Meg Whitman offers TV stations free footage

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Are you concerned about the decline in quality of the political media? Well, fear not. Meg Whitman has offered to fill in the gaps where the old-fashioned free press has faltered.

Whitman’s campaign has put television stations around the state on notice that it will be sending daily video images of the candidate on the campaign trail, just in case a station wants to put any of them on the air.

‘We are starting something brand new at the Whitman campaign … so you can more easily provide your viewers with breaking news from California’s gubernatorial campaign,’ the campaign wrote in a statement.

Whitman’s campaign is not the first to try to get images on the air during news broadcasts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration produced numerous ‘video news releases’ in the early years of his administration. Some of that footage wound up on local news broadcasts without any disclaimers that the images came from the administration.

President George W. Bush’s administration also came under fire for producing such videos in 2005. Both Bush and Schwarzenegger defended the videos, likening them to news releases routinely sent to reporters.

-- Anthony York in Sacramento