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THIS WEEK’S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. America’s Army Fights Back: The PR Plan for the Pentagon’s “Demonstration Village”
2. Pat Robertson & SourceWatch
3. ABA’s School Vending Policy Fizzes On Obesity Prevention
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. A Very Slight Change in the Script
2. Uncle Sam Wants Your Parents
3. Hot Wager
4. Chinese Reporters Fight Pay to Praise Plan
5. SLAPPing Speech
6. Justifying Shooting
7. Indian Givers
8. Two Versions of the Truth
9. What’s Wrong with this Picture?
10. The Junkman Goes Nuclear
11. The Wal-Mart Thought Police
12. Missing: News Coverage of Communities of Color
13. One-Stop Influence Shopping
14. Voluntary Soda Jerks as PR
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== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. AMERICA’S ARMY FIGHTS BACK: THE PR PLAN FOR THE PENTAGON’S “DEMONSTRATION VILLAGE”
by Diane Farsetta Sometimes even the slickest public relations effort doesn’t improve a person’s or an institution’s image. Think of the U.S. State Department’s $15 million “Shared Values” ad campaign, which tried to assuage anti-American sentiment in Muslim countries.
More commonly, PR campaigns enjoy partial successes. That appears to be the case with the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC, formerly called the School of the Americas or SOA), a Defense Department facility at Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia. While media coverage and Congressional attitudes haven’t improved appreciably since WHINSEC launched a major PR effort three years ago, the Institute has achieved a partial d√孤ente with some academic figures and human rights organizations.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3936
2. PAT ROBERTSON & SOURCEWATCH
by Bob Burton There’s never a quiet day at SourceWatch, our open-source encyclopedia of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. Some days, articles that have been patiently compiled by our volunteer writers over months, are suddenly in demand.
A case in point is the article on the founder of the Christian Coalition of America, Pat Robertson, who proposed in a broadcast on his 700 Club program that covert American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. “We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Associated Press quoted Robertson stating. Over the last eighteen months a number of regular contributors have compiled a comprehensive listing of online news stories on Robertson spanning the last decade. Others have started profiles on the various organisations Robertson is involved in.
Meanwhile Cindy Sheehan’s vigil outside George W. Bush’s ranch has put a spotlight on the cost of the war in Iraq. In a column last week for O’Dwyer’s PR Daily, Kevin McCauley, contrasted Sheehan’s vigil in the Texas heat with Bush remaining “cocooned in Crawford, sticking to the script of appearing only before supporters and people in the Administration.” In the last week over eighty new articles have been started as well as numerous additions to existing pages.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3912
3. ABA’S SCHOOL VENDING POLICY FIZZES ON OBESITY PREVENTION
by Laura Miller The American Beverage Association scored PR points recently when they unveiled a new voluntary “school vending policy.” The trade association for soft drink manufacturers says it is encouraging beverage producers and school districts to provide “lower-calorie and/or nutritious beverages” to schools and limit the availability of soft drinks in schools. ABA’s announcement snagged positive news stories across the country, but public health advocates questioned the group’s commitment to preventing childhood obesity.
“It’s ironic that ABA would choose to make this announcement at the National Conference of State Legislatures meeting, since its members lobby against any state bills to get sodas out of schools,” said Michele Simon, director of the Center for Informed Food Choices. According to a release authored by Simon and Susan Linn, a member of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, in the past year, soft drink lobbyists successfully killed or watered down bills restricting soft drink sales in schools in Connecticut, Arizona, Kentucky and New Mexico.
For the rest of this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3934
== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. A VERY SLIGHT CHANGE IN THE SCRIPT
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/
08/23/BL2005082300618.html?nav=rss_politics
During his speech in Salt Lake City on Mondy, President Bush for the first time mentioned the number of U.S. soldiers who have died there—a change in script that follows “months of painstakingly avoiding specific mention of the extent of American casualties in the war,” notes Dan Froomkin. According to advisors, his gesture “was aimed in part at deflecting criticism that he is not sensitive to the sacrifices imposed by his policies.”
SOURCE: Washington Post, August 23, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3935
2. UNCLE SAM WANTS YOUR PARENTS
slate.msn.com/id/2124786/fr/rss/
Last month we noted that one of the obstacles facing U.S. military recruiters is “parents who are reluctant to see their kids enlist.” Now the army is responding with an advertising campaign targeting parents directly with the slogan, “help them find their strength.” Seth Stevenson analyzes the ads and their new slogan, in which “The Army has at last been repositioned as a finishing school. You’ve done the best you can, Mom and Dad, but it’s time to let the service raise him right.” Of course, the ads completely sidestep the possibility that their kids will get killed. “Most other ads paid for by the government have very different goals,” Stevenson notes. “In PSAs about drugs, drunk driving, smoking, and teen sex, parents are unfailingly urged to shield their kids from danger. Here, they’re being asked to throw their kids right in harm’s way.”
SOURCE: Slate, August 22, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3931
3. HOT WAGER
www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1552092,00.html
After months of trying, British climate researcher James Annan has finally found a couple of global warming skeptics willing to put their money where their mouths are. In November of last year, warming skeptic Richard Lindzen was quoted saying he’d be willing to bet that the earth’s climate will be cooler in 20 years than it is today. When Annan contacted him, however, Lindzen would only agree to take the bet if Annan offered a 50-to-1 payout. Subsequent offers of a wager were also refused by Pat Michaels, Chip Knappenberger, Piers Corbyn, Myron Ebell, Zbigniew Jaworowski, Sherwood Idso and William Kininmonth. At long last, however, Annan has persuaded Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev to take a $10,000 bet. “There isn’t much money in climate science and I’m still looking for that gold watch at retirement,” Annan says. “A pay-off would be a nice top-up to my pension.”
SOURCE: Guardian (UK), August 19, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3929
4. CHINESE REPORTERS FIGHT PAY TO PRAISE PLAN
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story
_page/0,5744,16320646%255E2703,00.html
A leading state-run newspaper in China has scrapped a controversial appraisal system in which reporters would get paid more if they pleased the Communist Party’s central propaganda department. The plan prompted a rebellion by the paper’s reporters, one of whom posted an open letter condemning it on the Internet. The rebellion also prompted the resignation of the paper’s chief commentator, who felt “ashamed” after writing a fawning article praising Chinese President Hu Jintao. (This sort of plan might have better chances these days at Time magazine in the United States, whose war correspondent James Lacey has been begging the government to take steps that would “give the appearance of a state-controlled media.”)
SOURCE: Weekend Australian, August 20, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3925
5. SLAPPING SPEECH
www.alternet.org/story/24293/
Thanks to Molly Ivins for mentioning our work in her recent column about “strategic lawsuits against public participation” (SLAPPs), in which corporations file harassment lawsuits to silence their critics. Ivins cites the experience of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which “has already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight years earlier, Consumer Reports rated the Isuzu Trooper ‘not acceptable’ for safety reasons. And the case has not yet reached trial. And that is the real menace of SLAPP suits. It’s not that corporations win them, but that they cost critics so much money that the critics are silenced — and so is everyone else who even thinks about raising some question about a corporate product or practice.”
SOURCE: AlterNet, August 19, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3924
6. JUSTIFYING SHOOTING
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1551287,00.html
Following the revelation that British police gave out false information about the shooting of a terrorism suspect who turned out to be innocent, Simon Hattenstone urges greater skepticism about official police accounts. After the shooting of Brazilian student Jean Charles Menezes, police claimed that he had been wearing an unseasonably bulky, padded jacket that might be concealing a bomb, and that he ran from police and vaulted a ticket barrier at a subway station before being shot dead. But closed-circuit TV footage from the subway shows him “entering the station at a normal walking pace and even picking up a free copy of the Metro newspaper. He was wearing a denim jacket.” Hattenstone lists a series of other incidents in which British police have given false information about suspects who died in their custody. “Few deaths at the hands of the police have been as clear-cut as that of Jean Charles de Menezes,” Hattenstone writes. “None has been as high profile. But the subsequent police distortion is all too familiar.”
SOURCE: Guardian (UK), August 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3922
7. INDIAN GIVERS
www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/2005/
08/18/stories/2005081800150400.htm
Public relations “is coming of age” in India, writes Ramesh Narayan, the founder of an advertising agency in Mumbai. Its emergence has been accompanied by some shady practices, such as press confererences where reporters receive a “press kit which contained relevant material and a gift. … Considerable time was spent in deciding what gift should be purchased. Journalists were tired of receiving pen sets and calculators. Textile companies would dole out suit lengths and saris. Others took the unimaginative route of handing out envelopes stuffed with money.” And Narayan worries that an even worse trend is corrupting the news media: “operations where editorial space is officially sold to anyone who wants to buy it.”
SOURCE: Hindu Business Line, August 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3921
8. TWO VERSIONS OF THE TRUTH
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8798202/
The Atrios blog caught a telling moment on “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” during its recent interview with Melanie Morgan of Move America Forward, the right-wing outfit that recently sponsored a feel-good tour of Iraq. As Morgan squared off against Iraq war veteran Paul Rieckhoff of Operation Truth, Matthews admitted that some of his guests tell him different versions of the truth when the cameras are rolling than when the cameras are off: “What I keep doing here is asking people on and off camera who come on this program, high-ranking officers, enlisted, former officers. I get sometimes, not all the time, two different versions, the version they give me on the air and the version they give me the minute when we‚續re off the air. The version they give me when we‚續re on the air is gung-ho, we‚續re doing the right thing, everything is moving along. The version they give me off the air is, Rumsfeld is crazy. There aren‚續t enough troops over there. We‚續re not taking this seriously enough, or, we shouldn‚續t be there, sometimes.”
SOURCE: “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” August 1, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3920
9. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/81
FA5F83BA6B477086257062000D1AEB?OpenDocument
“When Sears Portrait Studios wanted to lure new mothers, it didn’t just order more ads of smiling babies or mail out big coupons,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Instead, the company hired the Vandiver Group “to create a word-of-mouth marketing campaign in mid-2003.” First, Vandiver identified “influentials” – people others look to for information or advice – who are mothers, using phone surveys. Survey questions included whether the moms engage in “influential” activities like writing letters to the editor or attending public meetings. Then panels of these “mom influentials” were asked “about proposed product changes, advertising and marketing strategies, other studios and what the company could do better. These conversations were designed to give insights into the company and spark the mothers to spread the word about Sears Portrait Studios. … After the panels, the mothers received free portrait packages as a thank-you for their time.”
SOURCE: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3919
10. THE JUNKMAN GOES NUCLEAR
mediamatters.org/items/200508120001
Media Matters for America has news on the latest from Steven Milloy, the Cato Institute’s self-proclaimed “debunker” of “junk science” and commentator for Fox News. They report that Milloy (who is not a scientist himself) recently self-published a deceptive “study” purporting to show that radiation levels at the U.S. Capitol Building were 65 times higher than the proposed standards for the federal government’s planned high-level radioactive waste storage dump at Yucca Mountain. For our exposes on Milloy, see, for example, our article on “How Big Tobacco Created the Junkman” or our report on Milloy’s unfounded claim that more asbestos at the World Trade Towers would have saved lives during the 9/11 terrorist attack. (And for a humorous take on the Milloys of the world, the Slashdot website recently featured a clever posting titled, “Can You Spot the Real Scientist?”)
SOURCE: Media Matters for America, August 12, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3918
11. THE WAL-MART THOUGHT POLICE
www.alternet.org/wiretap/24069/
“Wal-Mart, America’s largest retailer, prides itself on being a ‘family-friendly’ store, with smiley faces guiding stressed-out breadwinners to a land of low-cost, guilt-free consumption,” writes Amy Schiller. But it has become “the self-appointed culture police by screening the music, books and magazines that many Americans will be able to access. … Take, for example, Wal-Mart’s refusal to sell Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album in 1996, citing objections to a lyric that criticized Wal-Mart for selling handguns. … The huge bestseller, America: the Book, featuring Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the rest of the Daily Show crew, was banned from Wal-Mart in 2004.” Wal-Mart also refused to carry Robert Greenwald’s documentary, “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War.” Even “something as potentially broadly appealing, positive, and utterly non-offensive as a T-shirt reading ‘Someday a woman will be president’ was pulled from the sales floor because ‘the message goes against Wal-Mart family values.’”
SOURCE: AlterNet, August 16, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3917
12. MISSING: NEWS COVERAGE OF COMMUNITIES OF COLOR
www.sptimes.com/2005/08/18/Floridian/Media_s_quest_for_div.shtml
“A survey released in July by the Radio-Television News Directors Association and Ball State University found that about 21 percent of journalists working in local TV were minorities, virtually unchanged from the year before. … A study released in June by the John and James L. Knight Foundation found that 73 percent of the nation’s 200 largest newspapers employ fewer minorities than they did at some year between 1990 and 2004,” writes Eric Deggans. “Why does this matter? Because TV anchors and other journalists … directly affect what gets on the air.” Deggans points to what he calls “Endangered White Women Syndrome” – the glut of news coverage of missing white women, while people like Tamika Huston, a missing black South Carolina woman, are virtually “ignored by national media, despite a $30,000 reward and the efforts of an aunt who is a Miami-based public relations executive.” (And another recent study found that “newsrooms with larger numbers of Asian American staffers did a better job of covering Asian American communities and issues.”)
SOURCE: St. Petersburg Times, August 18, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3916
13. ONE-STOP INFLUENCE SHOPPING
www.sacbee.com/content/news/courts_legal/story/13428133p-14269434c.html
The Sacramento-based public relations firm run by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief fundraiser “is representing a local developer who, while working to block a bill at the Capitol, has agreed to help host a fundraising dinner on the governor’s behalf.” It’s the fourth time that clients of fundraiser Marty Wilson’s firm, Wilson-Miller Communications “have had bills or other business pending with the state.” (The firm also works closely with Manning Selvage & Lee.) The developer, the Gidaro Group, “will contribute in the $25,000 range” for Schwarzenegger’s ballot measures. State assemblywoman Lois Wolk, who introduced the bill Gidaro opposes, said, “The combination of lobbyists, public relations and political consultancy all under one roof is a growing phenomenon, and it raises a lot of ethical questions.” It’s also bipartisan; a lead fundraiser for former governor Gray Davis “built a multimillion-dollar lobbying business in Sacramento after Davis took office.”
SOURCE: Sacramento Bee, August 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3915
14. VOLUNTARY SODA JERKS AS PR
online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112423461722614
960,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
“The first salvo in a broader public-relations counterattack by beverage companies to help the industry reverse its tarnished image” is voluntary restrictions on drink sales in schools. The guidelines, which will be touted “in full-page ads in several national newspapers,” suggest that new school contracts remove carbonated soft drinks from elementary schools and remove sugary drinks from middle schools during school hours. All beverages will continue to be sold in high schools. Susan Neely, “the creator of the ‘Harry and Louise’ ads that helped torpedo President Clinton’s health-care plan in the early 1990s,” now heads the industry group American Beverage Association. She’s leading the “multimillion-dollar advertising and PR campaign to show that the beverage industry derives a substantial portion of its sales and growth from healthier beverages.” Neely explained, “You have to have an industry voice.”
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub. req’d.), August 17, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
www.prwatch.org/node/3914
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The Weekly Spin is compiled by staff and volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a nonprofit public interest organization. To subscribe or unsubcribe, visit:
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