subject: Prepackaged News (1) [print this page] Pseudo-events, news feeds, news conferences, and prepared, or "canned," editorials are examples of news prepackaged for the convenience of reporters. News managers are well aware of reporters' weaknesses and endeavor to exploit them through prepackaged news. As one public relations and political Links Of London Charms(http://www.londonjewelrystore.co.uk/S-Charms-4.html) consultant wrote, "It is much easier for a reporter to be spoon-fed than to go on a scavenger hunt in government or industry to find his next story."
Reliance on prepackaged news in part accounts for the fact that most reporters missed the emergence of the savings and loan crisis. "We usually depend on govern-mental institutions or groups like Common Cause or Ralph Nader or General Motors or somebody to make sense out of all this data for us," explained Brooks Jackson, an award-winning CNN reporter.
It is legal to buy news shows off the shelf. For example, the program Hard Copy began airing on Channel 2 in New York in fall 1989. It was purchased from an outside vendor, Paramount, which produced it as a package for stations around the country that were affiliated or owned by the three largest networks. Nobody at CBS or at Channel 2 had anything to do with what the packagers put in the program, including the topics covered. Everything was decided and manufactured by the packager. Such packaged news programs are appealing because the station splits the ad revenue with the packager, making a lot more money than if the station's staff puts the program together. Owing to the lack of a disclaimer, viewers were led to believe that reporters for the station had prepared the stories and were responsible for their content, even though they were not. In such instances; the packager has wide latitude for influence.
There are hazards in airing other people's work, however. In January 2000, ABC News decided not to air a BBC documentary accusing an executive at a modeling agency of having sex with underage models. Since ABC had already agreed to pay for the rights to the story, the decision not to run it carried a "kill fee." The decision not to air the documentary on ABC's 20/20 was made after the executive charged that his remarks had been selectively edited to incriminate him.
In a process almost too bizarre to be believed, a self-confessed murderer argued in summer 1995 that he had killed and would continue to do so to attract sufficient media attention to ensure that a prominent media outlet would publish his 56-page, 35,000-word treatise on the ills of contemporary society. In June, the man tagged the Unabomber by the press, wrote both the New York Links Of London Bracelets(http://www.linksgiftstore.com/bracelets-c-141.html) Times and the Washington Post, giving the papers until September 29 to print the tract and three annual follow-ups, in return for his guarantee that he would stop trying to kill. If neither paper took up his offer, said the bomber, he would resume the killings. On August 2, both papers ran 3,000-word excerpts on page 16 as part of a report on FBI efforts to identify the bomber through analysis of his style and philosophy.
At the time that he made the original request, the killer had been blamed for sixteen bombings since 1978, which had resulted in the deaths of three and the injury of twenty-three more. His rationale suggested that he was deliberately manipulating media norms:
