[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, January 22, 2003

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, January 22, 2003
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Bush PR Barrage Formalizes Office of Global Communications
>2. Google Catches Bush Astroturf Campaign
>3. Some Folks Might Say That's an Insult
>4. Astroturf Ethics
>5. Spin Doctors Prescribe the Wrong Medicine
>6. PR Watch Banned From Corporate Grassroots Confab
>7. Muzzling the Media in Wartime
>8. Push Polling for Nuclear Power
>9. Charlotte's Web Unravels
>10. TV's Yellow Journalism:  Hyping War to Boost Ratings
>11. The CIA and the New York Times
>12. Pentagon Manages Press With Reporter Trainings
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>
>1. BUSH PR BARRAGE FORMALIZES OFFICE OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS
>http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1042491018351&p=1012571727291
>   War Is Sell and the techniques being used by the US are familiar
>   marketing and PR strategies. The Financial Times notes today that
>   the Bush Administration has "published a dossier depicting Saddam
>   Hussein's government as an 'apparatus of lies', as President George
>   W. Bush maintained a high-pitched note of impatience with the Iraqi
>   leader. ... However, the White House's own version of agitprop also
>   skates over some aspects of history. ... The Bush administration
>   has become increasingly focused on the public relations battle, as
>   the antiwar movement has gathered momentum in the US and Europe. Mr
>   Bush yesterday signed  an executive order formally creating the
>   Office of Global Communications , which has been working informally
>   for the last six months trying to spread the US message in
>   sceptical parts of the world."
>SOURCE: Financial Times, January 22, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1043211600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1043211600
>
>2. GOOGLE CATCHES BUSH ASTROTURF CAMPAIGN
>http://www.politechbot.com/p-04332.html
>   "It looks like the Bush Administration is astroturfing, trying to
>   artificially create the appearance of a grassroots movement
>   supporting their policies," writes Jules Agee. "A Google search on
>   the phrase 'demonstrating genuine leadership' returns a number of
>   nearly identical letters sent to the editors of various newspapers
>   and publications this month, each one with the name of a different
>   individual attached." Some alert bloggers traced the letters to a
>   Republican party website that offers gifts such as coolers, tote
>   bags and mouse pads in exchange for sending letters to the editor.
>   When asked about the form letters, one newspaper editor commented,
>   "The practice of mass submitting letters is old. We have been
>   receiving these types of letters for some time. ... I'm just
>   shocked that it has taken so long for others to expose it. This fad
>   begun over three years ago." But some newspapers liked the letters
>   so much that they published them more than once, over the
>   signatures of different local residents.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1043187088
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1043187088
>
>3. SOME FOLKS MIGHT SAY THAT'S AN INSULT
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15394-2003Jan19.html
>   Howard Kurtz reports that the New York Times has spiked a "My Job"
>   column by Jeff Barge, a Manhattan public relations executive who
>   described planting stories in major newspapers and blasted the PR
>   industry as "a deceptive business" in which newspapers are fed
>   "quotes that are just plain fabricated by the PR people." According
>   to Times editor Judith Dobrzynski, Barge's piece was "too
>   self-promotional." (The mention of Barge appears in the bottom half
>   of Kurtz's column, under the subhead, "Unfit to Print.")
>SOURCE: Washington Post, January 19, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042952400
>
>4. ASTROTURF ETHICS
>http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7381/120/a?etoc
>   After a recent article in the British Medical Journal detailed drug
>   company sponsorship of medical meetings on "female sexual
>   dysfunction," a PR firm with clients in the pharmaceutical and
>   biotechnology industry has launched a global campaign to "counter"
>   the BMJ report. Michelle Lerner of the HCC De Facto PR firm said it
>   would "violate ethical guidelines" to disclose the identity of her
>   client.
>SOURCE: British Medical Journal, January 18, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042866001
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042866001
>
>5. SPIN DOCTORS PRESCRIBE THE WRONG MEDICINE
>http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7381/170/DC1
>   "It's no easy job to save market share for expensive
>   antihypertensive drugs when headlines read 'When Cheaper Is Also
>   Better,'" writes Jeanne Lenzer. A major new study shows that the
>   expensive drugs used to treat hypertension "were no better than a
>   diuretic. In some instances they were not quite as safe - even
>   though they were substantially more expensive." To minimize the
>   health community's awareness of this result, drug companies used
>   sneaky tactics such as sending key doctors off on a sightseeing
>   junket to keep them from hearing about the study at a conference of
>   the American College of Cardiology. The same thing may be happening
>   with other drugs, according to Marcia Angell, former editor of the
>   New England Journal of Medicine. "A lot of newer drugs may not only
>   not be better - they may be worse," she said. "Most drug companies
>   don't want a head to head [study]. And the FDA [Food and Drug
>   Administration] allows trials to run that are rigged where a drug
>   is tested against placebo or a drug of the same class that is
>   inadequately dosed, or they look at the wrong group of people or
>   the wrong endpoints so their drug looks good." Adds Dr. Jerome
>   Hoffman, professor of medicine and emergency medicine at the
>   University of California at Los Angeles, "we abdicate our
>   responsibility, as well as risk the public health, if we allow
>   proprietary companies, whose primary interest has to be selling
>   their wares, to guard the public hen house."
>SOURCE: British Medical Journal, January 18, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042866000
>
>6. PR WATCH BANNED FROM CORPORATE GRASSROOTS CONFAB
>   Every February the powerful  Public Affairs Council (PAC) holds its
>   annual National Grassroots Conference for Corporations and
>   Associations in some lovely southern location. PR Watch wanted to
>   attend and report on this year's confab in Key West. We covered the
>   1997 conference and uncovered a goldmine of hidden information on
>   how corporations wage powerful campaigns at the grassroots to
>   promote their special interest agendas. So-called "corporate
>   grassroots" is where PR, corporate power and lobbying all come
>   together, and other than PR Watch almost no one reports on it.
>   Unfortunately, Doug Pinkham the president of PAC has informed us
>   that because "you are no doubt planning to run another special
>   issue about grassroots programs ... you won't be permitted to
>   attend." That's a shame, especially given the 80 degree temperature
>   difference in February between our home in Wisconsin and the PAC
>   conference in Key West. To get a flavor of the meeting we did
>   cover, read our reporting in the  first quarter 1997 issue of PR
>   Watch, to which Doug Pinkham refers.
>Web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042837761
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042837761
>
>7. MUZZLING THE MEDIA IN WARTIME
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5682-2003Jan17.html
>   "If you put the First Amendment up for a nationwide vote, we're not
>   so sure it would pass," reports Howard Kurtz. "When war breaks out,
>   many folks believe that the people with pens and microphones should
>   just get out of the way and let the soldiers do their jobs."
>   According to a recent opinion poll, two-thirds of the public
>   believes the government should have the right to stop the media
>   from disclosing military secrets, and 56% say news organizations
>   are more obliged to support the government in wartime than to
>   question the military's handling of the war.
>SOURCE: Washington Post, January 17, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042779601
>
>8. PUSH POLLING FOR NUCLEAR POWER
>http://www.reformer.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,102%257E8862%257E1117204,00.html
>   Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY), which owns a nuclear power
>   plant near Brattleboro, VT, has been conducting an opinion poll
>   using leading questions designed to influence public opinion, not
>   measure it. "They were trying to sneak in some propaganda disguised
>   as an objective poll," said one local resident after being called.
>   "They claimed they didn't know who was paying for the poll." ENVY
>   has been fighting to keep the plant open as town meetings convene
>   to discuss its fate. Last year, the company spent $250,000 on a
>   public relations campaign that narrowly defeated an anti-nuke
>   ballot initiative whose supporters only spent $500.
>SOURCE: Brattleboro Reformer, January 17, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042779600
>
>9. CHARLOTTE'S WEB UNRAVELS
>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/16/world/main536756.shtml
>   "The U.S. State Department has suspended its ad campaign extolling
>   Muslim life in the U.S., barely a month after propaganda czar
>   Charlotte Beers pitched 'paid media' as the best way to influence
>   the Islamic World," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. The TV ads were
>   controversial in the countries where they aired, and government-run
>   channels in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan refused to run them. "Islamic
>   opinion is influenced more by what the U.S. does than anything it
>   can say," comments an advertising executive quoted in the Wall
>   Street Journal.
>SOURCE: CBS News, January 16, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042693200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042693200
>
>10. TV'S YELLOW JOURNALISM:  HYPING WAR TO BOOST RATINGS
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/15/business/media/15TUBE.html?ex=1043742322&ei=1&en=8b717a5af1d08b19
>   "As the military buildup continues in the Persian Gulf, another
>   conflict is brewing at home, among MSNBC, CNN and the Fox News
>   Channel. ... Recalling how CNN made its name during the gulf war,
>   each channel is trying to distinguish itself and outdo its rivals.
>   ... As a result, the reports are taking on a hypercharged tone as
>   the cable networks try to persuade viewers ahead of time that they
>   are the ones to watch should war break out. ... The networks now
>   generally use a 'whooshing' sound to precede an on-screen headline.
>   There is far more frequent use of the words 'Breaking News' or
>   'News Alert,' even for events that in the past would not have
>   called for urgent treatment. ... At the very least, Graham T.
>   Allison, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at
>   Harvard, said the competition among the networks is adding to a
>   public sense that war is inevitable."
>SOURCE: New York Times, January 15, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042606800
>
>11. THE CIA AND THE NEW YORK TIMES
>http://editorandpublisher.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=5093455&fb=Y&partnerID=60
>   "What would Americans think if they knew that their best newspaper,
>   The New York Times, had allowed one of its national-security
>   reporters to negotiate a book deal that needed the approval of the
>   CIA?" writes Allan Wolper. "What would they say if they knew the
>   CIA was editing the book while the country is days or weeks away
>   from a war with Iraq and is counting on the Times to monitor the
>   intelligence agency?"
>SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, January 14, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042520402
>
>12. PENTAGON MANAGES PRESS WITH REPORTER TRAININGS
>http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030114.html
>   The Pentagon is training civilian reporters on its military bases
>   for war reporting. "One hundred twenty journalists trained last
>   November at the Quantico Marine Corps Base and the Norfolk Naval
>   Station; another wave of reporters trained last month at Fort
>   Benning, and another session is scheduled this month at Fort Dix in
>   New Jersey," Democracy Now reports. "The training teaches reporters
>   battlefield survival, military policy and weapons expertise." In a
>   lively roundtable discussion on Democracy Now with military
>   reporters and a Pentagon spokesperson, Harper's publisher Rick
>   MacArthur calls the Pentagon's reporter training "innovative public
>   relations" and a "con job."
>SOURCE: Democracy Now, January 14, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042520401
>
>
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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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