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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

1. Not a Client to Bring Home to Mom
2. RNC: A Marketplace of GOP Ideas
3. Kids: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
4. Total Ad Saturation
5. Al-Jazeera Gets a Time Out
6. Politics vs Science, Round 432
7. PR Firm Needs Good PR
8. Media Is Sell
9. Bizarro Media Analysis, Part II
10. Wanting to Have Your Cake, Eat It Too, and Get Another Slice
11. When Vets Attack
12. Playing Good Flack, Bad Flack
13. Your Flack at Five
14. Bizarro Media Analysis
15. Angry Arabs
16. Employing America (Sort Of)
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1. NOT A CLIENT TO BRING HOME TO MOM
www.odwyerpr.com/members/0810asg_eritrea.htm Eritrea “signed Alexander Strategy Group, a firm with strong Republican ties, to a contract worth more than $300K a year to improve its ties with the United States.” According to Amnesty International, “torture, arbitrary detention, 'disappearances' and ill-treatment of political prisoners” are common in the Horn of Africa nation. Human Rights Watch reports, “The Eritrean government has lobbied the United States to use Eritrea's Red Sea ports as military bases in the war against terrorism.” The contract “forbids the [Alexander Strategy Group] from discussing its work without the consent of Eritrea.” The Alexander Strategy Group's other clients include the Nuclear Energy Institute, Blackwater USA and PhRMA.
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (reg. req'd), August 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1092110402
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1092110402

2. RNC: A MARKETPLACE OF GOP IDEAS
nytimes.com/2004/08/10/nyregion/10gop.html The Republican National Convention's entertainment director, former Gospel Music Association president Frank Breeden, calls his part of the program “Preachers and Patriots.” He explained, “Entertainment plays more of a prominent role in marketing messages today than ever before,” and convention organizers want to use music and culture to sell their political philosophy “just like Cadillac uses Led Zeppelin.” With limited network coverage, “we have to think like television, use a large pallet of creative ideas to convey the message.” Breeden is also “competing with the many parties that are being held by politicians, elected officials, lobbyists and corporations. Many have booked performers who might otherwise have appeared at the convention.”
SOURCE: New York Times, August 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1092110401
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1092110401

3. KIDS: BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=679&ncid=742&e=18&u=/usatoday/20040810/cm_usatoday/kidsroleinsecuringusa The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's new “Ready for Kids” program will “teach fourth- to eighth-grade kids the ABCs of emergency preparedness in the event of a terrorist attack,” with help from “a mascot – an American shepherd dog – and instructions to bug parents to develop a family emergency plan.” The program, part of “National Preparedness Month” in September, will include TV and radio ads, a website and partnerships with the Boy and Girl Scouts, Salvation Army and Chamber of Commerce. A December survey by GOP pollster Frank Luntz “showed that only 14% of Americans had created a family communications plan or emergency kit, despite much-higher numbers after 9/11.”
SOURCE: USA Today, August 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1092110400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1092110400

4. TOTAL AD SATURATION The Democratic 527 group America Coming Together “is deploying thousands of supporters with PalmOne hand-helds to battleground states to play electronic ads individually for voters.” The 15 state, $125 million get-out-the-vote effort's “canvassers were already using 2,000 Palms to track voters. … [An] advertising consultant … suggested that instead of just using the Palms to record information, the workers could also show voters state-specific political ads focused on an issue they care about.” ACT's political consultant said, “The response has been tremendous. Who has ever been to someone's door carrying a PalmPilot and showing an ad? Nobody! In some cases people have never seen a PalmPilot up close before.”
SOURCE: Advertising Age, August 9, 2004
Web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1092024000
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1092024000

5. AL-JAZEERA GETS A TIME OUT
edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/08/07/iraq.al.jazeera/ “To protect the people of Iraq and the interests of Iraq,” Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi ordered the Al-Jazeera television network's Baghdad offices closed for one month. The closure “will give them the chance to readjust their policy against Iraq,” said Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib. An Interior Ministry statement charged Al-Jazeera with “contribut[ing] to hindering the Iraqi reconstruction process by justifying kidnappings and killing of foreigners working here.” Former U.S. ambassador to Qatar Kenton Keith said Al-Jazeera has a slant which “most Americans are not comfortable with,” but the network is “no more [biased] than other news organizations.”
SOURCE: CNN, August 8, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091937600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091937600

6. POLITICS VS SCIENCE, ROUND 432
www.nytimes.com/2004/08/07/politics/07frazer.html Gary Frazer, the Interior Department's “senior career official in the Endangered Species Office, which has produced several scientific findings angering his political superiors in the Fish and Wildlife Service, was reassigned last week to a newly created post as his division's liaison to the United States Geological Survey.” Frazer's perhaps least admiring superior, Julie MacDonald, has been accused of creating “an overly cozy relationship between regulator and regulated” after she provided information helpful to the California Farm Bureau's effort to end endangered species protections for the delta smelt fish.
SOURCE: New York Times, August 7, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091851200
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091851200

7. PR FIRM NEEDS GOOD PR
www.odwyerpr.com/members/0806fh_enterprise.htm As if it hadn't gotten enough bad press lately, PR firm Fleishman-Hillard “is taking a media hit for its failed campaign on behalf of Enterprise Rent-A-Car to defeat a … car rental tax to help pay for … a $250 million arena in downtown Kansas City.” A mayoral aide suggested the firm “stay out of issue campaigning … because they are incompetent.” Fleishman-Hillard lost another vote in support of riverboat gambling in Missouri, but “launched a major consumer education effort spotlighting healthy food and beverage products” made by PepsiCo. “Pepsi, like many food and beverage companies, has been criticized for contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic,” notes PR Week.
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub. req'd), August 6, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091764803
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091764803

8. MEDIA IS SELL
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44149-2004Aug5.html “Remember how the broadcast networks explained that they would cover only three hours of each of the four-day Democratic and Republican conventions because they are nothing more than infomercials?” asks Lisa de Moraes. Well, ABC and CBS will run “infomercials for products in which the networks have a financial interest” on their Friday newsmagazines. ABC will feature Victoria Gotti, of “Growing Up Gotti” on A&E, owned in part by ABC. CBS will feature Yoanna House, from the “America's Top Model” reality show on UPN, owned by CBS parent company Viacom. Fox will air a half-hour special on the “Alien vs. Predator” movie, from 20th Century Fox (although Fox News Channel, de Moraes notes, was “all over the convention”).
SOURCE: Washington Post, August 6, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091764802
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091764802

9. BIZARRO MEDIA ANALYSIS, PART II
online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109175404288784675,00.html?mod=mm%5Fhs%5Fmedia “At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental … that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates. … We've done this before: to railroad trusts in the first part of the 20th century, to Ma Bell more recently. Politically, big media may be on the wrong side of history,” wrote Time Warner board member and Turner Broadcasting System founder Ted Turner, in an article for Washington Monthly magazine. Turner admits that he's benefited from media consolidation, but writes, “Yet I felt then, as I do now, that the government was not doing its job.”
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091764801
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091764801

10. WANTING TO HAVE YOUR CAKE, EAT IT TOO, AND GET ANOTHER SLICE
www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5896708 The U.S. Federal Election Commission unanimously dismissed Citizens United's complaint against the movie “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The conservative group, which previously mounted a failed court challenge against the campaign finance reform law, sought to bar ads for the movie after July 30. Campaign finance reform prohibits companies and unions from running candidate-related ads 60 days before an election and 30 days before a convention. But Citizens United is requesting a media exemption for itself, so that it can “run election-time ads for a book called 'The Many Faces of John Kerry: Why This Massachusetts Liberal is Wrong for America' … and a documentary film on [Kerry] and his running mate, John Edwards.”
SOURCE: Reuters, August 6, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091764800
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091764800

11. WHEN VETS ATTACK
www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/campaign/05veterans.html “A group of Vietnam veterans has bought television time in three swing states for an advertisement that attacks Senator John Kerry, accusing him of lying about his war record, including the circumstances surrounding his medals, and betraying his comrades by later opposing the war.” The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is a 527 group that receives a significant amount of funding from Republican donors. The group worked with PR consultant Merrie Spaeth and Republican firm Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potham; both were part of a nasty campaign against Senator John McCain during the 2000 primaries. McCain blasted the new ad, saying, “I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable.”
SOURCE: New York Times, August 5, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091678400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091678400

12. PLAYING GOOD FLACK, BAD FLACK
corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11486 “On the eve of the Democratic National Convention … well-dressed politicians, corporate executives and their friends watched [fireworks] from a private party at a waterfront restaurant. … Rick Rendon [was] the man in charge of the party,” writes Pratap Chatterjee. Rick and brother John, senior staff for the secretive Rendon Group PR firm, present “two entirely different faces to the world while working out of the same corporation: Spin doctoring for the Colombian military's counter insurgency; encouraging citizens of Massachusetts to pay their taxes and recycle … doing public relations for Jean Bertrand Aristide when he was being re-installed by the Clinton administration and for the citizen groups advocating the overthrow of Noreiga as the U.S. military invaded.”
SOURCE: CorpWatch, August 4, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091592002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091592002

13. YOUR FLACK AT FIVE
citypages.com/databank/25/1235/article12352.asp Cyndy Brucato recently returned as a news anchor on Minneapolis-St Paul's ABC affiliate – after nearly two decades of doing PR. “Brucato spun professionally for the likes of the Minnesota House Republican Caucus, the tobacco company Brown & Williamson, the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, and Koch Industries.” She “remains the owner of a public relations firm – Brucato and Halliday – [but] says she is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations.” Since her return, “KSTP aired one of its more peculiar offerings: a soft-focus feature about a suburban couple who were upset that Planned Parenthood is selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words, 'I had an abortion.' The story [was] apparently plucked from the Drudge Report.”
SOURCE: City Pages (Minneapolis-St Paul), August 4, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091592001
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091592001

14. BIZARRO MEDIA ANALYSIS
www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000592440 “I think there are a lot of reasons to be critical of the media in America. I think that a lot of times the media sensationalize or magnify things that aren't – that really shouldn't be. I do think there's a big move away from actual reporting, trying to report facts. It's in newspapers and everything you read – that a lot more is opinion,” said First Lady Laura Bush, in an interview with Fox News Channel's “The O'Reilly Factor.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, August 4, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091592000
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091592000

15. ANGRY ARABS
www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_juancole_archive.html#109155146717746999 Two new opinion polls show that Arab anger at the United States has deepened – “to such an extent that in Egypt – an important ally in the region – nearly 100 percent of the population now holds an unfavorable opinion of the country,” reports the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer. The polls were conducted by Zogby International, which did similar polling two years ago. “In Zogby's 2002 survey, 76 percent of Egyptians had a negative attitude toward the United States, compared with 98 percent this year,” Linzer writes. “In Morocco, 61 percent viewed the country unfavorably in 2002, but in two years, that number has jumped to 88 percent. In Saudi Arabia, such responses rose from 87 percent in 2002 to 94 percent in June. Attitudes were virtually unchanged in Lebanon but improved slightly in the [United Arab Emirates], from 87 percent who said in 2002 that they disliked the United States to 73 percent this year.” As Middle East historian Juan Cole observes, this marks a significant change in attitude from the last year of the Clinton administration, when the U.S. favorability rating in some Middle Eastern countries was as high as 75%. “Even after the Afghanistan war, a third of Jordanians thought well of the US,” Cole writes. “Now almost no one anywhere does. These changes in attitude (which greatly benefit al-Qaeda) are mostly the result of [the] war on, and occupation of Iraq.”
SOURCE: Informed Comment weblog, August 3, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091505601
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091505601

16. EMPLOYING AMERICA (SORT OF)
prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?site=3&ID=218474&site=3&/news/news_story.cfm&setcookie=1 “We Employ America, a national cooperative marketing and advertising campaign targeting the loss of American jobs to outsourcing,” was launched by Milwaukee-based ad firm Catral Doyle Creative. WEA describes itself as “a market-driven, consumer focused program … designed to pool the resources of enrolled American manufacturers to inform consumers that, by choosing to purchase products from WEA member companies, they are supporting American jobs and economic stability.” To join WEA, “potential corporate members” must simply “demonstrate it has at least one product … [with] at least 65% of the total cost of the components, manufacture and packaging incurred within the United States.”
SOURCE: PR Week (sub. req'd), August 3, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at: www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1091505600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit: www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1091505600

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