Taco Bell Seeks PR Antidote to E. Coli Cases

Taco Bell has hired a safety expert, tested its produce, eliminated green onions, changed suppliers, and hired a PR crisis-response firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland. The firm's advice: publicize safety, which the company has done in big market newspaper ads. Still, with 69 reported East Coast cases of E.

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Former FCC General Counsel: Fake TV News Must Be Disclosed

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Publicist Mike Morris, identified as a reporter during a VNR broadcast

"Congress and the courts have stressed that as fiduciaries given the free use of the public airwaves, broadcasters are obligated to operate in the public interest. Flagrantly deceptive practices are inconsistent with that obligation and can find no sanction in the First Amendment."

Those words were written by Henry Geller, a former general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission and assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information. Today, the StarTribune in Minneapolis/St. Paul published an op/ed that Geller and I co-authored. The piece (copied below) describes why full disclosure of video news releases (VNRs) is both vital to the public interest and supported by legal precedent.

If you think the public should be told where its news really comes from, you can still support VNR disclosure, via the online action hosted by our colleagues at Free Press.

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