Before the good stuff got started -- sometime around 7 in the morning -- the local affiliates would often fill half an hour with a canned public-relations documentary supplied by the U.S. Army or some corporate public relations department, titled “The Big Picture” or “Industry on Parade.”

Whether this actually spurred Army recruitment or drove any of those impressionable youths to seek careers in the ball bearing trade remains unknown. It’s also unlikely the stations went to much trouble to warn their viewers that this stuff was “propaganda,” not properly vetted by their news departments. Any more than those kids were notified that the “food pyramid” charts they studied in school were provided by agents of the dairy industry. Nor -- so far as is known -- did any government busybody much care.

But nearly 50 years have passed. Today’s government busybodies have grown much busier.

The Federal Communications Commission announced last week it’s investigating allegations that dozens of TV stations have aired corporate advertisements masquerading as new stories.

Federal regulations, we’re now informed, provide for a fine of up to $32,500 each time a station airs a “video news release” without disclosing the corporate backer.

(Heavens! Is it retroactive?)

Seems the Center for Media and Democracy, a self-anointed watchdog group headquartered in Madison, Wisc., conducted a 10-month study of the airing of “video news releases” dressed up by corporate PR department to look like regular news stories.

The group found 98 such “video releases” aired on news programs on stations in 30 states, with affiliates of the Sinclair Broadcast Group and the Tribune Co. bring the most frequent “offenders.”

The group then asked FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to crack down.

“Millions of people watch these things, and they need to know -- they deserve to know -- who is seeking to persuade them,” comments Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, a Portland, Ore. group.

Yes, public relations has grown more sophisticated over the decades. And yes, stations should do a better job of disclosing the sources of what they broadcast.

But where should station managers draw the line? If a government health agency in cooperation with a private manufacturer announces the release of some new vaccine, urging the public to rush out and get theirs while providing footage of the stuff rolling off the production lines and people lining up for shots, is the station obliged to detail who will profit from sales of the nostrum? Is it obliged to provide “equal time” to those who hold the stuff is dangerous or ineffective? How much time? Who decides?

Once a government agency starts inserting itself into that decision process -- waving the threat of a $32,000 fine for each “violation” -- how long will it be before the script of every broadcast is submitted to a government censor for approval ... just as a courtesy, you understand, “just to be on the safe side”?

Wouldn’t it more efficient, at that point, for the FCC censor to have a little office, right there next to the newsroom? Wait, we don’t have to call them “censors.” Perhaps “advisors”? “Consultants”?

That’s the way other countries do it.

(Ironically enough, this new wave of FCC activism was launched in April of 2005, when the FCC sent broadcast stations a notice reminding them to disclose the source of video news releases promoting Bush administration programs and policies.)

The answer is that things were not meant to work that way in America. That’s why we have a First Amendment -- and why the foot-in-the-door assertion that somehow “freedom of the press” doesn’t apply to broadcast stations because they’re “limited in number” is so dangerous.

In fact, thanks to cable TV, satellite, and the Internet, Americans now have more sources of news than ever before. Many cities now have more TV and radio stations than they do newspapers.

And viewers have also grown more sophisticated. If they believe a news source is slanting its coverage or purposely leaving out part of the story, they can and do flee in droves to other sources -- note the declining viewership of the “big three” network evening news shows.

(Not at all coincidentally, when was the last time one of THEM mentioned that a vaccine or its thimerosal preservative might be unsafe or ineffective; that renowned biochemist Dr. Peter Duesberg has demonstrated “HIV” does not cause AIDS; that the 14th Amendment doesn’t really stipulate every baby born in the U.S. automatically becomes a citizen; that the privately owned Federal Reserve, far from “fighting inflation,” causes it and does so on purpose; that the IRS refuses to publicly discuss Supreme Court rulings on who really owes the income tax and whether it must be collected as an indirect excise ...?)

Yes, station managers have a professional ethical obligation to keep an eagle eye on where their news is coming from, watching out for slant and prejudice not only in the source, but also in their own staff -- especially when they simply mouth “what everyone knows.” Of course they should prominently disclose where news segments and other broadcast material originates.

But the best way to impose this discipline is simply for viewers to demand it, punishing offenders by going elsewhere. The government has no role here. It’s called “the free market.” The FCC -- if we need the agency any more, at all -- should limit itself to making sure stations broadcast on their assigned frequencies, and give up playing Inspector Clouseau in the newsroom.

This is the gang, after all, that recently required the addition of fine print to a TV laxative ad, assuring viewers that the stuff was not really used to keep the geysers of Yellowstone Park on a regular schedule.

Oh, please.