Things left unsaid: Source disclosure, the Video News Release and perceptions of credibility

Abstract

The video news release (VNR) has been a source of controversy since its first inclusion into newscasts in the early 1980s. This third-party (not produced by a news station) public relations and marketing-friendly content, when included alongside normally produced news stories, can make it difficult for the public to discern what is news and what is not. Problems specifically arise when news operations fail to disclose to their audience the source or provider of VNR content, and prevent news consumers from evaluating the legitimacy or intent of a VNR. A 4 (source disclosure cue: audio, video, combination of the two, and none) x 2 (source agent type: biased or neutral) experiment was implemented within this study to better understand audience evaluations, post exposure to a source disclosure cue, of the credibility of a news operation that implements VNRs within their broadcast. Disclosure cues were also evaluated for their effectiveness in raising awareness to the persuasive aspects of a VNR, and the impact of differing source agent types on participants' credibility assessment of a news operation. Results demonstrated 75% of participants (n=238) failed to correctly identify the source of the VNR when a disclosure cue was given. However, the audio and video combination condition was found to instigate the most awareness to the use of VNR. Overall, disclosure of a VNR's source could not be linked to changes in participants' evaluation of a news operation's credibility, with results demonstrating uniformly average means throughout. In addition, source disclosure could not be associated to a change in participants' awareness to the persuasive context of the VNR, with similar means exhibited. Because of the lack of an overall effect concerning credibility or knowledge of persuasive content within the study, greater media transparency is needed as are more media literacy opportunities for the public to best understand and navigate today’s complicated broadcast media reality.