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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
Studies on Media, Information & Telecommunication (SMIT)
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
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