NYT
WASHINGTON, March 16 - President Bush on Wednesday defended his administration's practice of providing television stations with video news releases that resemble actual news reports, saying that the practice was legal and that it was up to broadcasters to make clear that any of the releases they used on the air were produced by the government.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that at least 20 government agencies have made and distributed hundreds of video news releases in the last four years. Many of them were broadcast on local news programs without any public acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
Pressed on why the government does not require that broadcasters identify the material as being government-produced, Mr. Bush said that "there's a procedure that we're going to follow," and that if there is a "deep concern" about the releases appearing on the air as if they were journalistic reports, then local stations "ought to tell their viewers what they're watching."
The administration's use of the video news releases paid for by taxpayers has drawn criticism from some Democrats in Congress, and Democrats are also raising questions about the way in which television stations use them.
In a letter sent on Monday to Michael K. Powell, the departing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the commission to investigate whether stations were misleading their viewers.
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