwatch.org), I take it all with a grain of salt. But many of the tv stations that are under attach by the Center for Media and Democracy are actually admitting guilt and apologizing for video news releases (VNRs) – prepackaged news segments that look like objective news, but are paid for by companies with their own vested interests. Clearly, VNRs are pretty attractive to local news stations because when the stories run out about cats getting rescued from trees, they are ready to be included in your morning news, and the only cost is a slight bias for certain products, websites, etc.

According to a November Red Herring article, in the cases reviewed, there were actually no FCC rules broken by airing these VNRs. But is this outsourcing of news to sources with clear conflicts of interest doing the right thing? Absolutely not.

Consumers deserve disclosure.

Take Google – the arguable reason for Google’s success in Internet search was that the technology was effective and its founders chose to take the higher road, when it came to advertising. While other search providers were selling their first five results, Google provided results in order of relevance, as determined by their algorithms. Ads were always and continue to be clearly labeled as such, off to the side, out of the way.

Additional references and interesting links: Actual VNRs aired on local news stations Center for Media and Democracy article on VNRs Probe of non-news news sought KGO, CBS 5-TV say they improperly used corporate tapes (San Francisco Chronicle) Here now, the (fake) news – Watchdog report snares three San Diego stations, but one fights back (San Diego CityBEAT)

The worst offenders, according to freepress.net: * Tribune Company (9 stations) * Sinclair Broadcast Group (8 stations) * News Corp/Fox Television (8 stations0 * Viacom/CBS Corp (6 stations)