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FTVLive showed you FIRST and EXCLUSIVE a policy that Nexstar handed down to their employees that ended up blowing up in their faces.

The policy dated August 31st told the employees of the company that their stations could not share video with their networks or CNN, until the 24 hours after the story aired on News Nation, Nexstar’s cable newscast.

Not long after the new policy went into effect, CNN pulled the plug on Nexstar stations, stopping them from using video from their feed.

Emails went out to the staff, telling Producers and others, that they could no longer use CNN’s video. Other networks starting looking into the same action and on Friday, Nexstar blinked.

FTVLive has learned that on Friday, Nexstar had a mandatory call with its News Directors and General Managers. In that call, the managers were told by Nexstar executive Blake Russell that the company was reversing its policy about not sharing video.

Russell said on the call that the stations CAN share breaking news with your network IF that network agrees to run a font that says courtesy “NEWS NATION.”

In other words, a Photographer at Nexstar’s station in Buffalo can shoot a breaking news story, send the story directly to CBS, or CNN and when it airs on the network, it will say “Courtesy News Nation.”

Never mind the fact that News Nation had nothing to do with the video, they will still get the credit.

While not a big deal, many at the local stations think that kind of sucks. “Talk about pissing all over your employees,” said one Nexstar employee to FTVLive.

“So my station does all the work, and the low rated News Nation gets the credit,” said one Nexstar news manager to FTVLive.

And here’s the kicker to all of this.

When the GM’s and News Directors were told about the policy change by Russell, they were told to inform their staff about this new policy but were told “DO NOT PUT IT IN WRITING.”

It appears that Nexstar did not want any emails leaked to FTVLive that showed they put a stupid policy in place and it didn’t even last a month.

After being told that they can’t put anything in writing, one manager on the call asked, “can we take notes?”

As one Nexstar manager said, “it wasn’t like FTVLive wasn’t going to find out anyway.”

The policy no sharing video policy was petty and stupid. What Russell should have done was put out a memo to the Nexstar employees and said, “We fucked up, we’re sorry and the policy from August 31 has now been rescinded.”

But, instead, they don’t admit to the mistake and then try and quietly change the policy, hoping that no one would notice.

So much for transparency in the news business.