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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

1. The Carbon PR Cycle
2. Who's Your Sugar Daddy?
3. Race, Elections and the Media
4. Painting Happy Faces on Black Boxes
5. Heal Thyself!
6. Mine, All Mine
7. Al Qaeda at the DNC
8. Triumph of the Trivial
9. Crossed Wires and Banana Republicans
10. A Match Made… Well, Somewhere
11. Riddle of the Sphinx
12. One Straight Shooter
13. Can Monsanto's Raider Vanquish Nader?
14. PR: Making Words Obscure Actions
15. Convention 'Hospitality'
16. Iraq's War on Unwarranted Criticism
17. They Blacklist, You Decide
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1. THE CARBON PR CYCLE
www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/84/carbon.html#WB “Organized by the World Bank, the International Emissions Trading Association and Koelnmesse (Cologne Trade Fair), Carbon Expo was supposed to be 'the Coming of Age of the Global Carbon Market,'” reports Chris Lang. At a journalists' workshop, World Bank Communications Advisor Sergio Jellinek said the Bank wanted to help journalists “in terms of getting the story right. You set the tone of the debate. It's a debate we want to be involved in,” he stressed. “Carbon emission trading, a vehicle for development. Is this a story that's worth telling? I think it is.”
SOURCE: World Rainforest Movement Bulletin
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2. WHO'S YOUR SUGAR DADDY?
prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=218037&site=3 “A grassroots PR effort that included giving away American flags for the Fourth of July has helped Donald Trump win the right to build a new casino in Orange County, an economically depressed area in Indiana,” reports PR Week. Competition for the casino license was fierce; Indianapolis PR firm MZD promoted Trump as experienced and caring. Trump “pledged to give $5 million each to refurbish two local resort hotels.” MZD offered “to replace [businesses' and families'] worn-out American flags with new ones. One citizen at a public meeting mentioned [the free flags] as a sign that Trump truly cared.”
SOURCE: PR Week (sub. req'd), August 2, 2004
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3. RACE, ELECTIONS AND THE MEDIA
www.citylimits.org/content/articles/weeklyView.cfm?articlenumber=1562 “Gaining access to the Republican National Convention has become a tortuous struggle for a slew of local ethnic publications,” reports a New York City weekly. In Arizona, a Bush-Cheney organizer “insisted on knowing the race of a … journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney,” saying the information was needed “to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name” – which seems unlikely, since her name is Mamta Popat. In New Mexico, “Democrats who signed up to hear [Cheney] speak … were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.” One media analysis company estimates that, with Iraq coverage dominating the news, “67 percent of stories on Bush were negative, while only 36 percent were negative for Kerry.”
SOURCE: City Limits, August 2, 2004
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4. PAINTING HAPPY FACES ON BLACK BOXES
alternet.org/election04/19423/ “It's amazing how far the reputation of electronic voting has fallen,” writes Center for Media and Democracy researcher Diane Farsetta. On November 9, 2000, one company bragged, “If Florida had used an e-voting system, we'd know the winner already.” But over the past few years, as “expert critiques of and troubling incidents with e-voting systems multiplied to the point of attracting major media attention,” the multi-industry group Information Technology Association of America “urged e-voting companies to unite under a public relations banner.” A longer version of this article ran in the Center's quarterly journal, PR Watch. Subscribe today and be among the first to read future exposes!
SOURCE: AlterNet, August 2, 2004
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5. HEAL THYSELF!
bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7460/247?etoc Just 13 percent of Americans think pharmaceutical companies are “generally honest and trustworthy,” according to a recent survey. “Public confidence in drug companies has plunged harder and faster than for any other industry,” putting them “on a par with tobacco, oil and [HMOs].” With medical journals not identifying drug study authors' “relevant conflicts of interest,” Schering-Plough pleading guilty to defrauding Medicaid, Bristol-Myers Squibb settling charges of financial improprieties, and GlaxoSmithKline withholding information about its antidepressants' usefulness for adolescents, it's not too hard to understand the survey results.
SOURCE: British Medical Journal, July 31, 2004
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6. MINE, ALL MINE
www.montanaforum.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=580&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Montana's citizen-passed ban on cyanide leach mining may be repealed in a November initiative supported by the group Miners, Merchants and Montanans for Jobs and Economic Opportunity. The group receives almost all of its funding from Colorado's Canyon Resources Corp. – which may explain a “little-known part” of the initiative “that would restore mining rights that any company or person had when the cyanide method was banned in 1998.” Initiative opponents, concerned at the environmental effects of cyanide mining, have formed a “Save the Blackfoot” group, whose board consists “largely of southwestern Montana residents, some of them Blackfoot River users.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, July 30, 2004
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7. AL QAEDA AT THE DNC
journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/07/30/queda_came.html Journalism professor Jay Rosen, who attended the Democratic national convention, says the “great overlooked story in all the reporting” was the heightened security situation. “It was in your face, nonstop, in thousands of ways inside what was called, in military terms, The Perimeter,” Rosen writes. “It came lunging at you as you approached the site and enveloped all when you were on site. You could have your credentials checked twenty times on a single trip from the ground floor to your seats. … It was telling us that we live in a different world than the last time there was a political convention. … What was all this security about? And who authored it? Ultimately, Al Queda did. … Al Queda also came to the convention.”
SOURCE: PressThink, July 30, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091160002

8. TRIUMPH OF THE TRIVIAL
nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?hp New York Times' columnist Paul Krugman looks into why Americans haven't heard much about John Kerry's proposal to extend health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. After “reading 60 days' worth” of transcripts from major cable and broadcast TV networks Krugman writes, “Never mind the details – I couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis – how it's playing, not what's in it. On the other hand, everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to 'shove it,' though even there, the context was missing.” Krugman continues, “Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies, and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their personalities. We hear about Mr. Kerry's haircuts, not his health care proposals. We hear about George Bush's brush-cutting, not his environmental policies. … In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year's presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq.”
SOURCE: New York Times, July 30, 2004
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9. CROSSED WIRES AND BANANA REPUBLICANS
www.latimes.com/technology/la-na-florida30jul30,1,4532416.story?coll=la-headlines-technology Florida's Republicans are getting mixed signals about November. Governor Jeb Bush “has tried for months to persuade Florida voters touch-screen [electronic] voting machines are reliable.” But the state GOP party is circulating a flier that reads, in part, “The new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount. Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today.” Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County elections officials are “very pleased” that they found a compact disk containing the votes cast on e-voting machines in the 2002 gubernatorial primary; the information had been reported lost.
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2004
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10. A MATCH MADE… WELL, SOMEWHERE
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22128-2004Jul28.html “Citizens for a Sound Economy and Empower America have merged to form FreedomWorks, a grass-roots advocacy and political group to bolster their fight for 'lower taxes, less government and more economic freedom,'” reports Judy Sarasohn. The new group will be co-chaired by Dick Armey, C. Boyden Gray and Jack Kemp, with Matt Kibbe as president. Freedom Works is “intended, in part, to challenge political liberal groups such as MoveOn.org for voters this campaign season” and will engage in “lobbying, political fundraising and political activities, including voter education and get-out-the-vote efforts in key campaigns,” according to Armey.
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 29, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2004.html#1091073601
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11. RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX
online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109104875075676781,00.html?mod=health%5Fhs%5Fpolicy%5Flegislation “The pyramid has crumbled,” said a food industry consultant. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion hired the Porter Novelli PR firm to redesign the Food Pyramid, or, as one PR pro called it, the “Food Guidance System, so it's not prejudiced that it's going to be a pyramid.” Food is a $500 billion industry, so “everybody and their dog” is interested, said the Wheat Foods Council president. Concerned groups include the U.S. Potato Board, the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, Atkins Nutritionals and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The USDA will pay Porter Novelli at least $1.6 million over the next year, for the redesign, slogan, Internet work and educational materials, reports Adweek.
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2004
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12. ONE STRAIGHT SHOOTER
www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000589029 Ohio's concealed carry law allows “only the media to find out the names of those obtaining such permits” for weapons. So Cleveland's newspaper, The Plain Dealer, published the “names, ages and home counties of the 3,000 residents who have taken out such permits, citing the public's right to know.” In response, Ohioans for Concealed Carry posted the newspaper editor's home address, phone number and other personal information on their website, along with a map to his house, saying, “The editor believes in open records.” The editor's home phone has received “a steady stream of phone calls, some of them obscene.”
SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, July 28, 2004
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13. CAN MONSANTO'S RAIDER VANQUISH NADER?
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001990673_nader28.html Toby Moffett is a well-connected Washington lobbyist employed at the Livingston Group, a powerful lobby firm begun by former Republican representative Robert Livingston. One of Moffett's close colleagues at Livingston is Lauri Fitz-Pegado who worked for the front group Citizens for a Free Kuwait. Moffett was previously a vice-president of Monsanto, the giant genetic engineering and pesticide company. In his youth Moffett worked for Ralph Nader and now as he did in 2000 he is trading on his “Nader's Raider” past to raise hefty contributions for a well-oiled attack campaign against Nader's run for the presidency. According to the Seattle Times, “anti-Nader groups have been organized for months. But the efforts have taken 'a huge move' recently in fund raising, research and a detailed attack plan, Moffett said. 'This guy [Nader] is still a huge threat,' he said. 'We're just not going to make the same mistake we made in 2000.' … A memo given to potential supporters said Moffett's group, United Progressives for Victory, will do research, community organizing, media outreach and Internet marketing aimed at weakening Nader's standing. Last night, Nader called it a smear campaign and said, 'It's the Democrats' undemocratic attempt' to quash third-party candidates.”
SOURCE: Seattle Times, Wednesday, July 28, 2004
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14. PR: MAKING WORDS OBSCURE ACTIONS
www.odwyerpr.com/members/0728apco_indonesia.htm The international PR firm APCO Worldwide “is spreading the word that Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, is a staunch U.S. ally committed to combating terrorism.” APCO signed a six-month agreement with Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information “to promote positive U.S./Indonesia ties,” including a high-level delegation to Washington DC, after Indonesia's presidential run-off election in September. Yet “Indonesian police … dropped plans to charge militant cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir with involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings following a court ruling last week that curbed the use of a tough antiterrorism law,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, July 28, 2004
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15. CONVENTION 'HOSPITALITY'
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19546-2004Jul27.html Candidates, delegates, protesters and media aren't the only folks attending the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer. Lobbyists, by the thousands, are doing “what amounts to the only real work going on at the convention – the nonstop currying of favor of elected officials by the most powerful interests in the country,” the Washington Post writes. Representing their well-heeled clients, lobbyists are hosting hundreds of events at the conventions hoping to make connections that will pay off for them in the future. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), played down the $19,000 luncheon given in his honor by the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Durbin, an original co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, called the luncheon an extension of his “day-to-day contact with business from my state.” “It's hospitality at the convention, and I think that's part of the experience,” he told the Post.
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 28, 2004
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16. IRAQ'S WAR ON UNWARRANTED CRITICISM
news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087374001384 “In a difficult security situation, we need to fight the terrorists by all means, and one of the main means is the media. We need them all to co-operate, even the private sector. It's for national security,” said Ibrahim Janabi, a former Iraqi intelligence officer who Prime Minister Iyad Allawi just appointed as the head of the new Higher Media Commission. The Commission, which will be housed in the old Information Ministry building, will “impose restrictions on print and broadcast media.” Janabi said the restrictions would include “unwarranted criticism of the prime minister.”
SOURCE: Financial Times (UK), July 27, 2004
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17. THEY BLACKLIST, YOU DECIDE
www.tvweek.com/article.cms?articleId=25615 “All PR people pitch stories to reporters, but Fox is unusually forceful … and active in letting reporters know when it is unhappy,” writes Alex Ben Block. “Among the hundreds of reporters with whom the [Fox News Channel] publicists regularly deal, some have written things that are deemed so offensive that Fox just stops talking to them.” The “blacklisted” include an Associated Press reporter who wrote an article about Paula Zahn leaving Fox for CNN and a Baltimore Sun reporter who, in late 2001, “noted that Fox correspondent Geraldo Rivera was not actually at the scene of a battle [in Afghanistan], as he had described.”
SOURCE: TV Week, July 25, 2004
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