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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Wed Nov 13 08:27:46 GMT 2002
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, November 13, 2002
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. This War Brough To You By The Rendon Group
>2. Ketchum Trains Military Personnel
>3. "Getting Serious" About War
>4. The T-Shirt You Won't See: Jail Winona!
>5. Saving Private Arnett
>6. Trusted Computing Meets George Orwell
>7. Spin Doctor, Heal Thyself
>8. The Marketing of Breast Cancer
>9. PR Budgets Average $2.7 Million
>10. GM Wins Greenwash Award
>11. Bush Lies, Media Swallows
>12. PR Groups On Wrong Side
>13. 'Kick Out the Jams Mo'f%ers!' and Buy A Jag
>14. Nike Case Should Boost PR
>15. War Party Gears Up for Post-Election Campaign
>16. Bowling Over The Internet
>17. Behind the Placards
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. THIS WAR BROUGH TO YOU BY THE RENDON GROUP
>http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK13Ak01.html
> "'Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic
> translator who did a great Saddam imitation,' recalls the Harvard
> grad student. 'Eventually, someone phoned me, asking if I wanted to
> help change the course of Iraq policy,'" writes Asia Times (Hong
> Kong) correspondent Ian Urbina. "So twice a week, for US$3,000 a
> month, the Iraqi student says, under condition of anonymity, that
> he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a Boston-area recording
> studio rented by the Rendon Group, a DC-based public relations firm
> with close ties to the US government. His job: translate and dub
> spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for
> broadcast throughout Iraq."
>SOURCE: Asia Times, November 13, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037163600
>
>2. KETCHUM TRAINS MILITARY PERSONNEL
>http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20021112workingp2.asp
> For the past two decades, the U.S. Army has been shipping out
> career officers for a year-long PR training at the Pittsburgh
> office of global PR firm Ketchum, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
> reports. "The two sides were paired through a call from the
> Pentagon. It seems someone thought it would be a good idea to get
> public relations training," the Post-Gazette's Teresa F. Lindeman
> writes. Several program alumni told the paper that "crisis
> communications and media relations tools have come in especially
> handy since leaving Ketchum." Don McGrath completed the program in
> 1990 to became a Pentagon press spokesman for the chief of staff of
> the Army. "By 1991, the U.S. air attack began, and [McGrath] needed
> everything he knew to cope with the almost overwhelming media
> invasion," Lindeman writes. McGrath is now vice president of
> corporate communications for BASF Corp. in New Jersey.
>SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 12, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037077202
>
>3. "GETTING SERIOUS" ABOUT WAR
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1112bush_wilkinson.htm
> "The White House is shifting James Wilkinson, who helped run the
> U.S./U.K. coalition communications office in the aftermath of the
> invasion of Afghanistan, to the Pentagon's U.S. Central Command to
> serve as spokesperson for Gen. Tommy Franks," O'Dwyer's PR Daily
> writes. "That move is a 'big signal' that the U.S. is 'getting
> serious' about Iraq, according to a report in The Washington Times.
> Wilkinson has just returned from a trip to Morocco, where he
> practiced his Arabic language skills on the streets. Defense
> Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used Wilkinson as his spokesperson during
> the presidential transition period."
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, November 12, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037077201
>
>4. THE T-SHIRT YOU WON'T SEE: JAIL WINONA!
>http://www.madison.com/wisconsinstatejournal/special/36572.php
> The judge in celebrity thief Winona Ryder's shoplifting conviction
> has ordered that no juror speak publicly about the case for 90 days
> to lessen their ability to profit from appearances and interviews.
> Columnist George Hesselberg notes that "no juror in a movie star
> case would talk for free, so that means until three months are up,
> we won't get to know what really happened. But I was not a juror,
> so here is what really happened: A millionaire tried to steal some
> expensive clothes and got caught. She will not go to jail, even
> though it is suspected she has done this before. Meanwhile, not one
> media outlet or Web page noted the irony that elsewhere in
> California, victims of the 'three-strikes and you're out' rule are
> spending years, even lives, in prison for stealing less."
>SOURCE: Wisconsin State Journal, November 12, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1037077200
>
>5. SAVING PRIVATE ARNETT
>http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/n_7963/index.html
> Former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett is angling to return to Iraq
> before the war starts this winter, writes Michael Wolff. This time,
> however, Arnett is freelancing for CameraPlanet, an indie
> news-production unit. Wolff sees Arnett as the last of a dying
> breed, as real war correspondents disappear and are replaced by
> famous talking heads like Geraldo Rivera or Christiane Amanpour.
> "As it happens, he is oddly able to do this, and all the other
> glamour-pusses are able to position themselves in the war picture,
> too, because nobody really does now what war reporters used to do.
> Nobody is covering combat -- nobody is in combat. Armies, after
> all, don't invite reporters along to battle anymore; and the point
> about digitized combat is that there is nothing but an explosion
> (recorded by gun cams) to cover; and, what's more, highly paid
> famous people are not, as a rule, able to endure great discomfort."
>SOURCE: New York Magazine, November 11, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1036990800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036990800
>
>6. TRUSTED COMPUTING MEETS GEORGE ORWELL
>http://www.sjc.uq.edu.au/insite/edition_7/Lifestyle/Computer%20Privacy.html
> Computer experts say Microsoft's "Palladium" software project,
> which builds on technology being developed by the "Trusted
> Computing Platform Alliance" (TCPA), could be misused to gain
> unprecedented access to personal computers and endanger freedom of
> speech. TCPA could potentially allow courts, governments and
> corporations to remotely delete and censor files they deem
> offensive. Microsoft claims that Palladium will offer better
> security to end users, which draws scoffs from observers who find
> it ironic that "the company responsible for nearly every major
> computer security problem, virus, and backdoor ... is now heralding
> its ability to make everything better." "Trusted Computing" is also
> featured prominently in a new website concerned with "issues,
> particularly those related to personal computer use, which threaten
> to bring us closer to the dystopian nightmare of George Orwell's
> novel, 1984."
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1036783452
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036783452
>
>7. SPIN DOCTOR, HEAL THYSELF
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1108drobis.htm
> "More than 14 PR groups have been meeting informally to coordinate
> a new plan in support of PR's role," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily.
> David Drobis, chairman of Ketchum, outlined the plan to improve the
> industry's tarnished image. "Early next year," he said, "they will
> come together in an effort to provide industry positioning on three
> critical topics: ethics, disclosure and transparency."
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, November 8, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036731600
>
>8. THE MARKETING OF BREAST CANCER
>http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/articles/breastcancer.html
> The Susan G. Komen Foundation and its fundraiser, the 5K Race for
> the Cure, have done much to raise awareness of breast cancer.
> Grassroots breast cancer advocates, however, are offended by the
> annual event, according to journalist Mary Ann Swissler in an
> in-depth article on the Komen Foundation for Southern Exposure
> Magazine. "The races, [critics] say, merely focus women on finding
> a medical cure for breast cancer, and away from environmental
> conditions causing it, the problems of the uninsured, and political
> influence of corporations over the average patient," Swissler
> writes. She uncovers Komen's direct connections with the
> pharmaceutical industry, corporate boards of private cancer
> treatment companies, habitual polluters, conservative lobbyists and
> George W. Bush as well as Komen's active support of an HMO-friendly
> version of the "Patients' Bill of Rights."
>SOURCE: Southern Exposure Magazine reprinted by the Fairfield (CT) County
>Weekly
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036691603
>
>9. PR BUDGETS AVERAGE $2.7 MILLION
> PR Tactics, a publication of the Public Relations Society of
> America, reports corporate budgets for public relations average
> $2.7 million in 2002, an increase from $2.25 in 2001. The Thomas L.
> Harris/Impulse Research Client Survey found that telecommunications
> firms outspend other sectors, averaging $8.04 million for PR
> budgets. Chemicals and plastics average $5.55 million; retailing,
> $3.96 million; energy, $3.68 million; and sports and entertainment,
> $3.52 million. Some of the PR spending goes to promoting new
> products. PR Tactics reports "a recent survey of 600 U.S. companies
> found that 87 percent of them introduced a new name for a product,
> service, or company in the last two years. ... Two-thirds reported
> that creating a new name was more difficult than in the past,
> perhaps given the influx of new monikers. What may surprise,
> however, was that 43 percent ... said they do not use research to
> test new names."
>SOURCE: PR Tactics, November 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036691289
>
>10. GM WINS GREENWASH AWARD
>http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid=4768
> "What are they thinking? GM's 'Introducing the Saturn VUE' ad,
> which ran in Newsweek magazine, compares their new SUV to
> endangered arctic species," the public interest group CorpWatch
> writes. "Never mind that SUVs produce carbon emissions that
> contribute to the global warming that's melting polar ice floes
> like the one pictured in their ad. And never mind that General
> Motors vehicles alone account for about 1.65% of the world's carbon
> emissions -- a significant amount for a single company. GM's
> publicists seem unfazed that most of the animals pictured in the ad
> are negatively impacted by climate change or that the arctic region
> is particularly vulnerable to global warming. They have the
> chutzpah to tell us their SUV is 'at home in almost any
> environment.' And that seems like a perfect reason to bestow them
> with a Greenwash Award."
>SOURCE: CorpWatch, November 7, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036645201
>
>11. BUSH LIES, MEDIA SWALLOWS
>http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021125&s=alterman
> "President Bush is a liar. There, I said it, but most of the
> mainstream media won't," writes Eric Alterman.
>SOURCE: The Nation, November 7, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036645200
>
>12. PR GROUPS ON WRONG SIDE
> "The Public Relations Society of America, the Arthur Page Society,
> the Institute for PR, the Council of PR Firms and the PA Council
> are on the wrong side of the Nike 'commercial speech' lawsuit,"
> writes Jack O'Dwyer, publisher of the O'Dwyer's PR trade
> publications. "Instead of siding with Nike, which refuses to defend
> the truthfulness of its statements about labor practices abroad
> (see No Logo for labor conditions in 18 foreign countries), the PR
> groups should be demanding that accuracy be served. The California
> Supreme Court ruled that Nike was promoting sales and thus did not
> have the protection civilians have in making statements."
>SOURCE: Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter, November 6, 2002
>Web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1036558801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036558801
>
>13. 'KICK OUT THE JAMS MO'F%ERS!' AND BUY A JAG
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/business/media/06ADCO.html?ex=1037597881&ei=1&en=f04a24b0bf336320
> "The Clash's 'London Calling, with its lyrical images of nuclear
> winter, looming ice age and engine failure, might seem a
> particularly annoying musical choice for selling an elite brand of
> cars. But for Jaguar, the 1979 song was the perfect accompaniment
> to the television commercials for its new X-Type car. Jaguar is not
> the only company blithely using songs whose lyrics come off as
> downright contrary to the images of the brands they advertise. ...
> 'On its face, it's preposterous...' said Mark Crispin Miller,
> professor of media studies at New York University. ... But it
> probably works, Mr. Miller said, adding, 'Their hope is that as
> people drive their Jaguars, they'll feel like outlaws.' ... The
> success of advertisers with these ads suggests that making radical
> songs saccharine is actually easy. 'Meaning is extremely
> malleable,' said Gary Burns, professor of communication... 'If it's
> a good riff, people are going to listen to it,' even in a
> commercial, said Jason Fine, senior editor at Rolling Stone
> magazine. 'It doesn't particularly bother me or steal the song's
> meaning from me. I know a lot of people do feel that way, but
> that's become an outdated way of thinking.' "
>SOURCE: New York Times, November 6, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036558800
>
>14. NIKE CASE SHOULD BOOST PR
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1105comm_seideman.htm
> Jeff Seideman, president of the Boston chapter of the Public
> Relations Society of America, is publicly disagreeing with the
> PRSA's stance on the Nike vs. Kasky lawsuit, in which Nike is being
> sued for allegedly making false statements about its overseas labor
> practices. "Actually, PRSA shouldn't be on either side of the
> issue," Seideman writes. It should have taken a position in support
> of ethical practices by PR professionals." Nike and the PRSA claim
> the First Amendment protects their right to make false statements
> about corporate social responsibility. Seideman retorts: "It seems
> hypocritical to me for our Society, which has recently embraced
> cause and social responsibility campaigns as legitimate marketing
> strategies (despite my personal belief that they are ineffective
> gimmicks) to claim that Nike is not engaged in commercial speech
> when it claims its labor practices are socially responsible. Social
> responsibility campaigns are a form of reputation management and
> reputation management is designed to directly, or indirectly,
> positively affect the bottom line. ... The greatest problem facing
> our profession today is our lack of credibility. ... We only made
> it worse last year when we eviscerated the enforcement provisions
> of our Code of Ethics. ... What a shame that the leading
> professional society of a profession already burdened by doubts
> about its credibility, would side with those who claim their public
> statements don't have to be truthful."
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, November 5, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036472401
>
>15. WAR PARTY GEARS UP FOR POST-ELECTION CAMPAIGN
>http://194.183.22.100/ips\ENG.NSF/vwWebMainView/51F800FD94E9813780256C680008D501/?OpenDocument
> "As soon as the results of Tuesday's mid-term elections are known,
> a small group of influential right-wing hawks with close ties to
> the offices of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President
> Dick Cheney will launch a new political campaign to rally public
> support for the invasion of Iraq," writes Jim Lobe. "The Committee
> for the Liberation of Iraq, which is setting up its office on
> Capitol Hill this week, plans to announce its formal launch next
> week, according to its president, Randy Scheunemann, a veteran
> Republican Senate foreign-policy staffer who until recently worked
> as a consultant to Rumsfeld on Iraq policy. The Committee appears
> to be a spin-off of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC),
> a front group consisting mainly of neo-conservative Jews and
> heavy-hitters from the Christian Right, whose public
> recommendations on fighting the 'war against terrorism' and U.S.
> backing for Israel in the conflict in the occupied territories have
> anticipated to a remarkable degree the administration's own policy
> course."
>SOURCE: Inter Press Service News, November 4, 2002
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2002.html#1036386002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036386002
>
>16. BOWLING OVER THE INTERNET
> "Documentarian Michael Moore has once again used a personal appeal
> over the internet to boost the success of his controversial work,
> highlighting the effectiveness of the web as a promotional tool,"
> PR Week reports. Encouraging people to see his new movie "Bowling
> for Columbine," Moore's email was sent to thousands on his mailing
> list and "was widely circulated, especially by film buffs and
> political activist who support Moore." Moore's movie features PR
> representatives from the Lockheed's Littleton, CO missile plant and
> K-Mart corporate headquarters. PR Week reports "Bowling for
> Columbine" is now showing on over 110 screens and has grossed $2.6
> million.
>SOURCE: PR Week, November 4, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036386001
>
>17. BEHIND THE PLACARDS
>http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=39605
> "If public-opinion polls are correct, 33 percent to 40 percent of
> the public opposes an Iraq war; even more are against a unilateral
> action. This means the burgeoning anti-war movement has a large
> recruiting pool," writes David Corn. Most Americans, however, won't
> agree with the agenda of the Workers World Party, which organized
> the recent anti-war demonstration in Washington. The WWP is a
> "small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist
> Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956"
> and which today supports North Korean dictator Kim Jon-Il and
> former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. "The anti-war
> movement won't have a chance of applying pressure on the political
> system unless it becomes much larger and able to squeeze elected
> officials at home and in Washington," Corn writes. "To reach that
> stage, the new peace movement will need the involvement of labor
> unions and churches. That's where the troops are o in the pews, in
> the union halls. How probable is it, though, that mainstream
> churches and unions will join a coalition led by the
> we-love-North-Korea set?"
>SOURCE: LA Weekly, November 1-7, 2002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1036126802
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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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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