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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. Environmental Defense or Nanotech Defense?
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. An Inclusive Approach to Fake Radio News
2. USAID Involvement in Palestinian Elections Backfires
3. On Iraq, Reality Trumps Spin
4. Street Theatre Catches Eye of Pentagon Spooks
5. Nuclear Company Underwrites Parliamentary Committee
6. Simon’s Prediction: VNR Disclosure Will Increase in 2006
7. Phantom Patients
8. Reporter Says Scrushy Stacked the Media and Jury
9. PR More Prevalent Than Ever
10. Lincoln Group Focuses on U.S. Media
11. Harrison Returns to Corporate Pastures
12. “Informal Inquiries” into Freeport’s Indonesian Operations
13. Spinning Nukes
14. Corporate Ads Grow Greener
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== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE OR NANOTECH DEFENSE?
by Bob Burton
If you have concerns about the development of nanotechnology, you might want to keep an eye on the ‘partnership’ between the chemical industry giant DuPont and Environmental Defense (ED), the New York-based environmental group.
The project, according to a joint media release issued in October 2005 by ED’s Fred Krupp and DuPont’s Chad Halliday, is to “identify, manage and reduce potential health, safety and environmental risks of nano-scale materials across all lifecycle stages.” Once developed, the framework will “then be pilot-tested on specific nano-scale materials or applications of commercial interest to DuPont.”
The announcement implies that DuPont has yet to bring any nano-products to market. However, a promotional webpage on Teflon — a DuPont technology — indicates otherwise. “Invista: built on DuPont innovation,” the website states. “TeflonŽ works on the nano scale,” Invista boasts, before waxing lyrical about the product’s water and oil repelling properties. (DuPont’s Textiles & Interiors division was spun off as a separate business, renamed Invista in September 2003, and sold to Koch Industries shortly afterwards.)
To be fair, ED has flagged concerns about there being inadequate health and environmental assessments of nanotechnologies to date. However, ED hasn’t mentioned publicly what they think about DuPont’s placing nanotech Teflon and similar products on the market, without such assessments.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4273
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. AN INCLUSIVE APPROACH TO FAKE RADIO NEWS
www.prweek.com/us/home/article/537793/novomedia-launches-targeted-radio-news-release-service/
The PR firm NovoMedia “has launched a radio news release service that will focus on the African American market,” reports PR Week. NovoMedia president David Henry “said in doing work for the Hispanic market, he recognized a need for the same types of services in the African American market.” African Americans have $723 million in buying power, and 90 percent of Black adults listen to the radio on a weekly basis, according to market research. Henry believes “most corporations are behind the ball in reaching out to” African Americans. He called radio the perfect way to target them, since “the African American market is going to be looking at a lot of the same television shows as everyone,” while certain radio programs “have a predominantly African American audience and topics that are obviously germane to the audience.” Fake radio news, or audio news releases, have not attracted the level of scrutiny that their TV cousins, video news releases, have.
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req’d), January 25, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4396
2. USAID INVOLVEMENT IN PALESTINIAN ELECTIONS BACKFIRES
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/23/AR2006012301611.html
A U.S. Agency for International Development program in the Palestinian territories put $2 million towards a series of “small, popular projects and events,” such as computer donations, a soccer tournament, and free food and water at border crossings, prior to the January 25 elections. The program “bears no evidence of U.S. involvement,” and a newspaper ad campaign (also funded by the U.S.) gives credit to the Palestinian Authority, “which the public closely identifies with Fatah.” A program report said the goal was “a constant stream of announcements and public outreach about positive happenings … in the critical week before the elections.” U.S. officials are concerned that the governing Fatah party will lose parliamentary seats to Hamas. “We are not favoring any particular party,” said USAID’s regional mission director. “But we do not support parties that are on the terrorism list.” A Hamas leader called for an investigation, while other Palestinian politicians criticized the program. “Let us do our elections entirely on our own,” said Mustafa Barghouti. “This effort was completely counterproductive.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, January 24, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4395
3. ON IRAQ, REALITY TRUMPS SPIN
www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.policy22jan22,1,3029883.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines
“While rarely do politicians follow academic insights, evidently the Bush administration is heeding research pioneered at the RAND Corp. showing that results and success buoy public attitudes and staunch declining support,” write author Richard Sobel and media professor David Nelson. “President Bush now speaks of victory more often. … Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld criticizes the media for focusing on the negative, particularly casualties.” However, they caution, “a public relations campaign” to “sell an unpopular war is unlikely to provide long-term staying power. A rule of thumb is that public perceptions of foreign policy initiatives respond about 80 percent to policy and 20 percent to presentation. And the Iraq policy and results appear not to be changing fundamentally enough to alter this equation.”
SOURCE: Baltimore Sun, January 22, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4393
4. STREET THEATRE CATCHES EYE OF PENTAGON SPOOKS
msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek
In May 2003, then-deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gave the go-ahead for a domestic intelligence gathering operation by the Defense Department, code-named TALON, under which “raw information” on “suspicious incidents” was given to U.S. Army analysts at the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). One apparently “suspicious incident” consisted of street theatre, organized by peace activist Scott Parkin, outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton. (In late 2005 Parkin was deported from Australia without explanation). A Pentagon memo, Michael Isikioff wrote, “shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained.” A Pentagon official told Isikoff that the number of U.S. citizens spied on could be in the thousands.
SOURCE: Newsweek, January 30, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4390
5. NUCLEAR COMPANY UNDERWRITES PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE
www.sundayherald.com/53711
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s bid to pave the way for an expansion of the nuclear power industry through the 2006 Energy Review and its consultation document, Our Energy Challenge, has been hit by controversy over undisclosed corporate lobbying. The Scottish Sunday Herald reports that a cross-party parliamentary group on nuclear power “failed to declare the administrative support it receives from nuclear power firm British Energy.” The group was also given presentations by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and the nuclear waste agency, Nirex. The cross-party group and its English counterpart, the Nuclear Energy APPG, also went on a trip, which was part-funded by the company, to a nuclear power station. NDA uses the PR firm Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, while Nirex is advised by Fleishman Hillard. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), which is responsible for decommissioning existing nuclear plants, has hired Grayling Political Strategy.
SOURCE: Sunday Herald (Scotland), January 22 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4389
6. SIMON’S PREDICTION: VNR DISCLOSURE WILL INCREASE IN 2006
www.bulldogreporter.com/dailydog/issues/1_1/dailydog_barks_bites/3007-1.html
Doug Simon, the President and CEO of D S Simon Productions, a major producer of video news releases (VNRs), optimistically predicts that in 2006 “TV stations will more willingly disclose sources of outside video they use on air during news and other programs.” Last year Simon said that “fewer than 10 percent” of his company’s VNRs used by broadcasters had “some sort of identification” to viewers of their sponsors. Simon opposes mandatory disclosure of VNRs, preferring to leave the decision in the hands of broadcasters. He also predicts that in 2006 “the PR Industry will work together to improve the public’s view of our profession with minimal initial effect … The key word above is ‘initial.’”
SOURCE: Bulldog Reporter, January 20, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4388
7. PHANTOM PATIENTS
education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,,1687476,00.html
A study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, which concluded that taking painkillers could protect against oral cancer, has been exposed as being based entirely on fabricated data. “He faked everything: names, diagnosis, gender, weight, age, drug use. There is no real data whatsoever, just figures he made up himself. Every patient in this paper is a fake,” Stein Vaaler, the director of strategy at the hospital, told the Guardian. There is no indication that the co-author of Dr. Jon Sudbo’s October 2005 article knew the data was falsified. In recent years, leading medical journals have sought to ensure higher editorial standards, better disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and exclude ghostwritten articles. The Lancet’s editor, Dr. Richard Horton, told the BBC that “the peer-review process is good at picking up poorly designed studies, but it is not designed to pick up fabricated research.”
SOURCE: Guardian, January 16, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4387
8. REPORTER SAYS SCRUSHY STACKED THE MEDIA AND JURY
www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001881819
“Throughout the six-month trial that led to Richard Scrushy’s acquittal in the $2.7 billion fraud at HealthSouth Corp., a small, influential newspaper consistently printed articles sympathetic to the … fired CEO.” The author of those stories, Audry Lewis, now says “she was secretly working on behalf of Scrushy, who she says paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm,” The Lewis Group. Audry Lewis wrote the articles, “sent unedited copies” to Scrushy and the PR firm’s Jesse Lewis, and Lewis placed the stories in The Birmingham Times, where his son is editor. Audry Lewis and Rev. Herman Henderson “now say Scrushy owes them $150,000 for the newspaper stories and other public relations work, including getting black pastors to attend the trial in a bid to sway the mostly black jury.” The prosecutor, Alice Martin, said, “If you want to pay someone to write favorable stories and can get a paper to print them, I don’t know of any law it violates.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, January 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4386
9. PR MORE PREVALENT THAN EVER
www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5418124
Public relations “is an increasingly vital marketing tool,” writes The Economist, “especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers’ attention.” Overall spending on PR in the United States is growing, reaching “some $3.7 billion last year, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a New York investment firm that specialises in media. It forecasts PR spending will grow by almost 9% a year. This is faster than the overall market for advertising and marketing, now worth a colossal $475 billion and growing at 6.7% a year.” With media fragmentation increasing the need for content, “crisply written or well-produced PR material can more easily get an airing. … Some branches of journalism have come to depend on a drip-feed of information and products from the PR industry.”
SOURCE: The Economist, January 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4385
10. LINCOLN GROUP FOCUSES ON U.S. MEDIA
www.odwyerpr.com/members/0117lincoln_dixon.htm
Lincoln Group, the Pentagon contractor recently outed for planting stories in Iraqi newspapers, is boosting its own PR efforts. The firm hired Bill Dixon, “a veteran PR executive,” as its new director of media relations. Dixon previously headed media relations for “the powerful DC-area investment ban Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group,” and has also managed PR for Google and The Motley Fool. He’s also worked on political campaigns, “in D.C., Wisconsin, Colorado, California and Virginia.”
SOURCE: O’Dwyer’s PR Daily (sub req’d), January 17, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4384
11. HARRISON RETURNS TO CORPORATE PASTURES
www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=5473&typeid=1
Alisa Harrison, who went from being the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s executive director of public relations to being the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s press secretary and director of communications, is returning to the corporate world. She’s joining the PR firm APCO Worldwide as a vice president, providing “strategic counsel in developing and implementing media and public affairs programs,” according to the Holmes Report. Harrison was the USDA’s PR point person on mad cow disease, when it was first discovered in the United States in 2003.
SOURCE: Holmes Report, January 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4383
12. “INFORMAL INQUIRIES” INTO FREEPORT’S INDONESIAN OPERATIONS
www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/international/asia/19freeport.html
In a statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the New Orleans-based mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold confirmed that it has “received informal inquiries from governmental agencies” about revelations by the New York Times that the company paid almost $20 million to Indonesian military officers and units between 1998 and 2004. The military benefactors were stationed near the massive Freeport mine in Indonesia’s Papua province. The late December Times report also detailed the environmental consequences of the company’s dumping mine tailings into a nearby river system. In a letter to the editor, Freeport President and CEO Richard C. Adkerson defended the company’s operations and stressed its commitment to corporate social responsibility. However, he did not comment on Freeport’s work with Indonesian military intelligence officers to monitor the email and phone calls of environmental activists.
SOURCE: New York Times, January 19, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4382
13. SPINNING NUKES
www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=5377&typeid=1
Hill & Knowlton (H&K) has won a $8 million account with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to promote “broad policymaker and decision-maker support for nuclear energy broadly and specifically for the Yucca Mountain project.” (Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been designated by the U.S. government as the national nuclear waste dump). The Holmes Report states that H&K “will work alongside WPP sister company Penn Schoen & Berland, which will handle research and polling for the NEI, which represents utilities and nuclear technology companies.” The NEI contract will include developing “a national coalition that would ‘activate and expand on’ existing nuclear energy supporters, engaging employees, shareholders, academics, health experts, and environmental organizations; ‘pre-empting and offsetting’ criticism from opponents.” Hill & Knowlton declined to comment on their NEI work. Unsucessful bidders for the account were Burson-Marsteller and Dittus Communications.
SOURCE: Holmes Report, January 16, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4381
14. CORPORATE ADS GROW GREENER
www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/01/17/business/bxgreen.php
“The ‘green’ advertising wave is on, as companies from Ford to General Electric to BP blitz the airwaves with concern for a clean planet,” the International Herald Tribune reports. “Advocacy groups and politicians are now challenging those corporate assertions.” For example, in a recent ad Ford claims it is “dramatically ramping up its commitment” to more environmentally friendly cars. “Left unstated in Ford’s recent ads: In 2003, the No. 2 U.S. automaker after General Motors, dropped its promise to increase average fuel efficiency on its sport utility fleet. In 2004, the company joined other automakers in suing to block a California law that would limit emissions of gases linked to global warming. And even if Ford meets its goals, low-emission hybrids by 2010 would make up less than 4 percent of the company’s fleet,” the IHT reports. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, called some of Ford’s claims “questionable,” telling the IHT, “They’re definitely exploiting the fashion of environmentally friendly vehicles.”
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune, January 18, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4380
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