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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. Pro-War “Vets for Freedom” Tied to Bush’s PR Team
2. Hadji Girl
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. Kids to Kraft: Where’s the Wheat?
2. U.S. Leads Effort To Shorten EU’s REACH
3. Drug Companies Fail Transparency Test
4. Call Goes Out For PR Industry Makeover Proposals
5. CSR “Preventing Progress,” Concludes Study
6. CanWest Pushes Drug Ads in Canada
7. Life and Lobbying Go On, After Abramoff
8. Afghanistan’s Media War
9. Nuking Hearts and Minds in Britain
10. Republicans Plot Pro-War Strategy to Win in November
11. Benador Asks: Are You With the Fabricators or the Terrorists?
12. Shell Oil Execs To Press the Flesh
13. Pentagon Calls SOS for Foreign Media Work
14. Ethics All Clear for Election Front Group
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== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. PRO-WAR “VETS FOR FREEDOM” TIED TO BUSH’S PR TEAM
by John Stauber
Citizen journalists on SourceWatch have been investigating and exposing the many Republican connections and the partisan pro-war political agenda behind Vets for Freedom, a new organization with mysterious funding and a flashy website designed by Campaign Solutions, part of the Donatelli Group. Vets for Freedom’s hollow claim of “non-partisanship” took another blow Sunday, June 25, when the Buffalo News published a front page story by Jerry Zremski, their Washington correspondent, linking Vets for Freedom to the Bush White House.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4916
2. HADJI GIRL
by Sheldon Rampton
If you want to understand why the war is going so badly in Iraq, it may help to examine the recent reaction to “Hadji Girl,” the videotaped song about killing Iraqis by U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile. The song became controversial when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discovered it on the internet and objected to its lyrics. “Hadji Girl” tells the story of a soldier “out in the sands of Iraq / And we were under attack”:
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4887
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. KIDS TO KRAFT: WHERE’S THE WHEAT?
www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/20_04/20_04.shtml
In contrast to the more than $15 billion in direct marketing spent in the U.S. to exhort children to buy food and non-food products, children often don’t get very far with the companies when they start asking questions. Olympia, Washington teacher Michi Thacker assigned her elementary students to write food manufacturers to raise questions, such as where the macaroni comes from. Most larger companies like Kraft suddenly had little to say. Kraft told one student via email that “the information you are seeking is considered confidential.” Gatorade, Frito Lay, Campbell’s and Post had similar nonanswers. Nancy from Nancy’s Yogurt of Eugene, Oregon, on the other hand, responded personally to students with the names of the producing farms and the origins of ingredients. Rethinking Schools contains 13 articles about how children learn about food, including the costs of local and imported food, corporate food distribution networks, connecting food and heritage, and what an earthworm (in contrast to a PR firm) can teach you about eating right.
SOURCE: Rethinking Schools, Summer 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4921
2. U.S. LEADS EFFORT TO SHORTEN EU’S REACH
online.wsj.com/article/SB115134772234890994.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
By year’s end, the European Union is expected to adopt REACH, a proposal that would “require manufacturers to test industrial chemicals used in the manufacturing process to gather health and safety data.” REACH stands for “Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals.” The bill “has prompted a U.S.-led coalition of 13 countries to step up lobbying efforts to make the final measure more amenable to industry,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The diplomatic missions of the U.S., Japan, Australia, India and other countries issues a length joint critique of the proposed law this month, saying certain provisions would disrupt international trade without offering clear environmental benefits.” C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. ambassador to the EU and former chair of FreedomWorks and Citizens for a Sound Economy, said European policymakers “never did a proper impact assessment to evaluate the risk-versus-benefit status of this legislation.”
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req’d), June 27, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4920
3. DRUG COMPANIES FAIL TRANSPARENCY TEST
www.consumersinternational.org/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=95357
&int1stParentNodeID=89650&int2ndParentNodeID=95352
A report by Consumers International, a global federation of consumer organisations, examined the corporate social responsibility policies of 20 major drug companies to test what information they disclose about sponsoring patient groups, funding disease awareness campaigns and offering hospitality to medical experts. The report, Branding the Cure: A consumer perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility, Drug Promotion and the Pharmaceutical Industry, “found only one company, (Eli Lilly), provided information on policies towards patient organisations; Less than half provided information about codes of conduct for gifts and hospitality to health care professionals; Pfizer, that worlds biggest pharmaceutical company, provides no specific public information about its marketing code of conduct.” The report concludes that self-regulatory codes of conduct are inadequate and that there is a need to “dissolve [the] veiled relationships between pharmaceutical companies and health researchers.”
SOURCE: Consumers International, June 26, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4919
4. CALL GOES OUT FOR PR INDUSTRY MAKEOVER PROPOSALS
www.prweek.com/uk/news/article/565545/EPCA+looks+lift+industry+image/
The European Centre for Public Affairs (ECPA), a non-profit PR training and research group, is calling on PR consultancies to outline how they would improve the image of the PR industry. ECPA deputy chairman Michael Burrell told PR Week that it was “important that the industry promotes and defends itself.” However, Burrell recognises the that improving the image of the industry won’t be easy. “It is a close to insuperable challenge to actually promote positive news stories about what [the public affairs industry] does,” he said. Burrell is European Chairman of Public Affairs for the privately-owned PR firm Edelman.
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req’d), June 22, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4918
5. CSR “PREVENTING PROGRESS,” CONCLUDES STUDY
www.sundayherald.com/56377
A new study on corporate social responsibility (CSR) from Scotland’s St. Andrews University concludes that corporate CSR programs “are so threadbare and misleading that they are preventing progress towards a sustainable future,” reports the Sunday Herald. The study adds that CSR reports, which are produced by less than four percent of major companies, are “at best useless and at worst highly misleading.” Study co-author Jan Bebbington, an environmental adviser to the Scottish Executive, warned, “Driven by globalisation, problems of pollution, waste and global warming are all threatening to disrupt humanity in unprecedented ways.” She criticized UK Chancellor Gordon Brown for promoting “a light-touch regulatory environment” and abandoning “plans to make companies report their social and environmental impacts.” The Confederation of British Industry welcomed Brown’s move, calling the proposed reporting “overly legalistic.”
SOURCE: Sunday Herald (Scotland), June 25, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4917
6. CANWEST PUSHES DRUG ADS IN CANADA
bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/332/7556/1469-a
The Canadian government has until the end of June to respond to a legal action by CanWest MediaWorks, which wants to overturn the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. CanWest MediaWorks, which owns a national television network in Canada, lodged the claim in December 2005. In a statement at the time, CanWest MediaWorks claimed that “Canadians are already inundated by American advertisements, making the issue one of ‘basic business fairness’ between the two markets.” Barbara Mintzes, from the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia, argues that there is a need for better enforcement of existing legislation. “CanWest’s solution is to get rid of the law. This is like saying that if corner stores are getting away with selling cigarettes to 13 year olds, we might as well get rid of the age restrictions,” she told the British Medical Journal.
SOURCE: British Medical Journal (sub req’d), June 24, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4914
7. LIFE AND LOBBYING GO ON, AFTER ABRAMOFF
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062101792.html
Lobbyists from the defunct firm Alexander Strategy Group, which closed after being tied to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and disgraced House majority leader Tom DeLay, are finding new K Street homes, reports Judy Sarasohn. Daniel Gans and Amelia Blackwood have started their own shop, Polaris Government Relations. Polaris has several former ASG clients, including BellSouth, U.S. Telecom Association, Xcel Energy and the Association of Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchisees, which retained Polaris to lobby on “estate taxes, ‘frivolous obesity suits,’ the minimum wage and avian flu.” Former ASG lobbyist Paul Behrends is now at C&M Capitolink and Terry Haines is at Buchanan Ingersoll. In related news, the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee released a report detailing how Abramoff used nonprofit groups “as extensions of for-profit lobbying operations.” One group, conservative activist Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, funneled more than $1 million from the Choctaw tribe to Ralph Reed, reports Associated Press.
SOURCE: Washington Post, June 22, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4911
8. AFGHANISTAN’S MEDIA WAR
news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1095848.ece
In Afghanistan, “the Taliban now have three different press spokesmen covering three separate regions of the country. In Kandahar this summer, Taliban cassettes, DVDs and magazines are available in numbers never previously seen. … The Taliban have also begun broadcasting a pirate station called the ‘Voice of Sharia’ from mobile transmitters in at least two southern provinces,” reports The Independent. “In response, Western forces in the country are extending a fledgling military funded radio channel called Radio Peace,” which aims to counter Taliban propaganda portraying President Hamid Karzai as a “puppet” of the United States. The Washington Post reports on “an unsigned but official-looking document” recently delivered to Afghan media outlets, which directed them to avoid any material that “weakens public morale or damages the national interest,” among other instructions. Karzai disavowed the document, which the national journalists’ association called “illegal.” The document is believed to have come from the Afghan intelligence service or government officials “seeking to indirectly intimidate the press.”
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), June 23, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4910
9. NUKING HEARTS AND MINDS IN BRITAIN
www.prweek.com/uk/news/article/565845/Nuclear+sector+hunts+public+champion/
“We need to win hearts and minds in local communities and reassure people about safety,” said Philip Dewhurst. He’s not a military commander in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the chair of the British Nuclear Industry Association (NIA). NIA, which represents 120 “nuclear power station operators, equipment suppliers and waste management firms,” is readying for the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair “to give the go-ahead for the building of new [nuclear] stations when it publishes the findings of the Energy Review next month.” NIA created a new staff position, public relations head, “to champion the industry,” reports PR Week. NIA’s chief executive has said “he believes the public would support new plants built next to existing power stations, where residents are already assured of safety and where thousands of jobs are supported.”
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req’d), June 22, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4909
10. REPUBLICANS PLOT PRO-WAR STRATEGY TO WIN IN NOVEMBER
www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22capital.html
The New York Times reports that Republicans are strongly embracing the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq in “an effort to turn what some party leaders had feared could become the party’s greatest liability into an advantage in the midterm elections.” In a strategy meeting “White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war. Participants also included Mr. Bush’s top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett.” The NY Times article makes no mention of the new group Vets for Freedom, an apparent client of the Republican consultanting firm Donatelli Group. It has been attacking John Murtha and other Iraq war critics while heavlily promoting Bush’s pro-war position. Vets for Freedom could be very helpful in the Republican pro-war PR strategy to keep control of Congress and the Senate.
SOURCE: New York Times, June 22, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4908
11. BENADOR ASKS: ARE YOU WITH THE FABRICATORS OR THE TERRORISTS?
www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/cohleresses
“Who needs Hill & Knowlton when you’ve got Benador Associates?” asks Larry Cohler-Esses in The Nation. Cohler-Esses examines a rapidly-debunked May 2006 story in Canada’s National Post, which claimed that Iran’s government was requiring Jewish residents to wear a yellow insignia. That story was planted by the PR firm Benador Associates, according to its president, Eleana Benador. The firm’s “stable of writers and activists” reads like “a Who’s Who of the neocon movement,” including Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and Amir Taheri, an Iranian exile who wrote the false story. Cohler-Esses notes that Taheri’s 1989 book, Nest of Spies, was also debunked for citing “nonexistent sources,” fabricating “nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed,” and distorting the facts “beyond recognition.” Last year, Taheri falsely claimed that Iran’s current ambassador to the United Nations took part in the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Yet, Taheri was part of an “Iraq experts” briefing of President Bush last month. “My major concern is the large picture,” Benador told Cohler-Esses. “As much as being accurate is important, in the end it’s important to side with what’s right. What’s wrong is siding with the terrorists.”
SOURCE: The Nation, June 14, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4904
12. SHELL OIL EXECS TO PRESS THE FLESH
www.prweek.com/us/news/article/563530/Shell+tour+US/
“As an industry, we have not done a good job about educating people and talking about how gas prices are set,” explained Shell Oil’s senior media relations specialist, Darci Sinclair. So, over the next two years, Shell “will send its senior leaders on a 50-city ‘tour’,” reports PR Week. Shell president John Hofmeister and other executives will hold “one-on-one and group meetings, receptions, speeches, and other events with local chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, educational institutions, media members, environmental groups, government officials, Shell employees themselves, and others.” The goal is to reach 10,000 people in total, in cities including Dallas, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Seattle, Charlotte and Honolulu. Like other oil companies and the industry group American Petroleum Institute, Shell is trying to counter public anger at high oil prices and “windfall profit” tax proposals.
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req’d), June 8, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4902
13. PENTAGON CALLS SOS FOR FOREIGN MEDIA WORK
www.odwyerpr.com/members/0621stratcom.htm
STRATCOM, the U.S. military’s Strategic Operations Command, has awarded its new contract for foreign media monitoring to SOS International. Perennial Pentagon favorite the Rendon Group formerly held the contract. SOS will track “foreign press in several languages across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Mexico with a focus on the so-called Global War on Terrorism,” reports O’Dwyer’s PR Daily. The contract is worth up to $67 million through 2010. SOS “was one of four companies awarded a multi-million contract with the FBI last year to train and provide role players to support the Bureau’s nationwide counterintelligence training program.” It’s also worked for the United Nations, providing “anti-money laundering training” in Nigeria; for Kellogg Brown and Root, providing linguists; and for the National Security Agency.
SOURCE: O’Dwyer’s PR Daily (sub req’d), June 21, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4901
14. ETHICS ALL CLEAR FOR ELECTION FRONT GROUP
www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,19525794%5E3462,00.html
The Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) has dismissed an ethics complaint that a front group authorized by the Chief Executive of Corporate Communications Tasmania, Tony Harrison, breached the PR industry’s self-regulatory code of ethics. In the March 2006 Tasmanian state election, Harrison authorised a major advertising campaign for Tasmanians for a Better Future but refused to disclose who was funding it. Australian Greens Senator, Christine Milne, argued that in her opinion Harrison breached the code of ethics provision which states that “members shall be prepared to identify the source of funding of any public communication they initiate or for which they act as a conduit”. In a speech to the Australian Senate late last week Milne said that all she got from the PRIA “was a two-line reply” dismissing her complaint. Corporate Communications Tasmania is the largest PR company in Tasmania and an affiliate of Porter Novelli.
SOURCE: The Mercury, June 20, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4900
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