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[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, December 25, 2002
Wed Dec 25 13:25:05 GMT 2002
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, December 25, 2002
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Loving Big Brother
>2. Nestle's Christmas Gift to Ethiopia
>3. Lott Got Blogged
>4. Memos Cast Shadow on Drug's Promotion
>5. Bonner Beats Rap for Astroturf Lobbying
>6. Secrecy Fights Loom Large in D.C.
>7. Shh...Don't Mention Where Saddam Got Weapons
>8. Outsourcing Big Brother
>9. Lott vs. the Republicans
>10. Inventing a Terrorist Story
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. LOVING BIG BROTHER
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/23/technology/23PEEK.html?ex=1041686642&ei=1&en=640b1ec9d2ec5423
> In Orwell's 1984, people loved Big Brother. Today, we've already
> embraced Big Brother technology. "In the Pentagon research effort
> to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian
> population, the most remarkable detail may be this: Most of the
> pieces of the system are already in place. Because of the inroads
> the Internet and other digital network technologies have made into
> everyday life over the last decade, it is increasingly possible to
> amass Big Brother-like surveillance powers through Little Brother
> means. The basic components include everyday digital technologies
> like e-mail, online shopping and travel booking, A.T.M. systems,
> cellphone networks, electronic toll-collection systems and
> credit-card payment terminals. In essence, the Pentagon's main job
> would be to spin strands of software technology that would weave
> these sources of data into a vast electronic dragnet. ... The
> civilian population, in other words, has willingly embraced the
> technical prerequisites for a national surveillance system that
> Pentagon planners are calling Total Information Awareness."
>SOURCE: New York Times, December 23, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040619601
>
>2. NESTLE'S CHRISTMAS GIFT TO ETHIOPIA
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,864711,00.html
> Faced with a "mounting public relations disaster" over its attempt
> to sue the famine-stricken country of Ethiopia for $6 million, the
> Nestle corporation has promised to donate the money to hunger
> relief. But Justin Forsyth of the hunger organization Oxfam calls
> the offer a "half measure" and calls on the company "unambiguously
> to drop the claim and allow the Ethiopian government to spend the
> money on famine relief. ... Nestle has had lots of opportunities to
> back down over the last year. Sadly it has taken Oxfam and the
> Ethiopian government exposing them to public outrage to make them
> see sense."
>SOURCE: The Guardian (UK), December 23, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1040619600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040619600
>
>3. LOTT GOT BLOGGED
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,863964,00.html
> "The momentum that ended in Trent Lott's resignation yesterday as
> the Senate majority leader did not, primarily, come from the
> traditional behemoths of the US media - the New York Times, the
> Washington Post and the main TV news networks," observes Oliver
> Burkeman. Those publications initially failed to report on Lott's
> racist comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. "In the
> interim, writers on numerous weblogs, or 'blogs,' were condemning
> the remarks - and swiftly uncovering evidence of a pattern in Mr.
> Lott's public pronouncements of indulgence towards the racist
> policies of the Old South."
>SOURCE: The Guardian (UK), December 21, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1040446800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040446800
>
>4. MEMOS CAST SHADOW ON DRUG'S PROMOTION
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/business/20DRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
> A whistle-blower's lawsuit has unearthed documents showing that the
> Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company circumvented the Food and
> Drug Administration's drug approval process through a PR and
> advertising campaign. The company's internal memoranda show that it
> avoided the large clinical trials needed to gain government
> approval of off-label uses for Neurontin, an epilepsy medicine.
> Instead, the company paid for small studies and had the results
> published in medical journals. "The company also hired advertising
> agencies to help write the medical journal articles," reports
> Melody Petersen. Warner-Lamber also "spread the word about those
> small clinical studies by inviting doctors to continuing-education
> classes, lectures at hospitals, dinners and weekend retreats. ...
> The company hired doctors to speak to their peers about Neurontin;
> the doctors were expected to present positive messages about the
> drug and were paid fees of $500 to $2,000 a speech. ... One of the
> more interesting tactics used by Warner-Lambert and the advertising
> agencies it hired to promote Neurontin concerned a 1996 dinner at
> the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. In a draft of a
> letter written to a doctor by an advertising agency, marketers
> offered the doctor $200 to memorize questions about Neurontin that
> they wanted him to drop casually into the dinner conversation."
>SOURCE: New York Times, December 20, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040360400
>
>5. BONNER BEATS RAP FOR ASTROTURF LOBBYING
>http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-md.bonner19dec19,0,3334282.story?coll=bal-local-headlines
> PR Watch has reported in the past on the questionable tactics of
> Bonner & Associates, which specializes in "astroturf" (artificial
> grassroots) organizing for corporate clients. Earlier this year,
> Jack Bonner was charged with ethics violations in Maryland, but the
> Maryland State Ethics Commission has cleared him of charges that he
> used deceptive tactics on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry.
> "The education fund's complaint was filed after an article in The
> Sun detailed how PhRMA and Bonner & Associates were attempting to
> defeat prescription drug legislation in Maryland and other states
> by teaming with obscure nonprofit community groups. ... Bonner &
> Associates teamed with a Michigan-based group called the Consumer
> Alliance. In exchange for seed money from PhRMA, Consumer Alliance
> tried ... making legislators think there was a groundswell of
> grass-roots opposition." Was Bonner really innocent, or does the
> ethics commission just have really low standards? Read the original
> story from the Baltimore Sun and decide for yourself.
>SOURCE: Baltimore Sun, December 19, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1040274000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040274000
>
>6. SECRECY FIGHTS LOOM LARGE IN D.C.
>http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&cid=1039054459282
> "The administration's fight to keep a tight hold over government
> information is far from over," reports Vanessa Blum. "Watchdog
> groups continue attempts to penetrate the inner sanctum of the
> executive branch using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and
> other open government laws." Numerous FOIA fights are currently
> underway against the White House and Justice Department. "It's
> absolute trench warfare," says Georgetown University Law Center
> professor David Vladeck. "We've had to litigate cases that we would
> never have brought before because the information ordinarily would
> have been disclosed."
>SOURCE: Legal Times, December 18, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040187601
>
>7. SHH...DON'T MENTION WHERE SADDAM GOT WEAPONS
>http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=362566
> "The United States edited out more than 8,000 crucial pages of
> Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a
> sanitized version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United
> Nations security council," reports the UK's Sunday Herald.
> Apparently the report includes embarrassing evidence of U.S. and
> European culpability in aiding the Iraqi weapons programs, dating
> back to before the Gulf War, but covering the period of Saddam
> Hussein's rise and his worst crimes. The list of companies that
> allegedly supplied Iraq with nuclear, chemical, biological, and
> missile technology includes Honeywell, UNISYS, Sperry Corp.,
> Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Eastman Kodak and Bechtel.
>SOURCE: The Independent (UK), December 18, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1040187600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040187600
>
>8. OUTSOURCING BIG BROTHER
>http://www.public-i.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=484
> "The Total Information Awareness System (TIA), the controversial
> Pentagon research program that aims to gather and analyze a vast
> array of information on Americans, has hired at least eight private
> companies to work on the effort," reports the Center for Public
> Integrity. Those companies, including Booz Allen & Hamilton,
> Lockheed Martin and Syntek Technologies (John Poindexter's former
> employer), have won $88 million in contracts from the Defense
> Department agency that oversees the program. The Electronic Privacy
> Information Center (EPIC) recently filed a legal action to force
> public disclosure of information about TIA, but unfortunately the
> judge in charge is John Bates -- the same guy who recently helped
> block public access to records of Dick Cheney's energy task force.
>SOURCE: Center for Public Integrity, December 17, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1040101200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1040101200
>
>9. LOTT VS. THE REPUBLICANS
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/12/13/MN179001.DTL
> Retaining Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader would damage the
> political future of the Republican Party, according to public
> relations experts interviewed by Matt Stearns. Former Hill &
> Knowlton CEO Bob Dilenschneider suggested Lott limit the damage by
> giving a speech at a black university, while others predicted "a
> slow, agonizing, debilitating political death" as Lott's
> ineffective attempts to explain away his endorsement of racist
> politician Strom Thurmond have been met with a flurry of stories
> about Lott's own racist track record: his racially-inflected 1984
> interview with the Southern Partisan; his long-standing association
> with a white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative
> Citizens; and his long history of support for segregation,
> enthusiasm for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and disrespect
> for Martin Luther King.
>SOURCE: Charlotte Observer, December 14, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1039842002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1039842002
>
>10. INVENTING A TERRORIST STORY
>http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1213/dailyUpdate.html
> Prompted in part by reports that a leaders of the Hezbollah has
> urged Palestinians to step up their suicide bombings, the Canadian
> government has banned the Lebanese group. Only problem is, the
> alleged statement from Hezbollah was probably invented by
> Washington Times reporter Paul Martin, who has a history of
> fabricating news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
>SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor, December 13, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2002.html#1039755600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1039755600
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University Brussels
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