Video News Releases

I honestly think that VNR's are a joke. It's some dreamed up news story that in actuality is an advertisement for whatever company the news release is produced for. So to answer the question, are VNR's journalistically ethical? In my opinion, no they're not. News should be reported in an ethical manner covering any and all sides to a story and not reporting a news story on what company ABC has compared to what company XYZ doesn't. So no I don't like these things at all. They do make journalists lazy. It's a quick story that they can fill their deadlines with.