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further information about media, political spin and propaganda.
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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. Only You Can Prevent Propaganda
2. Mr. Scott Goes to Brussels
3. Celebrity Shills for Pills and Other DTC Concerns
4. Prosecuting Campus Thoughtcrimes
5. ‘Information Operations’ Defined
6. CPB’s Traitor Baiter
7. Stepping Up the Attack on Green Activists
8. Fake News Gets Called on the Carpet
9. And Now, a Hidden Word from Our Sponsor
10. Hughes Gets a Little Help from a Friend
11. A Tough First Week at Work for Karen Hughes
12. Crisis Management Rule #1: Change the Subject
13. Rendon Rocks Iraq
14. Better Living Through Chemistry (Except for the Poor Kids)
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== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT PROPAGANDA
www.freepress.net/action/stopprop
The Government Accountability Office ruled last week that several aspects of the public relations firm Ketchum’s contract with the Department of Education were illegal, constituting “covert propaganda” or “purely partisan activities.” These include Karen Ryan-narrated video news releases and Armstrong Williams columns. The New York Times editorialized, “The White House order to close down the ersatz news coverage should have been unequivocal once the real news media uncovered the hired fakers. But administration apologists continued to insist only ‘legitimate dissemination’ of public information was at work.” Since the GAO can’t enforce its rulings, Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy have launched a letter writing campaign to Congress and the Department of Justice, urging that these crimes be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.” To send a letter, just use the above link.
SOURCE: Free Press, October 4, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4047
2. MR. SCOTT GOES TO BRUSSELS
As American corporations have “discovered that Brussels is the source of an increasingly large volume of legislation, ranging from environmental and labour standards to labelling requirements and new rules for the financial services industry,” more and more lobbyists are setting up shop there. The Financial Times writes, “The dramatic increase in US lobbying activity in recent years means that companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Procter & Gamble, General Electric and General Motors have already opened offices in Brussels to lobby the Commission, the European parliament and the Council of Ministers – the three institutions that call the shots in the EU capital.” According to the Times, U.S. firms have learned from watching the EU block the GE/Honeywell merger to not “make the mistake of ignoring the EU’s top competition regulator.” Even Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott is making yearly trips to meet with key EU commissioners to discuss services industry and food labeling issues.
SOURCE: Financial Times, October 3, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4046
3. CELEBRITY SHILLS FOR PILLS AND OTHER DTC CONCERNS
The Food and Drug Administration will hold a public hearing on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising, “more than two years after the last public hearing … failed to produce any guidelines to regulate the $4 billion ad category,” notes AdAge. In announcing the November 1 and 2 meeting in Washington, DC, the FDA said it “believes the agency, the industry and other members of the public now have enough experience with DTC promotion to understand what regulatory issues may need to be addressed.” Of particular interest are celebrity endorsements, since “such approaches plainly do not reflect a data-oriented approach to promotion.” The agency will also ask “whether and how techniques mislead consumers about the risk-benefit tradeoffs” of advertised drugs. In August, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America established their own voluntary DTC guidelines. A PhRMA spokesperson said the industry group will speak at the FDA hearing.
SOURCE: Advertising Age, October 3, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4044
4. PROSECUTING CAMPUS THOUGHTCRIMES
online.wsj.com/article/SB112838476408659062.html?mod=world_news_whats_news
“Some Republicans are pushing a measure through the House of Representatives meant to ensure that students hear ‘dissenting viewpoints’ in class and are protected from retaliation because of their politics or religion. Colleges say the measure isn’t needed, but with Congress providing billions of dollars to higher education, they are worried,” writes the Wall Street Journal. This “Academic Bill of Rights” is from “Marxist-turned-conservative activist David Horowitz” and his organization, Students for Academic Freedom. Through SAF, Horowitz “has called on students to report professors who they think promote a political viewpoint or discriminate against students for their beliefs.” As Molly Riordan reports in our latest, just-about-to-hit-mailboxes issue of PR Watch, SAF directed members to investigate the “political party affiliations of university professors” in “humanities and social science departments, which are perceived as more liberal than the sciences.” (If you don’t already receive PR Watch, become a member/subscriber today!)
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub. req’d.), October 4, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4043
5. ‘INFORMATION OPERATIONS’ DEFINED
blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/09/help_for_karen_.html
“As Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes begins her monumental campaign to improve the world’s opinion of the United States, not to worry, military information warriors are poised to jump in as soon as the FEMA of public diplomacy falters,” William Arkin writes for his “Early Warnings” blog. “Certainly one of the fastest growing military sectors is that of information operations (IO).” As it turns out, the Pentagon seems to have no shortage of agencies working on IO. To make sure everyone is on the same page, the Defense Department recently offered a new definition of IO: “The integrated employment of the specified core capabilities of Electronic Warfare [EW], Computer Network Operations (CNO), PSYOP [psychological operations], Military Deception [MILDEC], and Operations Security [OPSEC], in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversarial human and automated decisionmaking, while protecting our own.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, September 30, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4040
6. CPB’S TRAITOR BAITER
www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?bid=3&pid=24751
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is now headed by Republican fundraisers Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines. CPB vice chair Gaines was a charter member of GOPAC, a group most notably associated with Newt Gingrich’s 1994 House takeover. The Nation’s David Corn recently reviewed a 1990 GOPAC memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” that lists words to use to talk up GOP vision – ‘’caring,” “freedom” and “prosperity” – and to trash Democrats – “corrupt,” “intolerant” and “traitors.” “This is to say that Gay Hart Gaines … was a leading official of an outfit that advised Republican candidates to brand Democrats ‘traitors,’” Corn writes. “Of course, advocates and party funders have the right to be as partisan (and rhetorically extreme) as they wish. But the CPB is an entity that is supposed to oversee journalistic endeavors. Should a supporter of party propagandists be in charge of overseeing the journalism of PBS and NPR?”
SOURCE: TheNation.com, September 27, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4039
7. STEPPING UP THE ATTACK ON GREEN ACTIVISTS
www.alternet.org/envirohealth/26077/
“A remorseless rapist in Hamilton County, Ohio is sentenced to 15 years in prison for beating and raping a 57-year-old woman,” writes Kelly Hearn. “An environmental activist in California is sentenced to 22 years and 8 months for burning three SUVs at a car dealership after taking precautions to harm no lives. The disparity helps illustrates what animal rights and environmental groups say is an expanding Orwellian attack on American environmentalism being waged under the pretext of eco-terrorism.” On CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair writes, “Armed with the bulging array of new police and surveillance powers handed the agency in the wake of 9/11, the FBI is now free to prowl unfettered by even the thinnest strands of constitutional due process through the lives, email and bank accounts of activists trying to stop chemical plants from flushing toxins into their water. … On FoxNews, blinking eco-terrorist alerts have replaced Tom Ridge’s color-coded threat level.”
SOURCE: AlterNet, September 30, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4038
8. FAKE NEWS GETS CALLED ON THE CARPET
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/politics/01educ.htm
“The Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush’s education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party,” ruled the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The GAO report, “the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities,” found that the Department of Education contract with the Ketchum PR firm violated the ban on “covert propaganda.” Objectionable activities include a video news release where PR flack Karen Ryan says the Bush tutoring program “gets an A-plus”; news monitoring to determine whether stories agree that “the Bush administration / the G.O.P. is committed to education”; and Armstrong Williams’ newspaper columns and television spots praising the No Child Left Behind Act, without disclosing that he was paid by the Education Department. The GAO doesn’t have enforcement powers, but reports to the White House and Congress.
SOURCE: New York Times, October 1, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4037
9. AND NOW, A HIDDEN WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR
www.csmonitor.com/2005/0929/p12s02-wmgn.html
The Wall Street Journal reports that Subway Restaurants “launched a new sandwich last night by having it written into the story line of NBC’s ‘Will & Grace’.” Such advertising is increasingly spreading beyond television and movies, and into magazines and newspapers. According to a media consulting firm, “Revenue from product placements in magazine editorial copy – the stories and photographs – is expected to rise 17.5 percent to $160.9 million this year, and in newspapers by 16.9 percent to $65 million.” The Christian Science Monitor points out, “Product placements, if done in exchange for payment, would violate the operating guidelines of most publications, which usually insist on a clear division between stories or ‘editorial copy’ and advertising as a mark of responsible journalism.”
SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor, September 29, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4036
10. HUGHES GETS A LITTLE HELP FROM A FRIEND
www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-09-28-oppose_x.htm
“At the State Department’s invitation,” former Voice of America director and current dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication Geoffrey Cowan wrote an opinion piece for USA Today praising Karen Hughes, the new U.S. public diplomacy head. Hughes “knows that we have to change our tone so that we sound less arrogant,” Cowan wrote. “Importantly,” during her recent Middle East “listening tour,” Hughes was “accompanied … by Dina Powell, her new deputy, who was born in Egypt and speaks fluent Arabic.” Noting Cowan’s “third-party endorsement” of Hughes, O’Dwyer’s PR Daily reported that, while USA Today did disclose the State Department’s role in the opinion piece, the newspaper didn’t mention that “Cowan received a briefing from Hughes when she visited the campus on Sept. 21.”
SOURCE: USA Today, September 28, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4035
11. A TOUGH FIRST WEEK AT WORK FOR KAREN HUGHES
www.csmonitor.com/2005/0928/p01s03-wome.html
Karen Hughes “started her first week as the State Department’s top public relations officer with a ‘listening tour’ of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.” After Hughes’ meeting with Egyptian students on U.S. scholarships, one student said, “I’m glad she spoke to us, but I didn’t find her answers very convincing.” In Turkey, Fatma Nevin Vargun told Hughes, “War makes the rights of women completely erased.” Turkish activist Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal said there is “no chance for America to make its image better … while the war in Iraq is still going on.” Tuksal also said she was “feeling myself insulted” by some of Hughes’ comments. In Saudi Arabia, several of the 500 women at an event with Hughes took exception to her wish that Saudi women be allowed to drive and “fully participate in society.” An ob/gyn countered, “There is more male chauvinism in my profession in Europe and America than in my country.”
SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor, September 28, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4033
12. CRISIS MANAGEMENT RULE #1: CHANGE THE SUBJECT
thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092905/gop.html
“A Texas grand jury’s decision to indict former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) may have caught many people in Washington off-guard, but those in DeLay’s inner circle had spent the past few days bracing themselves,” reports The Hill. “Minutes after the announcement came, DeLay’s closest and strongest supporters began mounting a defense. By 2 p.m., a two-page memo condemning [Texas prosecutor] Ronnie Earle and the indictment was hitting Republican e-mail.” The memo “turns the ethical spotlight on Earle and casts DeLay as the innocent victim.” It “cites a Houston Chronicle article saying that Earle had started raising money for ‘far-left’ groups.” Republicans “would not disclose the author,” but the memo is similar to one written earlier this year by former Republican National Committee research director Barbara Comstock, in response to questions about DeLay’s foreign travel and campaign payments to his wife and daughter.
SOURCE: The Hill, September 29, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4032
13. RENDON ROCKS IRAQ
www.defenselink.mil/contracts/2005/ct20050927.html
The Rendon Group, a PR firm that has assisted U.S. military interventions in at least seven countries, continues to be a Pentagon favorite. The secretive firm recently won a year-long $6.4 million contract with the Army for “Strategic Communications Operations Support” in Baghdad. In April 2005, O’Dwyer’s PR Daily reported that Rendon “is winding down its current $8.2M contract” with the Pentagon’s Strategic Command. Rendon had been “handling foreign media analysis for about 15 months,” with a whopping “56 staffers handling the account.” The Rendon Group is no stranger to Iraq. Seymour Hersh reported in a March 2002 New Yorker article that the firm received close to $100 million from the CIA for work it did in Iraq in the five years following the Gulf War, which included launching the Iraqi National Congress.
SOURCE: Defenselink.mil, September 27, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4031
14. BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY (EXCEPT FOR THE POOR KIDS)
The American Chemistry Council (ACC), which received bad press last year for funding an Environmental Protection Agency study that would have exposed children to pesticides and household chemicals, launched a “major public education campaign” called “essential2.” The two-year, $35 million campaign will stress “how central chemistry is to the health and growth of our nation,” said ACC President Jack Gerard. “The chemistry industry is America’s leading exporter, accounting for 10 percent of all U.S. exports, and we generate more than half a trillion dollars for the U.S. economy each year.” ACC hired Ogilvy Public Relations Worlwide, APCO Worldwide and the Ogilvy & Mather ad firm for “essential2.” The campaign includes a new website, www.americanchemistry.com, “press, television, public relations, online and employee communications,” as well as outreach tailored to seven U.S. geographic regions.
SOURCE: PR Week, September 26, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4030
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