A report by the Center for Media Democracy, released in conjunction with Free Press, cites the use of commercial video news releases by 77 stations nationwide, including WPGH in Pittsburgh.

	Paul Drinkwater, NBC The death of John Spencer will be addressed in Sunday's story line on "The West Wing," when his character, Leo McGarry, dies. Click photo for larger image.

VNRs are press releases in video form, but to viewers they can look much like a regular news report.

The report cites a story that aired on WPGH on Dec. 2, 2005, that incorporated a VNR produced by D S Simon Productions for several electronics manufacturers. The report on high-tech gift-giving included an interview with an electronics expert, Robin Raskin. On her Web site (www.robinraskin.com), Raskin describes herself as "a consultant to both publishing and high-tech companies helping them reach consumers who want to benefit from the high-tech lifestyle." The report that aired on WPGH touts several products made by the manufacturers who paid for its production, but that fact is not disclosed, the CMD study said.

A representative of D S Simon did not return a call seeking comment. Raskin did not respond to an e-mail.

At the time of the broadcast, WPGH's 10 p.m. newscast was produced in-house by owner Sinclair Broadcast Group. It has since been farmed out to Cox-owned WPXI, which produces the 10 p.m. news that currently airs on WPGH.

Former WPGH anchor Shelia Hyland introduced the report, which is available for viewing online (www.freepress.net/fakenews/video/006_WPGH.mov). She said she had no knowledge of VNRs airing, but she wasn't surprised.

"I do remember a couple of things that aired and I remember going back to the producer and saying, 'That looked like an ad,' " she said. "We usually took things off the CNN feed or things Sinclair sent down."

In March 2005, Jeff Alan, WPGH's news manager at the time, said the station's policy was not to use VNRs.

Now news director at KOIN-TV in Portland, Ore., Alan said yesterday that WPGH never used VNRs sent through the mail, but sometimes the station took reports either from Sinclair or CNN Newsource that may not have been labeled as VNRs.

"I'm sure this was innocent, and would we have known it was a VNR, we wouldn't have run it," Alan said. "There's a bigger picture question here: These things are getting on the air everywhere because they're not being labeled as for-profit stories. If they're cleverly worded, you don't know they are for a particular product."

In the report, Raskin dismisses the iPod as a gift idea because it could be used by children to download pornography and also dismisses a gaming system that contains GPS technology that could attract "intruders." She touts retro video games by Coleco, a new Pac-Man game and a Panasonic battery. According to the CMD study, the corporations responsible for manufacturing those products paid for the creation of the VNR.

Hyland said she didn't see VNRs run on stations in Pittsburgh often, saying they're more often used by stations in smaller markets.

"We used them all the time in Kearney, Neb., where I worked 20 years ago," she said. She didn't suspect WPGH aired them with any regularity.

"I questioned more what ran within News Central segments. A lot of things there I questioned, but on the local level it didn't happen very often," Hyland said.

Sinclair's News Central provided national news and weather for WPGH's 10 p.m. broadcast and was widely criticized for presenting news with a right-wing slant. Hyland declined to be more specific.

"It's water under the bridge," she said. "I think the product spoke for itself."

Concern about VNRs duping the public have grown in recent years and came to light most notably in 2004. At that time, WTAE was one of about 50 stations to air the infamous Karen Ryan "reported" VNR on Medicare after it was fed to the station by CNN. The "report" was actually commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but that was not mentioned by stations that aired the story, which concluded like a normal news report: "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

In a memo to the Channel 4 staff after that incident, WTAE news director Bob Longo restated the station's VNR policy ("we do NOT use them as stories") and encouraged increased efforts to guard against a repeat of the CNN incident. At the time, Longo said VNRs should be treated like any news release, with the station evaluating whether or not the subject matter is newsworthy, and if it is, using Channel 4's editorial judgment as to how the story is crafted and what video and sound are sought after and used.

The CMD study tracked newsroom use of 36 VNRs over a 10-month period and found no instances where it was disclosed to viewers that the content of the "report" had been paid for by a commercial entity. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the VNR in its entirety.

After the study's release, the Radio-Television News Directors Association urged TV stations "to review and strengthen their policies requiring complete disclosure of any outside material used in news programming."

The Center for Media and Democracy (www.prwatch.org) describes itself as a nonprofit, public-interest organization investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda. Free Press (www.freepress.net) bills itself as a national, nonpartisan organization that seeks to increase informed public participation in media policy.

Powerful 'West Wing'

Sunday's episode of NBC's better-than-ever drama "The West Wing" (8 p.m., WPXI) deals with the ramifications of the death of vice presidential candidate Leo McGarry, necessitated by the death of actor John Spencer.

Knowing that cast members are shedding tears for both a co-worker and a fictional character makes it an emotionally resonant hour and creates obstacles for both the Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) campaign and for Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) as election night bleeds over into the next day.

"Ultimately, it's not about left or right, it's about doing right," says the new president-elect before episode's end. Ah, "West Wing," you're going out as idealistically as you began, and for that I am grateful.

'24' jumps the shark

Wait a minute -- inept, spineless President Logan (Gregory Itzin) is really the Big Bad behind this year's nesting doll conspiracy? There was nothing to suggest he was capable of leading a country, let alone conspiring against it.

Despite getting off to a strong start, the show's structure is wearing thin. Every six episodes, producers kill off the seeming lead bad guy to reveal another bad guy pulling the dead bad guy's strings. "24" is growing tiresome.

Time to move on

Now that Katie Couric has made her choice, can the media excitement and navel-gazing please come to an end? Yes, it's big news for one day, but anyone who thinks her move to "CBS Evening News" is hugely ground-breaking is out of touch with the current media landscape.

Women are much bigger stars in TV news than men and have been for years. WTAE's Sally Wiggin was absolutely right in Wednesday's Post-Gazette when she suggested installing a 49-year-old woman at the nightly news anchor desk was a bigger deal than Couric's gender alone.

Regardless of which aspect is more noteworthy, the months of coverage and speculation by media outlets is ridiculous. It's certainly not as big a deal to regular viewers as it is to self-obsessed newsies.

Channel surfing

How do you make 40-year-old "Star Trek" reruns relevant to a new generation? Surround them with on-screen graphics! That's the plan of cable network G4, which will air original "Trek" episodes at 11 p.m. weeknights beginning Monday within a graphic frame that spews facts about the series along its top edge and with real-time chat (from www.g4tv.com/trek2.0) along the bottom. Stats on the right keep track of the number of "dramatic Kirk pauses" per episode. That's the funniest part of this graphic mish-mash. ... Next week cable network OLN premieres "The Tournament" (10 p.m. Monday), a cute mockumentary series about ill-behaved adults whose children play on the same hockey team.

TV Q&A

This week's TV Q&A responds to questions about "House," "Law & Order" and graphics on WPXI. Read it online only at www.post-gazette.com/tv.