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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. The Emperor Doesn’t Disclose: Why the Fight Against Fake News Continues
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. Ketchum Catches No Heat, Gets New Contract
2. How To Serve (and Market To) Humans
3. Goodwill Hunting
4. PR Czar Earns E’s
5. Cosmetics Companies Push Pink
6. Fake Blogging and an Equally Fake Apology
7. Al Gore’s Code Red
8. Bush Breaks 40
9. Pesticides and Forest Service Fires
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== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. THE EMPEROR DOESN’T DISCLOSE: WHY THE FIGHT AGAINST FAKE NEWS CONTINUES
by Diane Farsetta Like much news that’s damaging to the Bush administration, the report came out on a Friday.
Since then, it’s gotten little media attention — just 41 mentions in U.S. newspapers and wire stories, according to a news database search on October 11. That’s remarkably sparse coverage for a story showing that the U.S. government has been engaged in illegal propaganda aimed at its own citizens.
On September 30, the nonpartisan, investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), announced that several aspects of work done for the Department of Education by the public relations firm Ketchum violated federal law. Taxpayer-funded projects carried out by Ketchum or its subcontractors — including Armstrong Williams and Karen Ryan — constituted “covert propaganda” or “purely partisan activities,” according to the GAO.
Yet, what the GAO has condemned, administration officials seem to consider business as usual.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4059
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. KETCHUM CATCHES NO HEAT, GETS NEW CONTRACT
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100900959.html
As part of a $300 million, three-year U.S. government effort encouraging seniors to sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug program, the PR firm Ketchum won a $25 million contract, including $2 million in fees, to manage the advertising campaign. Ketchum “produced a controversial series of prepackaged news stories,” or video news releases (VNRs), for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). VNRs that Ketchum produced for the Department of Education were also recently found to be “covert propaganda.” The Washington Post reported, “HHS officials say Ketchum got the new work because it already had a multiyear contract to provide public relations services for the department. The firm promised the new ads will not cross the legal line.” HHS’s Kathleen Harrington said that seniors trust Medicare information more when it comes from the government, so “it’s in the interest of our success … to label everything appropriately.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, October 10, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4069
2. HOW TO SERVE (AND MARKET TO) HUMANS
seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/243008_retail01.html
“The study of people in their natural environment is, The Hartman Group believes, the future of marketing,” explains a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story. So this market research firm, which has worked for Whole Foods, PepsiCo and Campbell Soup Company, has sent two sociocultural anthropologists into a private home for up to nine months, to “observe the family’s eating habits.” This new approach – called “reality marketing” – will fill “an enormous void in the intellectual capital of the entire industry,” said The Hartman Group’s Michelle Barry. Pepsi’s vice-president of consumer and customer insights, Dwight Riskey, agrees. “This generates a richness that we wouldn’t get from standard techniques,” he said. The Hartman Group’s CEO, Harvey Hartman, stressed the importance of observing one family over time: “The fluidity of life is the power behind reality marketing.”
SOURCE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 1, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4068
3. GOODWILL HUNTING
www.publicdiplomacy.org/55.htm
An advisory committee to the U.S. State Department has issued a new report which frankly admits that the war in Iraq, combined with prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, has deeply damaged America’s image in the rest of the world. “There is deep and abiding anger toward U.S. policies and actions,” states the report, titled Cultural Diplomacy: The Linchpin of Public Diplomacy. Committee members reviewed several academic studies and conducted interviews in various countries with artists, cultural activists, educators, filmmakers, writers, foreign officials and journalists. “A sense of crisis was everywhere apparent,” it states, “first in the growing perception of the United States as a hostile force, then in the scale of the diplomatic problem that must be solved: bridges rebuilt and new links forged. Put simply, we have lost the goodwill of the world, without which it becomes ever more difficult to execute foreign policy.”
SOURCE: Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy, September 15, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4064
4. PR CZAR EARNS E’S
www.tompaine.com/articles/20051006/a_failed_public_diplomat.php
Newly minted propaganda czar Karen Hughes’ “listening tour” of the Middle East “turned into a near feeding frenzy directed at her by the western media,” writes John Brown, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer. “Hughes’s PR failure with her home media would be of little importance if it did not lead to a simple but troubling question: If the administration’s Under Secretary in a key foreign policy post can’t demonstrate to western reporters that she’s a serious professional, how will she ever be able to convince the rest of the world … that her official assignment – winning hearts and minds abroad – is worth any attention or respect?” Instead of the four “E’s” of public diplomacy – “Education, Empowerment, Engagement and Exchanges” – Brown lists several different “E’s” that Hughes communicated on her tour: Evangelical, Erroneous, Evasive, Eccentric, Egocentric and Escapist.
SOURCE: TomPaine.com, October 6, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4062
5. COSMETICS COMPANIES PUSH PINK
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/fashion/thursdaystyles/06skin.html
“October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and beauty companies are once again selling pink-ribbon products … all of which earmark some of the purchase price for breast cancer charities,” the New York Times reports. “While a few lose money on pink-ribbon products, they still profit, market researchers say, from the consumer good will and loyalty that their giving inspires.” But not all women’s health advocates are tickled with the results. Helen Lynn of the UK-based Women’s Environmental Network told the London Telegraph that the pink ribbon has become a “blindfold” against the cancer risks associated with some cosmetics ingredients. Breast Cancer Action, a San Francisco-based group, has launched a “Think Before You Pink” campaign, urging consumers to ask “some critical questions before opening your wallet for these marketing campaigns: How much money goes to the cause? What is it supporting? How is it being raised? And will it truly affect the fight against breast cancer?”
SOURCE: New York Times, October 6, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4061
6. FAKE BLOGGING AND AN EQUALLY FAKE APOLOGY
www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1585687,00.html
Fake blogs—a form of viral marketing in which PR or advertising agencies attempt to generate interest in their client’s product by creating a fictional character on the internet—are drawing criticism from real bloggers. The Cohn & Wolfe PR firm had to apologize recently after “using a fictional character to leave a series of thinly veiled advertisements on blogs and other websites. A number of websites were hit last week with messages from Barry Scott,” a fictional spokesman for a British household cleaning product. British blogger Tom Coates was especially outraged and called it “a new low for marketers” after he wrote an emotional account of his relationship with his father, and then received comment spam from “Barry Scott” disguised as condolences. Coates replied: “My view was that any right-thinking person would view trying to market your product on such a post as revolting, corrupt, cynical, disgusting, sick and dishonourable.” According to some PR people, however, fake blogging is a good idea.
SOURCE: Guardian (UK), October 6, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4058
7. AL GORE’S CODE RED
www.alternet.org/mediaculture/26494/
“It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse,” former U.S. Vice President Al Gore told the We Media Conference in New York. “Something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America’s fabled ‘marketplace of ideas’ now functions.” Gore cited the dominance and poor quality of television as a main cause: “Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to ‘glue eyeballs to the screen’ in order to build ratings and sell advertising. … Just look at what’s on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings. … More importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation’s fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America’s industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.” Gore, whose new business venture, Current TV, airs “viewer-created content,” also blasted television for lacking “true interactivity.”
SOURCE: AlterNet, October 6, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4057
8. BUSH BREAKS 40
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/06/opinion/polls/main924485.shtml
For the first time in his presidency, George W. Bush has an approval rating below 40 percent, according to a new CBS News opinion poll. Also, “Sixty-nine percent of Americans say things in the United States are pretty seriously off on the wrong track—the highest number since CBS News started asking the question in 1983. … And for the first time in this poll, fewer than half the public approves of the way he is handling the campaign against terrorism.”
SOURCE: CBS News, October 6, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4056
9. PESTICIDES AND FOREST SERVICE FIRES
www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?tl=1&display=rednews/2005/10/06/build/nation/52-fs-pesticide.inc
“A U.S. Forest Service official who voiced concerns about alleged pesticide misuse in forests across the Southwest has been fired,” reports Associated Press. Doug Parker, who worked for the Forest Service for nearly four decades, was ostensibly fired for “failing to turn in a progress report on time, not training more than one person in a month’s time and turning in a report that wasn’t properly formatted.” But Parker, who filed a whistleblower complaint earlier this year about activities in New Mexico and Arizona forests, said, “The whole reason behind this is I reported some significant pesticide misuse problems to the regional forester and they don’t want to have controls over this process. … They want to be pesticide cowboys and go out there and do what they want to do without consideration of compliance with their own policies, regulations and environmental laws.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, October 6, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4054
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