Journalism has a new face: a fake one.

           White House public relations wizards have re-defined the rules of news reporting, employing an innovative and novel new method, the Video News Release.

           Utilizing actors who portray reporters, VNRs present an agenda or issue as an actual news story, and so well that some local TV news producers assume they are real, and run them as is. Clay Rittenauer, editor of the Hood River, Oregon-based Weekly Register newspaper, applauds the new method.

           “This will save so much time in reporting,” Rittenauer said, “it’s such a service for them to prepare the report for us. I mean, in the past, if we wanted to just lazily run a press release as is, we still had to distill it into a news article. This is really going to save a lot of time.”

           White House press director Vance Mason said the idea for VNRs came to him late one night while watching Fox News.

           “I was just moved to tears at how wonderfully (Fox) advances our (Conservative) agenda,” Mason said. “The way they weave opinion and bias into their leads is awe-inspiring, and nobody seems to notice or even care. So I thought, well, if we just send our information disguised as a news report, I wonder if local stations would notice?”

           Mason said he and his staff were happily surprised when their ruse worked, and they started seeing their counterfeit news pieces pop up like mushrooms on local stations nation-wide.

           “I remember waking up to a phone call from Dick (Cheney),” Mason recalls. “He said, ‘Turn on Channel 9,you delightful bastard, the rubes are running your Social Security VNR!”

           And what are news watchers saying about the new practice? Most like it just fine.

           “As long as there’s news on when I get home, who cares who made it?” said Ray Watkinson, a tile setter from Pittsburg, Penn.

           Others say it will improve the quality of the news they watch.

           “You gotta figure that the Government has more resources than local news stations,” said Flagstaff, Ariz. substitute teacher Sally Billingsworth. “They can put a lot more neat graphics and superimposed waving American flags on the screen. I’d rather watch that.”

           When asked if this new practice will undermine the credibility of news agencies, Billingsworth’s reply was, “Undermine what? I just want something to look at on my screen, ya know?”

           Still others deride the practice as deceptive and arrogant.

           “What message does this send to an already skeptical news audience?” asked Wenatchee, Wash. resident Bill Paulson. “The government is out of line with this practice.”

           President George W. Bush weighed in on the issue by placing the blame on the shoulders of the media.

           “I think these news agencies should announce that these VNRs are not real news stories. They choose to run them, and should tell their viewers what they are.”

           Bush added later that he has not met a true patriotic American that doesn’t believe the government is completely qualified to tell them what to think and what to know.

Editor’s note: The FCC, in an unprecedented stroke of competence, has recently ruled that news agencies must now disclose the origins of VNRs.  In compliance with new regulations, we  must declare this news article to be artificial. We at I-49 deeply regret any confusion, misrepresentation, mistaken identity, mental distress, manufactured notions or lack of imitation coffee creamer the running of this fake news story may have caused. Thank you.