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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. The Devil Is in the Lack of Details: The Defense Department’s Media Contracts
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. Front Group Claims Owls Learning to Love Logging
2. Playing FTSE with Social Responsibility
3. U.S. Spy Agencies Disappear History
4. Rumsfeld: Gee, Propaganda Is Wrong
5. The Fishy Funder That Almost Got Away
6. Kucinich Calls for Docs on Iraq War ‘Sell Job’
7. U.S. State Dept To Splurge on Persian Media
8. In Colombia, Reporters Trust, Don’t Verify, Official Sources
9. Lobbying: A Real Growth Industry
10. The UK and US: Similar Fake News, Iraq Occupations
11. Drug Company Reps Take Doctors To The Dogs, Lap-Dancing & Tennis
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== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. THE DEVIL IS IN THE LACK OF DETAILS: THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT’S MEDIA CONTRACTS
by Diane Farsetta
Although they’ve done their best to keep their spinning from public scrutiny, several major incidents have exposed the Bush administration’s manipulation of news media: The “sell job” for the invasion of Iraq. Payola pundits Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus. Stooge “reporter” Jeff Gannon / James Guckert. Video news releases determined to be covert propaganda by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Each time, concerned citizens, media critics and watchdog groups like the Center for Media and Democracy have called for a full accounting of the government’s use (and misuse) of public relations techniques and contractors. And, slowly, more information has surfaced — though nothing approaching the transparency a healthy democracy requires.
On February 13, the GAO released a 160-page report on the recent media contracts of seven federal departments. The data on government contracts with private PR firms, ad agencies, media companies and individual reporters is another piece in the propaganda puzzle.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4481
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. FRONT GROUP CLAIMS OWLS LEARNING TO LOVE LOGGING
online.wsj.com/article/SB114022159215877610-search.html
The Executive Director of the Evergreen Foundation, James Peterson, argues in a Wall Street Journal opinion article that the decline of the spotted owl in the U.S. Pacific Northwest is not due to logging in old-growth forests. Peterson, who has been given a string of awards by various logging industry groups, referred to an unspecified “privately funded” study which “infers an inverse relationship between harvesting and owls.” This, he argues, justifies “a long-term thinning program,” an oblique reference to the Bush administration’s Orwellian-sounding Healthy Forests Initiative, a program to log national forests. The Evergreen Foundation says it works to “restore public confidence in forestry.” The foundation’s website states that funders include logging and logging equipment companies, including Boise Cascade, Potlatch, Westvaco, Mead, Caterpillar and Timberjack. The foundation’s logging industry funding, however, wasn’t mentioned in Peterson’s Wall Street Journal article.
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4490
2. PLAYING FTSE WITH SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article346250.ece
“Nearly a fifth of the UK’s top public companies are still failing to deliver comprehensive reports detailing the economic, environmental and social impact of their business,” reports Andy Favell for The Independent. Analyses have found corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from 18 of the British companies on the FTSE 100 Index to be inadequate. Nine of the “poor performers” are also listed on FTSE-4Good, which is geared towards socially responsible investment. Favell explains, “FTSE-4Good initially set the bar relatively low and listing requirements are lifted each year.” He concludes, “It is common to hear both investors and [non-governmental organizations] levelling criticism at the standard of CSR reporting as a whole. … With a significant number of the FTSE 100 still failing to satisfy on CSR reporting, and greenwash accusations against many others, are we really getting the information we deserve?”
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), February 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4487
3. U.S. SPY AGENCIES DISAPPEAR HISTORY
nytimes.com/2006/02/21/politics/21reclassify.html
“In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years.” Since 1999, more than 50,000 once-declassified pages have been reclassified as secret. Intelligence historian Matthew Aid said some of the decades-old documents are “mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous.” The New York Times reports, “While some of the choices made by the security reviewers … are baffling, others seem … to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.” The program, which has cost millions, is “shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum.” An anonymous source told the Times that “the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency were major participants.” Though there has been “a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration,” the reclassification program is reportedly driven by federal spy agencies. A coalition of historians has expressed concern about the program.
SOURCE: New York Times, February 21, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4486
4. RUMSFELD: GEE, PROPAGANDA IS WRONG
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-infowar18feb18,1,1082213.story
In “his most specific comments thus far about the information operations program,” U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told interviewer Charlie Rose that his reaction to reports that the Lincoln Group paid Iraqi newspapers to run Pentagon-written stories was, “Gee, that’s not what we ought to be doing.” Rumsfeld said “he had not been initially aware of the clandestine program, and ordered it shut down” after the Los Angeles Times report. However, “Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said during a Dec. 16 news conference — more than two weeks after the existence of the operation was revealed — that it had not been shut down.” An anonymous source told the LA Times that “the program in Iraq was still active as of a week ago.” In a separate talk, Rumsfeld said negative media coverage of the Iraq propaganda has a “chilling effect” on U.S. troops’ “innovation” to win hearts and minds.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4485
5. THE FISHY FUNDER THAT ALMOST GOT AWAY
www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/dining/15well.html
In October 2005 the American Journal of Preventive Medicine published an article by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis assessing the relative risks and benefits of changes in fish consumption. The U.S. Tuna Foundation, representing major tuna processors such as Bumble Bee, hailed the study and warned, “If Americans reduce their fish consumption out of confusion about mercury, there will be serious public health consequences.” Now New York Times reporter Marian Burros reveals that the U.S. Tuna Foundation contributed the bulk of the $500,000 for the study. The journal article only disclosed as funders the National Food Processors Association Research Foundation, the Food Products Association, and a section of the National Fisheries Institute, a seafood lobby group. Joshua T. Cohen, lead author of the journal article, told Burros, “No one is hiding anything. … It never occurred to me anyone would think National Food Processors Association was less industry than Bumble Bee tuna.”
SOURCE: New York Times, February 15, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4479
6. KUCINICH CALLS FOR DOCS ON IRAQ WAR ‘SELL JOB’
www.odwyerpr.com/members/0217kucinich.htm
Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced a Resolution of Inquiry, demanding from the White House, Defense and State Departments “certain documents … relating to any entity with which the U.S. has contracted for public relations purposes concerning Iraq.” In a statement, the Congressman notes reports about the Rendon Group’s and Lincoln Group’s Iraq activities. Kucinich affirms the public’s “right to know” about attempts “to manipulate the news, falsify intelligence or mislead the public.” He adds, “Congress has a Constitutional responsibility to provide oversight.” The House international relations committee must vote on the resolution by the end of February. The resolution comes after a Government Accountability Office report on federal media contracts, which lists $1.1 billion in Defense Department spending on PR, advertising and other media firms from fiscal year 2003 through mid-fiscal year 2005.
SOURCE: O’Dwyer’s PR Daily (sub req’d), February 17, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4477
7. U.S. STATE DEPT TO SPLURGE ON PERSIAN MEDIA
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021500672.html
“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Congress yesterday to provide $75 million in emergency funding to step up pressure on the Iranian government.” If granted, the request would increase to $85 million the 2006 budget “to promote political change inside Iran,” up from $3.5 million last year. $50 million would be used to “significantly increase Farsi broadcasts into Iran, mainly satellite television broadcasting by the federal government and broadcasts of the U.S.-funded Radio Farda.” Another $5 million “will be aimed at reaching the Iranian public through the Internet and building independent Farsi television and radio stations.” $15 million “would go to Iranian labor groups, human rights activists and other groups, generally via … groups such as the National Endowment for Democracy.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, February 16, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4475
8. IN COLOMBIA, REPORTERS TRUST, DON’T VERIFY, OFFICIAL SOURCES
www.colombiajournal.org/colombia228.htm
“The media’s over-reliance on official sources, despite … a long history of lying and manipulation by those sources,” often makes the media “an instrument of U.S. foreign policy,” writes Garry Leech. On February 12, Reuters and Spain’s EFE reported “that leftist rebels belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had massacred six members of a family, including an 80-year-old woman. The entire story … was based on the statements of a single Colombian government official.” U.S. outlets, including the Houston Chronicle and ABC News, ran the story. But “it was later revealed that the FARC were not in fact responsible. … The interior minister of the department of Antioquia … acknowledged that following an initial investigation into the killings, ‘The method of operation indicates [the perpetrators] to be paramilitaries.’” Only EFE ran a follow-up story. A United Nations report released the same week documented “an increase in extra-judicial killings by Colombian soldiers and police.”
SOURCE: Colombia Journal Online, February 14, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4474
9. LOBBYING: A REAL GROWTH INDUSTRY
online.wsj.com/article/SB113988289379073090.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
“U.S. corporations and interest groups spent a total of $1.16 billion to lobby Washington in the first half of 2005, setting a record.” From January through June 2005, “corporations, trade associations, lawyers and unions spent about $6.5 million a day to lobby Congress and the Bush administration.” Since 1999, lobbying spending has increased an average of 10 percent each year. But the first half of 2005 alone saw an eight percent increase over the previous six months. Top lobbyists were AARP ($27.8 million, “mainly to defeat the Social Security plan”), General Electric ($13.9 million, on the “asbestos-litigation overhaul and tax policy”), the United States Telecom Association ($11.4 million), U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($8.6 million, plus another $9.5 million through its Institute for Legal Reform), American Medical Association ($9.5 million), Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. ($7.3 million) and Altria ($6.7 million).
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req’d), February 14, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4471
10. THE UK AND US: SIMILAR FAKE NEWS, IRAQ OCCUPATIONS
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1709950,00.html
In 2002, the British government “launched a little-known television propaganda service that seems to mimic the U.S. government’s deceptive approach to fake news,” writes David Miller. British Satellite News (BSN) is produced by the company World Television, which “also makes corporate videos and fake news clips for corporations such as GlaxoSmithKline, BP and Nestle.” BSN reports are sent to more than 400 stations worldwide and used regularly by 185 stations, including those in Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia and “14 of the 17 Middle East countries.” Miller notes a “suggested intro” to one BNS piece that reads, “This year is not the first time an outside power has sought to construct a modern, democratic, liberal state in Iraq. Britain tried to do the same in the 1920s.” Miller writes, “In reality the 1920 occupation led immediately to a popular revolt that was ruthlessly suppressed. A puppet monarchy was imposed, which was neither ‘modern’ nor ‘democratic.’”
SOURCE: The Guardian (UK), February 15, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4470
11. DRUG COMPANY REPS TAKE DOCTORS TO THE DOGS, LAP-DANCING & TENNIS
www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1709327,00.html
In late January a comedian hosting the UK Pharmaceutical Marketing Society’s Annual Advertising Awards ceremony joked that “twenty years ago it was all lap dancing and champagne for the doctors. These days you’re lucky if you can give them a three-star hotel and a f***ing biro.” Not so, it seems. Last Friday the British drug industry lobby group, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) announced that it had suspended Abbott Laboratories from membership for six months for breaching its self-regulatory marketing code. ABPI’s media release didn’t specify what activities had been complained about. However, buried in a 112-page report (pdf) it was revealed that in 2004 company representatives had taken dozens of hospital doctors greyhound racing, a senior manager had taken a health professional to a lap-dancing club and a senior manager provided senior hospital consultants with centre court tickets to watch tennis at Wimbledon.
SOURCE: Guardian (UK), February 14, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4469
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