[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, July 9, 2003

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, July 9, 2003
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Public Airwaves For The People
>2. White House Admits It Used Bad Intelligence
>3. PR Budgets Bulge Against Obesity
>4. Rise of the Machines
>5. Blair's Top Spin Doctor Fights the BBC
>6. Anger Rises for Families of Troops in Iraq
>7. US Public Catching On To Big Lie?
>8. False Fronts
>9. Defending Science
>10. Grubman Becomes the Media
>11. Iraq Elections Would Be "Destructive"
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>
>1. PUBLIC AIRWAVES FOR THE PEOPLE
>http://www.mediareform.net/callthehill.php
>   "A month ago the FCC dramatically relaxed media ownership
>   regulations, stifling the cornerstone of American democracy: a
>   free, fair, and open public debate," MediaReform.net writes.
>   "Because one million Americans raised their voices against the FCC
>   decision, the Senate Commerce Committee recently sent a bill to the
>   Senate floor for a vote that would roll back many of the rules."
>   MediaReform.net is calling for people to contact their
>   congressional representatives, asking them to ensure that the
>   public airwaves serve the interests of the people and not the media
>   monopolies.
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057723878
>
>2. WHITE HOUSE ADMITS IT USED BAD INTELLIGENCE
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/08/international/worldspecial/08PREX.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
>   "The White House acknowledged for the first time today that
>   President Bush was relying on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate
>   information from American intelligence agencies when he declared,
>   in his State of the Union speech, that Saddam Hussein had tried to
>   purchase uranium from Africa," the New York Times reports. Monday
>   evening after Bush had departed for Africa, White House officials
>   issued a statement in spokesman Ari Fleischer's name that "made
>   clear that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's statement" made
>   in January's State of the Union address. As of yet, no one has
>   taken responsibility for including in the speech the false claim
>   about Iraq's attempt to acquire enriched uranium from Niger. The
>   acknowledgment came after weeks of questions and contradictory
>   answers in the US and UK about intelligence used by the Bush and
>   Blair administrations to justify an invasion of Iraq. In our new
>   book, Weapons of Mass Deception, we expose the Bush
>   administration's hard sell for a war on Iraq -- an international
>   pitch based on distortions, lies, and misinformation.
>SOURCE: New York Times, July 8, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1057636800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057636800
>
>3. PR BUDGETS BULGE AGAINST OBESITY
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=184328&site=3
>   "Kraft Foods grabbed the PR high ground in the public debate about
>   obesity and America's unhealthy eating habits by announcing a
>   series of planned changes in how it will make and market its
>   products," PR Week reports. "The changes include increased
>   communications with various groups interested in the obesity issue,
>   as well as proactive efforts to encourage improved child fitness
>   and nutrition." But the Guardian's Mark Borkowski calls Kraft's
>   move "PR at its shabbiest and most shameful. It is an abject
>   demonstration of the way in which PR can create and then exploit an
>   agenda of apparent corporate responsibility to promote a brand,
>   enhance its status, and to set out a stall that provides
>   pre-emptive evidence to guard a company's reputation against future
>   attack." Borkowski points out the dubious nature of Kraft's desire
>   to be "part of the solution," considering that the food company is
>   majority owned by the Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris).
>   O'Dwyer's PR reports the Ad Council has hired GYMR, a Washington,
>   D.C. firm, to handle PR for a government-sponsored anti-obesity
>   campaign. The effort, called "Healthy Lifestyles," has a $125,000
>   PR budget through December. Eric Leininger, senior VP of marketing
>   services for Kraft, is on the Ad Council's board of directors.
>SOURCE: PR Week, July 7, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1057550400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057550400
>
>4. RISE OF THE MACHINES
>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0307.confessore.html
>   In the past, the lobbyists who populate Washington's K Street were
>   about as likely to be Democrats as Republicans, a practice that
>   ensured lobby firms would have clout no matter which party was in
>   power. But as Republican-dominated national politics have created
>   an increasingly one-party system, the GOP has made a determined
>   effort to undermine the bipartisan complexion of K Street. "If
>   today's GOP leaders put as much energy into shaping K Street as
>   their predecessors did into selecting judges and executive-branch
>   nominees, it's because lobbying jobs have become the foundation of
>   a powerful new force in Washington politics: a Republican political
>   machine," writes Nicholas Confessore. "Like the urban Democratic
>   machines of yore, this one is built upon patronage, contracts, and
>   one-party rule. But unlike legendary Chicago mayor Richard J.
>   Daley, who rewarded party functionaries with jobs in the municipal
>   bureaucracy, the GOP is building its machine outside government,
>   among Washington's thousands of trade associations and corporate
>   offices, their tens of thousands of employees, and the hundreds of
>   millions of dollars in political money at their disposal."
>SOURCE: Washington Monthly, July/August 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1057545137
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057545137
>
>5. BLAIR'S TOP SPIN DOCTOR FIGHTS THE BBC
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3048356.stm
>   Alastair Campbell, the communications director for British Prime
>   Minister Tony Blair, is at the center of a major controversy
>   sparked by BBC reports that he and other British government
>   officials "sexed up" their Iraq weapons dossier to justify the
>   government's war plans. Campbell fought back by accusing the BBC of
>   lying and demanding an apology. Blair himself called the
>   allegations "as serious an attack on my integrity as there could
>   possibly be." The BBC, however, stands by its story. Two British
>   parliamentary select committees have been conducting hearings into
>   the affair, with a report from the Commons Foreign Affairs
>   Committee due out July 7.
>SOURCE: BBC, July 6, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1057464000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057464000
>
>6. ANGER RISES FOR FAMILIES OF TROOPS IN IRAQ
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/04/national/04FAMI.html?pagewanted=print&position=
>   It is becoming increasingly obvious that the war that "ended" on
>   May 1 is still underway. "Military families, so often the ones to
>   put a cheery face on war, are growing vocal," writes Jeffrey
>   Gettleman. "Since major combat for the 150,000 troops in Iraq was
>   declared over on May 1, more than 60 Americans, including 25 killed
>   in hostile encounters, have died in Iraq, about half the number of
>   deaths in the two months of the initial campaign. Frustrations
>   became so bad recently at Fort Stewart, Ga., that a colonel,
>   meeting with 800 seething spouses, most of them wives, had to be
>   escorted from the session. 'They were crying, cussing, yelling and
>   screaming for their men to come back,' said Lucia Braxton, director
>   of community services at Fort Stewart."
>SOURCE: New York Times, July 4, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1057291200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057291200
>
>7. US PUBLIC CATCHING ON TO BIG LIE?
>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030702/wl_mideast_afp/us_iraq_opinion_030702080437
>   "For the first time since the beginning of the war in Iraq, a solid
>   majority of Americans believe the Bush administration either
>   'stretched the truth' about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or
>   told outright lies, according to a new opinion survey," Agence
>   France-Presse reports. A University of Maryland poll conducted from
>   June 18 to 25 found that 52 percent of respondents said they
>   believed President George W. Bush and his aides were "stretching
>   the truth, but not making false statements" about Iraqi president
>   Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
>   O'Dwyer's PR editor Kevin McCauley writes, "America has awoken from
>   its slumber. People are finally realizing that they were bamboozled
>   by the Administration into going to war with Iraq. A Gallup poll,
>   released July 1, finds that 56 percent of Americans say Iraq 'was
>   worth going to war for.' That's down sharply from the 73 percent
>   who answered that way in mid-April after the U.S. military took
>   control of Baghdad."
>SOURCE: Agence France-Press, July 2, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1057118401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057118401
>
>8. FALSE FRONTS
>http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20030701-9999_1c1pr.html
>   This spring, the Dr. Pepper company recruited bloggers to talk up
>   "Raging Cow," a flavored-milk drink. "The company hoped to work up
>   Internet buzz about the beverage - and it was OK, by the way, if
>   the bloggers didn't mention that Dr Pepper had given them freebies
>   and flown them to Dallas for a pep session," writes James Hebert,
>   who examines several examples of the old PR trick of "getting a
>   supposedly independent third party to tout your product."
>SOURCE: San Diego Union-Tribune, July 1, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1057032001
>
>9. DEFENDING SCIENCE
>http://www.DefendingScience.org
>   Ten years ago, on June 28, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court issued "the
>   most influential ruling you've never heard of," says the Project on
>   Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy. In the case known as
>   Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., they directing judges
>   to act as "gatekeepers" in the courtroom, excluding expert
>   testimony if they deemed it was "junk science." "But what started
>   as a well-intentioned attempt to ensure reliable and relevant
>   evidentiary science has had troubling consequences. ... Polluters
>   and manufacturers of dangerous products are successfully using
>   Daubert to keep juries from hearing scientific or any other
>   evidence against them."
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1056772800
>
>10. GRUBMAN BECOMES THE MEDIA
>http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1923790
>   Former celebrity publicist Lizzie Gruman has changed careers.
>   Grubman spent 37 days in jail following an infamous temper tantrum
>   in which she backed her Mercedes SUV into a crowd outside a
>   Hamptons nightspot, injuring 16 people. She now works as a gossip
>   and entertainment reporter for a New York radio station.
>SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, June 27, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/June_2003.html#1056686401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1056686401
>
>11. IRAQ ELECTIONS WOULD BE "DESTRUCTIVE"
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42905-2003Jun27?language=printer
>   So much for "Operation Iraqi Freedom." William Booth and Rajiv
>   Chandrasekaran report that "U.S. military commanders have ordered a
>   halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and
>   towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked
>   mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military
>   leaders." The decision is "creating anger and resentment," but L.
>   Paul Bremer, the PR crisis manager turned overlord of Iraq, says
>   "Elections that are held too early can be destructive." The
>   Guardian quotes Bremer's strategy for running the country: "We are
>   going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture
>   or... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this
>   country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our
>   will on this country."
>SOURCE: Washington Post, June 27, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/June_2003.html#1056686400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1056686400
>
>
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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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