Peter Wengryn

Peter Wengryn if the President and CEO of VMS a major media monitoring and analysis company used by public relations companies, advertisers and marketers.

In October 2002 VMS announced that Wengryn had been appointed as President and CEO. For the preceding three and a half years he had been Chief Financial Officer for VMS.

Wengryn graduated with a MBA in Finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1985 and worked in "finance and management with companies such as Chase Manhattan Bank, First Boston, General Electric and Seven Worldwide". 

Responding to the controversy over Video News releases
In response to a major New York Times article on VNR's the PR trade publication, O'Dwyers PR Daily, convened a teleconference of leading VNR company representatives to discuss "what the industry can do about the torrent of negative publicity". 

During the conference call Wengryn stated that after the controversy emerged VMS did some research on where video news releases were used. "The lower markets are more apt to look and display the entire package while the higher markets may use particular segments," he said. (Sub req'd)

In his opening comments on the conference call Wengryn insisted that "it's the government's right--in fact, I think it's their responsibility to disseminate important information in a detailed way to the public. Thirty-second sound bites are simply not sufficient to get the depth of information in the hands of the American public."

It was the responsibility of broadcasters, he argued, to evaluate the content of VNR's, identify footage "appropriately" and ensure the presentation of a "fair and balanced story to their viewers".

"And most importantly I believe that the onus is really on the viewing public, the American people, to consider all the information that's being presented to them to evaluate the merits of each and to make informed decisions," he said.

Other SourceWatch resources

 * Video news releases