The U.S. Department of Education was in hot water earlier this year after it was determined they were secretly paying some editorial columnists to promote the Bush education agenda. In addition, the Bush administration came under fire for creating VNRs (video news releases) about public policy issues that were not being identified as coming from the Federal Government.
Fast forward to Oct. 20th, and we now have the "Prepackaged news Store Announcement Act of 2005" requiring any Federal agency to have a "clear notification" within the text or audio of a news story that the VNR was prepared or funded by the "United States Government."
Consumers read and watch prepackaged news stories all the time by way of news releases that are published in newspapers and VNRs which are broadcast on television. Confirming the source of a message should be a basic rule of any communicator, however some PR folks don't want the audience to know exactly who created the message. Regardless of which way you fall on whether the source should always be blatantly clear, the Federal Government should always identify itself on behalf of any message it creates with taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately because of the Department of Education's strategy to promote without full disclosure, we now have a FEDERAL LAW forcing government agencies to disclose.
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