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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== SPIN OF
THE DAY ==
1. Only You Can Prevent Media Liars
2. America’s Most Wanted, in Pakistan
3. Pro-Military Eye for the Russian Guy
4. The Sleuths of Spin
5. A Swift Kick in the Family Retirement Plan
6. Seeking Disclosure
7. Feeling Noncommittal
8. Think Glocally, Act Vocally
9. Corporate Lobbyists at the Feeding Trough
10. “Jeff Gannon’s” Incredible Access
11. The Wolves Arrive in Sheepskins
12. See Syria Spin
13. PR Damage Control for Halliburton’s Iran Deals
14. Late Victory for McLibel Defendants
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== SPIN OF
THE DAY ==
1. ONLY YOU
CAN PREVENT MEDIA LIARS
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
Do you value independent, democratic, collaborative research and reporting?
Then please donate to the Center for Media and Democracy today! This is our
last call asking for support for our SourceWatch and grassroots reporting projects.
So far, 118 of you have responded – thank you! If you haven’t yet
donated, here are a few reasons why you should: Armstrong Williams, Maggie
Gallagher, Michael McManus, Karen Ryan, Mike Morris, “Jeff Gannon”… Need
we go on? You can use the above link to access our secure, online donation
page, or mail a check made out to “CMD” to CMD, 520 University
Ave, Suite 227, Madison, WI 53703.
SOURCE: Center for Media and Democracy, February 23, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3305
2. AMERICA’S
MOST WANTED, IN PAKISTAN
www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p07s02-wosc.html
“The U.S. government has launched a series of advertisements – broadcast
for the first time on Pakistani state television and radio stations – promising
multimillion dollar awards for information leading to Mr. bin Laden’s capture.” The
ads show “images of bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the one-eyed reclusive
Taliban leader Mullah Omar,” while a voice says, “Who can stop the
terrorists? Only you.” The $5 to $25 million awards are also publicized
on “posters, matchbox covers, newspaper ads, and the Internet.” One
Peshawar shopkeeper called the ads “useless,” adding, “Everyone
knows what Osama looks like. … People even name their babies after him.”
SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor, February 22, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3304
3. PRO-MILITARY
EYE FOR THE RUSSIAN GUY
www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/02/21/russia_launches_patriotic_tv_channel/
To boost “the feeling of national pride among its citizens,” the
Russian Defense Ministry is launching Zvezda (”Star”), a new television
channel. Zvezda’s manager said the channel “will dedicate 10 percent
of its programs to military topics – movies, documentaries, talk shows
and a planned reality show detailing the lives of conscripts in barracks.” It’s
seen as an attempt “to boost military prestige and counter negative reports
of hazing, desertions and corruption in the armed forces.” All of Russia’s
TV channels are “either owned or tightly controlled by the government.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, February 21, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3301
4. THE SLEUTHS
OF SPIN
www.alternet.org/story/21307/
Bill Berkowitz writes that the Center for Media and Democracy’s “sleuths
of spin John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have exposed how corporate shills
and government spokespersons manipulate the media and undermine democracy for
more than a decade,” and are now “setting about an ambitious – yet
necessary – undertaking: reinventing journalism.” Berkowitz interviews
Center founder Stauber about recent media scandals involving PR, payola, and
fake journalists. They also discuss SourceWatch, “an information source
that is truly ‘of, by and for the people,’” and other ways
the Center works to further media democracy.
SOURCE: Alternet, February 22, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3300
5. A SWIFT
KICK IN THE FAMILY RETIREMENT PLAN
www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html?
The industry-funded lobbying group USANext “says it plans to spend as
much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse
lobby opposing [Social Security] private investment accounts.” To oversee
the campaign, USANext hired Chris LaCivita, recently of the 527 group Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth. USANext is also looking to other Swift Vets advisers,
having hired Creative Response Concepts and hoping to hire Rick Reed of the
Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm firm. An unnamed USANext official said their
pro-privatization campaign “would be so aggressive that the White House
might not want to associate with it,” especially because the group “is
attacking the AARP.”
SOURCE: New York Times, February 21, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3299
6. SEEKING
DISCLOSURE
www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/politics/19gao.html?
Comptroller general and Government Accountability Office chief David
Walker warned federal agencies that, while they “have the right to disseminate
information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated
[public] funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to
be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify … that
the agency was the source of those materials.” Video news releases “can
be utilized … so long as there is clear disclosure.” In the past
two years, the GAO found VNRs from the Department of Health and Human Services
and the Office of National Drug Control Policy to violate the ban on covert
government propaganda.
SOURCE: New York Times, February 19, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3290
7. FEELING
NONCOMMITTAL
www.ajc.com/business/content/business/0205/18nuketalk.html?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is “wondering just what the nation’s
nuclear power companies are up to these days.” While “taking steps
toward building new reactors,” the companies are “each emphasizing
they have ‘made no commitment’ at all to actually building new
nuclear plants.” According to the paper, “The industrywide use
of the ‘no commitment’ mantra is no accident. It’s included
in nuclear-energy talking points that showed up last year on the Web site for
the industry’s federal lobbying organization, the Nuclear Energy Institute.” An
NEI spokesperson said “the noncommitment mantra is a kind of ‘hedging’ – not
unusual … for publicly traded companies beginning to talk about potentially
huge future capital investments.”
SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3288
8. THINK
GLOCALLY, ACT VOCALLY
journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/02/18/mcg_glcl.html
Journalist Doug McGill has a new weblog called “Glocal Man,” reflecting
the “idea of glocal or worldplace news … that every place on earth
is connected by strands of mutual influence, interdependence, and direct causality.” McGill
writes in a manifesto style essay. “Because the geographical distances
are so great, say between Rochester, MN and Brooklyn, NY and Warsaw, Poland,
it’s often easy not to see those connections. But those connections are
there.” Glocalized journalism, he says, “is a way of writing the
news that describes and explains a community in the widest possible useful
context, which is very often—I am tempted to say most often—a global
context.”
SOURCE: PressThink, February 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3287
9. CORPORATE
LOBBYISTS AT THE FEEDING TROUGH
www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/business/18lobby.html
“These are heady days on Capitol Hill for business lobbyists,” writes
Stephen Labaton. “After suffering numerous setbacks in President Bush’s
first term, business lobbyists now say they have the wind at their backs.” In
addition to pushing for “tort reform” (which limits what people can
collect in damages if they sue a corporation), lobbyists are also getting Congress
to ram through new legislation that “would make it significantly more difficult
and expensive for poor and moderate-income families to use bankruptcy protection
to shield themselves from creditors. The bill’s supporters say it is necessary
to curb abusive filings, although its critics say it is largely a gift to the
credit card and banking industries.”
SOURCE: New York Times, February 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3286
10. “JEFF
GANNON’S” INCREDIBLE ACCESS
www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/17/gannon/index.html
“James Guckert’s mysterious career as a White House correspondent
for Talon News just took another strange twist,” writes Eric Boehlert. “And
once again, the newest revelation raises the central question: Who broke the
rules on Guckert’s behalf to give him access to the White House? Despite
administration claims that Guckert [aka “Jeff Gannon”] simply followed
established protocol in order to routinely slip inside the White House briefing
room, it now appears clear that Guckert, who just months before his 2003 debut
as a cub reporter was offering himself up online as a $200 an hour male escort,
benefited from extraordinarily preferential treatment, likely granted by someone
inside the White House press office.” Some conservative apologists are
trying to distract attention from the “Gannongate” scandal by equating
Guckert with leftist journalist Russell Mokhiber – a position also expressed
in Editor and Publisher magazine. (There are, however, some differences. Mokhiber
writes under his own name, and he hasn’t plagiarized White House news releases
and tried to pass them off as his own reporting. And as far as we can tell, Mokhiber
doesn’t use photos of his erect penis to advertise on the internet.)
SOURCE: Salon.com, February 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3285
11. THE WOLVES
ARRIVE IN SHEEPSKINS
www.campaigndesk.org/archives/001275.asp
“One of the most striking developments to come out of the three payola
flaps involving conservative pundits that have surfaced recently,” writes
Brian Montopoli, “has been just how surprised the participants seem to
be at the uproar that has greeted the exposure of their actions. … Certainly,
there does seem to be a feeling developing among some politicians and commentators
on the take that the old, honor-based standards of journalism have grown quaint.” He
adds, “even though op-ed editors themselves know that many writers have
an incentive not to disclose their connections, there isn’t a lot they
can do to fight back. … Many editors lack the knowledge, expertise, and
time necessary to weed out those trying to deceive them, and most of the op-ed
editors contacted for this piece admitted — off the record — that
they have been fooled more than once. And that’s only the ones they’re
aware of.”
SOURCE: CJR Campaign Desk, January 30, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3284
12. SEE SYRIA
SPIN
prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=235598&site=3
“The Syrian government, increasingly under fire for its suspected role
in sponsoring terrorist activity, has launched a PR offensive to improve its
image in the West,” reports PR Week. The Syrian Society for Public Relations,
in collaboration with the British International Society for Public Relations, “will
educate officials about how to maintain good relations with foreign governments,
non-governmental organizations, the media, and opinion leaders.” Syrian
Ambassador Imad Moustapha is also making “a conscious media push in the
U.S.” In related news, the Saudi government has a two-page ad in the February
17 New York Times, highlighting their recent counter-terrorism conference.
SOURCE: PR Week (reg. req’d.), February 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3283
13. PR DAMAGE
CONTROL FOR HALLIBURTON’S IRAN DEALS
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6982444/site/newsweek/
“Only weeks before Halliburton made headlines by announcing it was pulling
out of Iran … the Texas-based oil services firm quietly signed a major
new business deal to help develop Tehran‚Äôs natural gas fields,” Newsweek’s
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write. “But overlooked in most of the
press coverage of the announcement was that [Halliburton CEO David] Lesar’s
statement contained enough wiggle room to permit Halliburton to continue participating
in the new South Pars project. … Lesar‚Äôs announcement was little
more than ‘PR damage control,’ said one congressional investigator
who has closely followed Halliburton‚Äôs dealings. ‘They‚Äôre
still acting like the sanctions law are a big joke,’ the investigator added.”
SOURCE: Newsweek, February 16, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3282
14. LATE
VICTORY FOR MCLIBEL DEFENDANTS
www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1415518,00.html
The British government will review its libel laws after two environmental
campaigners who were sued by McDonald’s won a legal judgment. The European
court of human rights ruled “that their rights to a fair trial and freedom
of expression were violated when they were denied legal aid,” reports
Clare Dyer. “McLibel” defendants Helen Steel and David Morris were
sued by the fast-food chain for passing out leaflets that accused McDonalds
of selling unhealthy food and damaging the environment. “The world’s
biggest fast-food chain spent an estimated £10 million on the case, which
involved 28 pre-trial applications,” Dyer reports. “The pair had
to represent themselves with sporadic free help from friendly lawyers and £40,000
raised from supporters to help cover expenses such as transcripts and photocopying. … The
human rights court in Strasbourg ruled that the ‘inequality of arms’ between
the two meant they were denied a fair trial and there was a ‘chilling
effect’ on their freedom of expression.”
SOURCE: Guardian (UK), February 16, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3281
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Weekly
Spin is compiled by staff and volunteers at the
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