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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. Hill & Knowlton Lobbies for F-gases
2. Withdrawal from Reality
3. Whatever the Skin Color, Inside Are Black Lungs
4. The State Department’s, uh, War Room
5. Dubai’s PR Boom
6. Fake News for a Good Cause?
7. What Studies? Oh, Those Studies!
8. Rewriting History
9. Art and Propaganda
10. The Man Who Sold the War
11. Cruise Control
12. PR Weblogs
13. The Report Behind Kenneth Tomlinson’s Jump
14. Disease Is Also Sell
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== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. HILL & KNOWLTON LOBBIES FOR F-GASES
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4459586.stm
The Hill & Knowlton PR firm reportedly used scaremongering tactics to kill legislation before the European Parliament that would have banned fluorinated gases (”f-gases”), which contribute to global warming. “It’s been six months of intense lobbying,” said Avril Doyle, a parliamentarian who supported the regulation. “It was email, writing, phoning and faxing, non stop.” She added that MEPs received letters “threatening them with job losses if they voted for this amendment or they voted for that directive.” Greenpeace reports that the most vocal lobbying on F-gas regulation has come from the “European Partnership for Energy and the Environment” (EPEE). In fact, EPEE is neither European nor for the environment. “It’s actually an industry front group,” states the Greenpeace report, “made up largely of American and Japanese multinationals with plants in Europe, who are lobbying against regulation of F-gases out of cost concerns. And while their website makes a flashy show of how their chemicals don’t destroy the ozone (which is true) they fail to mention that they’re contributing to global warming. … Ironically, Hill & Knowlton is exactly the same company which, in 1975, trotted out reports and scientists claiming that the Ozone hole was a myth, environmentalists were scare-mongering, and industry shouldn’t be required to take costly and unnecessary action to ban CFCs.”
SOURCE: BBC, November 22, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4208
2. WITHDRAWAL FROM REALITY
The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, yet the call by Democratic Congresman John Murtha for troop withdrawal prompted a firestorm of attacks from Republicans, who called the decorated Vietnam veteran a “coward” and compared him to leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. Murtha called the war “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.” He recalled the situation in Vietnam when White House officials said major military tasks would be over by the end of 1965. Instead, there were 2,263 American fatalities by the end of 1965, and more than 55,000 after that date. “I’m trying to prevent another Vietnam,” Murtha said.
SOURCE:
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4207
3. WHATEVER THE SKIN COLOR, INSIDE ARE BLACK LUNGS
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051118/ap_on_he_me/hispanic_smoking;_ylt=
AiPZ83nRaB.Cbizb8K5iVfOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3czJjNGZoBHNlYwM3
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the National Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco Prevention, and Floridians for Youth Tobacco Education warn that the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting Latino children. Not only do Latino communities have relatively low smoking rates – making them “ripe for an industry seeking to boost sagging sales” – but Spanish-language marketing often “goes under the radar of the Federal Trade Commission.” The advocacy groups pointed to R.J. Reynolds’ “Kool be true” campaign, which recently ran an eight-page color ad in Latina magazine with pictures of musicians and the line, “It’s about pursuing your ambitions and staying connected to your roots.” The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids wants data to be collected on tobacco ads targeting different ethnicities. An RJR spokesperson called their cigarettes “multicultural,” saying, “Do we want adult Hispanics to smoke our brand? Yeah. Just like we want African-Americans and whites to smoke our brands.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, November 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4200
4. THE STATE DEPARTMENT’S, UH, WAR ROOM
www.prweek.com/us/news/article/528508/state-department-sets-rapid-response-operation/
“The U.S. State Department has set up a rapid-response office dedicated to countering international news reports about the U.S. in the Middle East and the Muslim world that diverse from the ideas and values the Bush administration is seeking to export.” The office, under PR czar Karen Hughes, “monitors global news stories and distributes a one-page report each morning to administration officials and policy makers in Washington.” Hughes is also expanding the State Department’s speaker’s bureau and encouraging ambassadors and public affairs officers “to become more vocal on major issues and do more speeches and TV interviews.” “Regional Arab speakers” are being recruited, “to speak on behalf of U.S. interests on the Al-Jazeera TV network,” an outlet previously shunned by the Bush administration. Lastly, the department’s new technology initiative uses “web chats, streaming video, and text messaging to amplify the government’s message and make it relevant to younger audiences.”
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req’d), November 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4199
5. DUBAI’S PR BOOM
www.prweek.com/uk/home/article/527765/analysis-dubai-pr-market-growing-fast/
The economy is booming in the Arab emirate of Dubai, and so is the public relations industry. “Someone recently remarked that anyone who could rent a space at Dubai Media City was opening a PR agency,” jokes John Badenhorst, director-in-charge at Landmark PR & Events. But according to Tim Burrowes, editor of Dubai-based Campaign Middle East (a weekly newspaper for the advertising and media industries), “The major problem for the PR industry is that there are a lot of crooks and charlatans operating here – and standards are often woeful.”
SOURCE: PR Week, November 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4198
6. FAKE NEWS FOR A GOOD CAUSE?
www.prweek.com/us/home/article/528516/paper-dc-paid-tv-station-tout-initiative/
“CBS affiliate WUSA-TV was charging the [Washington] DC government as much as $100,000 annually to promote breast cancer awareness during newscasts.” From 2002 to 2004, anchors at the Gannett-owned station were required to encourage viewers to go to the station’s website for information about breast cancer – next to a banner ad for the city’s Human Services Department. Through their “Buddy Check 9" program, the TV station also encouraged viewers to remind women friends or family members to perform self-exams for breast cancer. The city’s contracts with the station, obtained by The Washington Times, specify payments were for “on-air mentions … of the Buddy Check 9 program” and of the station’s website, “for the Department of Human Services’ banner.” The station’s manager said, “We did not sell news time,” but the chair of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics committee said the “line between what’s news coverage and what’s paid advertising” needs to be “fairly distinct.”
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req’d), November 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4197
7. WHAT STUDIES? OH, THOSE STUDIES!
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/16/AR2005111601875.html
“DuPont Co. hid studies showing the risks of a Teflon-related chemical used to line candy wrappers, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and hundreds of other food containers,” according to a former employee and leaked company documents. The chemical, Zonyl, degrades into perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), the safety of which is debated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. The leaked documents describe “laboratory tests showing [Zonyl] came off paper coating and leached into foods at levels three times higher than the FDA limit set in 1967.” Another test showed rats and dogs fed Zonyl for three months “had anemia and damage to their kidneys and livers.” The EPA has accused DuPont of repeatedly failing “over a 20-year period to submit required data about PFOA,” and will hold a hearing on the issue this month. DuPont settled one PFOA contamination class-action lawsuit for $107.6 million but faces another.
SOURCE: Associated Press, November 16, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4196
8. REWRITING HISTORY
consortiumnews.com/2005/111505.html
“It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how (the Iraq) war began,” Bush scolded his critics in his Veterans Day speech on November 11. But as Robert Parry observes, Bush is the one doing the rewriting. “Bush’s argument is that he didn’t lie the nation into war; he and his top aides were just misled by the same faulty intelligence that Congress saw,” he writes. In reality, however, “the White House sees far more detailed intelligence than what is shared with Congress.” Parry adds that “perhaps the strongest evidence of Bush’s proclivity to lie about Iraq came after the invasion, when he began falsifying the record – rewriting history – with claims that Saddam Hussein had barred U.N. weapons inspectors from entering Iraq. … The significance of this provable lie to the other Iraq War falsehoods is that it demonstrates Bush’s intent to deceive.”
SOURCE: Consortium News, November 16, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4195
9. ART AND PROPAGANDA
www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20051114101111366
“The internet has added a whole new dimension and level of artistic sophistication to anti-war and anti-imperialist art and propaganda during the Iraq war and surrounding events,” writes Kari Lydersen. On websites such as PeacePosters.org, MiniatureGigantic.com, AnotherPosterForPeace.com and OverMyDeadBody.org, “graphic designers and grassroots propagandists from far-flung corners of the globe (though most heavily concentrated in Europe and the US) have posted their work on web sites and circulated it by email in the hopes that others will reproduce and display it freely.”
SOURCE: Infoshop News, November 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4193
10. THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WAR
www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&
pageregion=single7&rnd=1132271793151&has-player=true
While the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence drags its feet on discovering how the White House sold the Iraq war, journalist James Bamford has written a major expose on one of the key players: John Rendon. In his Rolling Stone story “The Man Who Sold the War,” Bamford traces the development of Rendon and his firm The Rendon Group (TRG) from Democratic Party organizer to Kuwaiti liberator to secretive Pentagon propagandist-for-hire. In a rare interview, Rendon “boasted openly” to Bamford of “the sweep and importance of his firm’s efforts as a for-profit spy.” One example of TRG’s work is the story of Iraqi exile Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who claimed Saddam Hussein had tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The fact that al-Haideri failed CIA polygraph tests didn’t stop TRG from giving Judith Miller the print exclusive interview. “Her front-page story, which hit the stands on December 20th, 2001, was exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide,” Bamford writes.
SOURCE: Rolling Stone, November 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4192
11. CRUISE CONTROL
www.prweek.com/us/news/article/527581
“It took the public tailspin of Tom Cruise’s reputation to put the importance of the celebrity PR pro into the spotlight,” reports Julia Hood. “Cruise put his sister in the job vacated by the legendary Pat Kingsley. The impact of subsequent PR gaffes was instantaneous, as Cruise became a laughingstock for jumping on sofas on Oprah and taking Brooke Shields to task for postpartum-depression medicating. … Cruise has always seemed a bit high-strung and certainly litigious with certain media outlets, but the more extreme aspects of his personality were smoothed out for public consumption under the guidance of Kingsley. Now that Cruise has turned to Rogers & Cowan, he has presumably realized that celebrity PR should be handled by the pros.”
SOURCE: PR Week, November 14, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4191
12. PR WEBLOGS
www.pubsub.com/lists/pr.php Constantin Basurea has compiled a list of blogs that focus on public relations. Most of them are pro-PR and written by public relations practitioners, but the Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch.org is also listed, along with the Europe-based SpinWatch.org.
SOURCE: PubSub Community Lists
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4190
13. THE REPORT BEHIND KENNETH TOMLINSON’S JUMP
www.cpb.org/oig/reports/602_cpb_ig_reportofreview.pdf
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) Inspector-General, Kenneth A. Konz, found former CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson “violated statutory provisions and the Director’s Code of Ethics” in negotiations over the creation of a program hosted by Paul Gigot, the conservative editor of the Wall Street Journal opinion page. Konz also found that Tomlinson hired Fred Mann, a 20 year veteran of the conservative National Journalism Center, to assess “NOW with Bill Moyers” and other programs, “without informing the Board or without Board authorization” and that his hiring of ML Strategies and the Alexander Strategy Group to advise on lobbying strategy on a budget bill “was not handled in accordance with CPB’s contracting procedures.” Tomlinson resigned before the report was publicly released. In a fiery response, included as an appendix to the report, Tomlinson complained the findings would “only help to maintain the status quo and other reformers will be discouraged from seeking change.”
SOURCE: Corporation for Public Broadcasting Inspector-General, November 15, 2004
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4189
14. DISEASE IS ALSO SELL
www.courant.com/business/hc-sellingsickness.artnov
10,0,3087515.story?coll=hc-headlines-business
As “part of a cultural shift that increasingly sees health problems as lifestyles rather than diseases,” food marketers are targeting the chronically ill “as the new much-reach demographic.” Groceries have “heart healthy” sections because there are more than 70 million U.S. residents with heart problems, representing “$71 billion in annual buying power.” The nation’s 21 million diabetics “command about $14 billion” and “about two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese,” writes the Associated Press. The Chicago marketing research firm IRI Healthcare recently reported on “the disease-marketing trend.” IRI’s Bob Doyle says the impact is even wider: “If Mom comes down with something, the entire household’s diet changes.”
SOURCE: Associated Press, November 10, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/4188
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