[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, November 27, 2002

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, November 27, 2002
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Hype in Health Reporting
>2. Congress Subpoenas Saudi Arabia PR Records
>3. Stock Exchange Mulls Forcing Media to Reveal Conflicts
>4. PR/Ad Giants Are Spinning Drugs Into Gold
>5. CBS Sells Fake TV News in VNR Venture
>6. APCO Represents Association of Southeast Asian Nations
>7. Astroturf Groups Give Drug Industry Even More Clout
>8. Muzzle the Old Folks
>9. 'Ya Hey, Cheeseheads!  Eat Yer Mad Deer Brains.'
>10. "Scientific" Journal's Industry Ties
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. HYPE IN HEALTH REPORTING
>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14638
>   "Do reporters know that so much medical news is actually unpaid
>   advertising?" writes Diana Zuckerman, president of the National
>   Center for Policy Research for Women & Families. "The most
>   effective industry influence is so well-hidden that many reporters
>   and producers are totally unaware of it. The role of pharmaceutical
>   companies and other health care industry interests in shaping news
>   coverage of medical products and treatment is as invisible as it is
>   pervasive."
>SOURCE: AlterNet.org, November 25, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1038200401
>
>2. CONGRESS SUBPOENAS SAUDI ARABIA PR RECORDS
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1125saudis.htm
>   "The House Committee on Government Reform, which is investigating
>   reports of American children kidnaped and held in Saudi Arabia, has
>   issued subpoenas to the Kingdom's top lobbying firms Qorvis
>   Communications, Patton Boggs and the Gallagher Group demanding they
>   turn over their PR and lobbying records," O'Dwyer's PR Daily
>   reports. "The Saudi Embassy claims those documents are protected
>   under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as 'archives
>   and documents of the mission.'" Committee head Rep. Dan Burton
>   (R-Ind.) rejects that argument, noting that the Vienna Convention
>   is "intended to protect foreign diplomats but has no application to
>   American citizens 'who choose to sell their services as public
>   relations/lobbying mouthpieces for foreign interests,'" O'Dwyer's
>   reports. Saudi Arabia has spent more than $3 million to shape US
>   opinion concerning the Kingdom. Meanwhile, Princess Haifa
>   al-Faisal, wife of Saudi Arabia's Ambassador Prince Bandar bin
>   Sultan, is accused of providing money to al-Qaida.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, November 25, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1038200400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1038200400
>
>3. STOCK EXCHANGE MULLS FORCING MEDIA TO REVEAL CONFLICTS
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/business/22NORR.html?ex=1039241065&ei=1&en=c84948625819efc5
>   "After the bubble burst, the [New York Stock Exchange] regulators
>   decided that it was not nice for an analyst to tout a stock without
>   mentioning that he owned the stock or that his employer was the
>   company's investment banker. So they ruled that such conflicts had
>   to be disclosed. Fair enough. But to whom? Many investors learn
>   analysts' opinions not from reading brokerage reports but from news
>   media reports. So the Big Board said that the firms had to make
>   sure that broadcasters who quoted the analysts had to pass on the
>   disclosure. The broadcasters said, in effect, what about the
>   newspapers? And that is how the new rule came to be. ... The S.E.C.
>   will decide which rule will be approved. Annette L. Nazareth, the
>   commission's director of market regulation, ... voiced concern that
>   if information on conflicts is not passed on by the news media,
>   'then we have achieved very little' by requiring disclosure. 'You'd
>   think," she said, "that the same outlets that were saying what a
>   terrible wrong was done to the public would want to cooperate.'"
>SOURCE: New York Times, November 22, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037941201
>
>4. PR/AD GIANTS ARE SPINNING DRUGS INTO GOLD
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/22/business/22DRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
>   "Dentists leafing through The Journal of the American Dental
>   Association last May found a study concluding that a new drug
>   called Bextra offered relief from one of their patients' worst
>   nightmares - the acute pain that follows dental surgery. Federal
>   regulators had rejected that conclusion only six months before,
>   leaving Bextra's marketers, Pharmacia and Pfizer, hard pressed to
>   sell it as an advance over Celebrex, their earlier entry in a
>   crowded market for pain drugs. The new study helped light a fire
>   under Bextra. Its sales soared 60 percent over the three months
>   that followed ... . But the research was not conducted by
>   academics. Instead, the lead investigators were from Scirex, a
>   little-known research firm owned partly by Omnicom, one of the
>   world's biggest advertising companies. Madison Avenue - whose
>   television ads have helped turn prescription medicines like Viagra,
>   Allegra and Vioxx into billion-dollar products - is expanding its
>   role in the drug business, wading into the science of drug
>   development. ... One advertising executive calls it 'getting closer
>   to the test tube.'"
>SOURCE: New York Times Friday, November 22, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037941200
>
>5. CBS SELLS FAKE TV NEWS IN VNR VENTURE
>http://www.prweekus.com/us/about/directory3a/images/cbs.jpg
>   For years CBS (and all the other networks) have run fake news
>   stories in the form of Video News Releases (VNRs). But now, CBS is
>   also in the business of creating, producing and distributing VNRs.
>   These phony news stories appear on TV networks and their
>   affiliates, misleading viewers into thinking they are watching real
>   news reports when in fact they are watching cleverly-disguised
>   commercials designed to look just like real news. Thousands of VNRS
>   are produced and aired every year. TV news directors save money by
>   filling air time with these slanted, pseudo-news segments that
>   stealthily promote clients' products and ideas. Now CBS has taken
>   this outrage to a new level by entering the profitable business of
>   selling, producing and distributing VNRs. A CBS Media Group
>   advertisement in the current PR Week urges potential clients to
>   hire CBS and "put one of the world's leading media companies to
>   work for you" producing video news releases. CBS even guarantees
>   "placement on the  CBS Newspath VNR feed."  Karen L. Kapnick,
>   formerly an account manager with MediaLink, runs CBS's VNR
>   business.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1037909908
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037909908
>
>6. APCO REPRESENTS ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1121apco.htm
>   The Association of Southeast Asian Nations hired APCO Worldwide to
>   develop "positive U.S.-ASEAN ties." "President Bush has made
>   establishing free trade agreements with each individual ASEAN
>   nation a foreign policy priority," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The
>   U.S. Administration also counts on ASEAN support for its war on
>   terrorism." Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Viet
>   Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei and Myanmar are ASEAN member
>   countries.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, November 21, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1037854802
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037854802
>
>7. ASTROTURF GROUPS GIVE DRUG INDUSTRY EVEN MORE CLOUT
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/21/politics/21DRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
>   "Having spent more than $30 million to help elect their allies to
>   Congress, the major drug companies are devising ways to capitalize
>   on their electoral success by securing favorable new legislation
>   and countering the pressure that lawmakers in both parties feel to
>   lower the cost of prescription drugs, industry officials say. The
>   industry's hand appears stronger now than at any other time in
>   recent years, a result of its large donations to political parties
>   and candidates and millions of dollars spent on television
>   advertising by industry-financed groups." (The New York Times print
>   version of this story noted that at least $15 million was spent on
>   TV ads placed by drug industry front groups such as the United
>   Seniors Association. For unknown reasons this information is not in
>   the New York Times online version.)
>SOURCE: New York Times, November 21, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1037854801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037854801
>
>8. MUZZLE THE OLD FOLKS
>http://www.suntimes.com/output/feder/cst-fin-feder21.html
>   If you happen to sound like you're older than 54, don't even bother
>   calling in to any of the talk shows on Chicago's WLS-AM radio
>   station. Michael Packer, operations manager of the ABC-owned
>   news/talk station, sent a confidential memo to staffers ordering
>   them to screen out "any old sounding callers" no matter what they
>   have to say. (Maybe they're worried that old people can still
>   remember a time when radio stations carried something other than
>   rantings from right-wing gasbags.)
>SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times, November 21, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037854800
>
>9. 'YA HEY, CHEESEHEADS!  EAT YER MAD DEER BRAINS.'
>http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/122002/cwd.html
>   Wisconsin's huge deer herd is infected with chronic wasting disease
>   (CWD), a deadly dementia that is a mad cow-type disease in deer,
>   filling their brains with swiss cheese-like holes and plaque. The
>   best available scientific evidence indicates that CWD, like British
>   mad cow disease, could infect and kill humans. Rather than learn
>   from Britain's mistakes and take a precautionary approach,
>   Wisconsin has launched a PR and advertising campaign to belittle
>   human health concerns and promote hunting. This week's deer hunt is
>   a multi-billion dollar industry and sales of licenses fund the
>   state's Department of Natural Resources. Milwaukee Magazine tells
>   the disturbing story of the state's PR cover-up. Wisconsin state
>   epidemiologist James Kazmierczak says "you could live on a diet of
>   deer brains and never get sick." While state officials give false
>   and misleading assurances to the public, the deaths of young
>   venison eaters from the human equivalent of CWD seems on the rise.
>SOURCE: Milwaukee Magazine
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037812400
>
>10. "SCIENTIFIC" JOURNAL'S INDUSTRY TIES
>http://www.cspinet.org/new/200211191.html
>   The Center for Science in the Public Interest has joined a number
>   of other health and science leaders in questioning the integrity of
>   Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (RTP), a "seemingly
>   independent scientific journal" that hides "its authors' and
>   editors' extensive financial ties to tobacco, chemical,
>   pharmaceutical, and other industries. ... [M]any RTP papers are
>   written by scientists from industry labs or by industry-paid
>   lawyers and lobbyists. The same industries might then use RTP
>   articles in court to help derail lawsuits, or to make the case for
>   less regulation in legislative- and executive-branch proceedings."
>SOURCE: CSPI News Release, November 19, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037682001
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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Carpentier Nico
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University Brussels
Studies on Media, Information & Telecommunication (SMIT)
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
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