Karen Ryan was happy to hear my voice.

"At least you called to ask if I'm a real person," she said. After a week of being called everything from an actress to a hooker, a little self-doubt was inevitable.

Karen Ryan, who was once a TV reporter, opened a public relations business in Washington. One of her specialties was the "video news release." Industry groups or government agencies with a story to tell and the money to get it told would hire her to produce one- or two-minute TV "news" reports. She would do friendly interviews, slip in a mention of a product or program, then send it off to TV stations.

She ended each report with, "In Washington, this is Karen Ryan reporting." That's how she closed a spot touting the Bush administration's new Medicare prescription package, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But this is an election year. Someone noticed the self-promotional spot and, in no time, the General Accounting Office opened an investigation and the public howled indignantly.

The focus of public fury is, as usual, the least blameworthy target. Ryan has been called a phony. One newspaper editorial told people that, if they see her, don't believe her. Chris Matthews, onetime chief of staff for Tip O'Neill, used the term "hooker." When Tip O'Neill's fixer calls you a hooker, that's got to hurt.

The problem here is that, aside from the Department of Health and Human Services, Ryan has done reports for an array of industry groups. She has "reported" on the virtues of Excedrin, laser eye surgery, frequent flier programs, even the FluMist that became a hot item this year as the supply of flu shot vaccine dwindled.

"Stations are lazy," she said. "If these things didn't work, then the companies would stop putting them out."

It's not only laziness. Television stations cut corners to maximize profits. Instead of paying a correspondent to cover Washington, it's cheaper to plug in a wishy-washy video shilling Excedrin, and end it with a familiar voice.

Karen Ryan's voice got very familiar. Stations in Tampa, Sacramento, Baltimore, North Carolina -- wherever the need arose for a quick segment of free "journalism" -- fed her to unsuspecting viewers.

On KMAX in Sacramento, she told viewers of the 9 p.m. show about how frequent flier miles were becoming easier to use, and interviewed a spokesman from Capital One, a credit card vendor, to show how. In Atlanta, WAGA aired her report on the new Medicare prescription benefits program. Viewers in Tampa turned to WTSP and learned why money spent now on seeing a doctor saves money later. In Pittsburgh, WPGH, the Sinclair Broadcasting station that fired much of its news staff in favor of feeds from a centralized newsroom in Baltimore, offered Karen Ryan on Aug. 16.

But along with laziness and thriftiness, never discount plain cluelessness.

Carol Michel, senior executive producer at WTSP, assured me her station rarely uses video news releases without the proper treatment.

"We seldom use them. If we do use them we would for certain re-track it. We would have one of our anchors re-read it," she explained. So, Karen Ryan's voice would vanish and a local "reporter" would dub the thing.

So much for the "if-only-we-had-known" defense.

"When video news releases go out to television stations they are clearly identified," Ryan said. Her Health and Human Services-financed piece, for instance, was titled "The Government Answers Your Questions on Medicare."

"Every television station that takes a video release knows there's a client behind them," she said.

Now that she has been denounced as a Bush administration plant, Ryan doubts she'll be doing any more of this work. One of the tasty ironies is that Karen Ryan isn't even sure she's voting for Bush. She touted the Medicare bill, but when I asked her if she thought it was a good bill, she replied, "I have no idea."

And the woman who planted sponsored news reports about FluMist on dozens of stations has one other confession. She opted for the shot, instead.

She got the flu anyway.