The headlines have more or less vanished since the scandal over "fake news" first surfaced about six months ago, but behind the scenes producers of Video News Releases (VNRs) are mobilizing to get the Federal Communications Commission to slow down its investigation of the controversial format.

Quick recap: In August the FCC announced that it had sent out letters to 77 TV stations asking them whether they broadcast "fake news"—ad company Video News Releases (VNR) made to look like real news features.

"The public is misled by individuals who present themselves to be independent, unbiased experts or reporters, but are actually shills promoting a prepackaged corporate agenda," FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said in praise of the move.

Critics of VNRs say that broadcasters can air such pieces, usually produced and distributed by public relations firms, but they have to disclose the origin of the program to their viewers.

In April, the Center for Media and Democracy issued a study indicating that said same 77 television stations, reaching more than half the U.S. population, have aired such VNRs, many of which promote all sorts of products—candy, flowers, ketchup, Cadillacs—without telling couch potatoes that they're really watching a commercial, not a legit feature.

Until last month, the queried TV stations individually scrambled to come up with responses to their alleged use of undisclosed VNRs. Some apologized. Others made excuses. Still others said they would do it again.

But on October 16th the National Association of Broadcast Communicators (NABC) made its existence known to the FCC in a public filing. NABC describes itself as "a newly formed organization that represents the interests of Video News Release (VNR) production companies."

The outfit includes prominent VNR makers like MultiVu, whose President Tim Bahr has written a short guide to VNRs called Broadcast and Beyond.

"The main purpose of a VNR is to facilitate television news coverage," Bahr's handbook explains. "Therefore, providing news that is relevant to a diverse television audience is essential to gaining television coverage. In other words, you should use VNRs for stories that will play well on TV news."

NABC's first filing came out swinging, accusing the CMD of "creating the false impression that numerous broadcast stations across the country are violating the Commission's sponsorship identification requirements." To bolster its arguments, the group cited a more lengthy filing authored on October 5th by the Radio Television News Directors Association and also critical of the FCC's investigation.

NABC protests that the Commission's rules don't require sponsorship identification of all VNRs; only those that deal with controversial issues of public importance, politics, or when the VNR maker has paid the station to run the program.

Thus "broadcasters are free to use VNRs that reference commercially available products or services (and that do not deal with controversial or political matters or involve the payment of money or other valuable consideration to the broadcasters)," NABC writes, "without violating Commission sponsorship identification requirements."

The CMD has already challenged this claim, citing an April 2005 FCC Public Notice statement on the matter.

"Listeners and viewers are entitled to know who seeks to persuade them," the Notice asserts, adding that "whenever broadcast stations and cable operators air VNRs, licensees and operators generally must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material that they are viewing."

But even a glance at CMD's detailed rebuttal of the RTND/NABC filings suggest that the last word on this issue is a long way off.