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[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Wed Sep 10 05:51:22 GMT 2003
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, September 10, 2003
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Belated Courage
>2. "Weapons of Mass Decepton" Hits the Road in CA & WI
>3. Terms of Authority
>4. Operation Army Advertising
>5. Asbestos Bill Attracts Corporate Lobbyists
>6. Beltway Politics Becomes The New Reality TV
>7. The Post-Modern President
>8. Americans Remain Dead Wrong About Saddam and 9/11
>9. US Popularity Down Despite Image Campaign
>10. Score One for Conspiracy Theorists
>11. The Chairman Speaks
>12. The Rollback Machine
>13. Losing Proposition
>14. Al-Jazeera's Here
>15. U.S. Rushed Post-Saddam Planning
>16. EPA's Revolving Door
>17. Bill O'Reilly Decides, You Shut Up
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. BELATED COURAGE
>http://villagevoice.com/issues/0337/cotts.php
> Following recent revelations that the U.S. Environmental Protection
> Agency misled the public about air quality in New York following
> the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Daily News has been crowing
> about how columnist Juan González "was the first to sound the
> alarm" that ground zero was a toxic dump after 9/11. As Cynthia
> Cotts points out, however, the newspaper "was not always so crazy
> about González's scoop. Indeed, sources say, ... editors
> discouraged the columnist from pursuing the toxic story and buckled
> under pressure from federal and local authorities."
>SOURCE: Village Voice, September 10-16, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1063166401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063166401
>
>2. "WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTON" HITS THE ROAD IN CA & WI
>http://www.prwatch.org/calendar.html
> Weapons of Mass Deception is currently ranked #23 on the New York
> Times' best seller list, its third week on that list. Check out
> some of its recent reviews. Authors Sheldon Rampton and/or John
> Stauber are on the road the last half of September for book talks
> in San Francisco (9/15), Sebastopol (9/16), Berkeley (9/17), and
> Corte Madera (9/18), California. Then back to Wisconsin to Richland
> Center (9/22), Madison (9/23), Milwaukee (9/24), and finally
> Duluth, Minnesota on September 26. For more information see our
> events page.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1063166400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063166400
>
>3. TERMS OF AUTHORITY
>http://cjr.org/issues/2003/5/alt-rosen.asp
> Alternative sources of news such as the Internet have made readers
> "more assertive and far less in awe of the press" than before,
> writes Jay Rosen. He highlights the case of Chris Allbritton, a
> former AP and New York Daily News reporter who became "the Web's
> first independent war correspondent," raising donor funds to
> support his weblog reporting on Iraq. "The Internet did the rest,"
> Rosen writes. "On March 27, his reporting drew 23,000 users to his
> site, thus proving, not that anyone in the public can perhaps be a
> journalist, but that anyone who is a journalist can have a
> mini-public on the Net." Unlike traditional journalism, Albritton's
> site also lets readers participate as journalists themselves, as in
> the recent exchange between Sheldon Rampton and Australian
> journalist Eric Campbell regarding TV cameraman Paul Moran's
> relationship to the Rendon Group.
>SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1063115979
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063115979
>
>4. OPERATION ARMY ADVERTISING
>http://www.americanwaymag.com/business/feature.asp?archive_date=9/1/2003
> "Just like in the old days, the military wants you," writes Beth
> Snyder Bulik. "But these days, Uncle Sam has a better pitch. With
> the help of big-time ad agencies and sleek messages, the stalwart
> armed services have modernized their marketing and advertising o
> and attracted a new generation of recruits in the process." Tactics
> used to promote its "Army of One" slogan have included interactive
> games on the Internet and sponsorship of a NASCAR race car.
>SOURCE: American Way Magazine, September 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063101538
>
>5. ASBESTOS BILL ATTRACTS CORPORATE LOBBYISTS
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=189182&site=3
> "Major US corporations ranging from Pfizer to Halliburton are
> mobilizing scores of public affairs professionals across Washington
> this fall in hopes that the new legislative session will bring an
> end to years of costly asbestos-related lawsuits," PR Week's
> Douglas Quenqua writes. "Working separately as the Asbestos Study
> Group (ASG) and the Asbestos Alliance (AA), hundreds of major
> companies that have either manufactured or used asbestos are
> lobbying for protection from more than 600,000 asbestos lawsuits
> now pending in US courts. A bill that would create a $108 billion
> trust fund from which victims could receive compensation is
> expected to be considered by the Senate this fall. Many in Congress
> consider the bill, which would also bar future asbestos-related
> lawsuits, a high priority, but newly revived debates over energy
> policy and Iraq threaten to sidetrack the long-simmering issue.
> Hence, a vast army of public affairs professionals is mobilizing to
> preserve the momentum."
>SOURCE: PR Week, September 8, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062993601
>
>6. BELTWAY POLITICS BECOMES THE NEW REALITY TV
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=189184&site=3
> "HBO is turning its lens on the Beltway this week with the debut of
> a new reality-based series about Washington lobbyists," PR Week
> reports. "K Street mixes working politicians and lobbyists,
> including the likes of Michael Deaver, Mary Matalin, and James
> Carville, with a cast of actors playing lobbyists. ... The 10-part
> series from executive producers George Clooney and Steven
> Soderbergh will grab plotlines from the headlines, and film only
> one week in advance in an attempt to remain as timely as possible.
> For example, a 20-minute test episode shown to critics features a
> story that revolves around a lobbying firm's decision on whether or
> not to represent Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi. Senators John
> McCain (R-AZ), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) make
> cameos, and show producers say they plan on recruiting other DC
> insiders. While some in the Beltway might crave their 15 minutes,
> the idea of having real clients appear in fictional plots makes
> others nervous. Burson-Marsteller, which had a State Department
> contract for four years providing communications support for the
> Iraqi National Congress (INC), which is led by Chalabi, worries
> that an inaccurate portrayal could harm its clients' images."
>SOURCE: PR Week, September 8, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1062993600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062993600
>
>7. THE POST-MODERN PRESIDENT
>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.marshall.html
> "Every president deceives. But each has his own style of deceit,"
> writes Joshua Micah Marshall. The Bush administration, he says,
> specializes in "a particular form of deception: The confidently
> expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion. ... Many of the
> administration's policy arguments have amounted to predictions -
> tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes,
> Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower - that most
> experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn't be definitely
> disproven until events played out in the future."
>SOURCE: Washington Monthly, September 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062922793
>
>8. AMERICANS REMAIN DEAD WRONG ABOUT SADDAM AND 9/11
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32862-2003Sep5.html
> "Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least
> likely that [Iraq's Saddam] Hussein was involved in the attacks on
> the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest
> Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the
> fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al
> Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and
> independents. ... The poll's findings are significant because they
> help to explain why the public continues to support operations in
> Iraq despite the setbacks and bloodshed there. Americans have more
> tolerance for war when it is provoked by an attack, particularly
> one by an all-purpose villain such as Hussein. 'That's why
> attitudes about the decision to go to war are holding up,' [Andrew]
> Kohut said.
>SOURCE: Washington Post, September 6, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062820800
>
>9. US POPULARITY DOWN DESPITE IMAGE CAMPAIGN
>http://afr.com/articles/2003/09/05/1062548990647.html
> "US popularity has plummeted in the Arab and Muslim world despite a
> nearly two-year-old State Department campaign to boost the US
> image, according to a Congress report," the Australian Financial
> Review reports. "Despite anecdotal claims of success with certain
> elements of the campaign in some countries, polling data shows the
> United States is more unpopular and more resented in many
> Muslim-majority nations than before the September 11, 2001
> terrorist attacks, the report said." According to the September 4
> General Accounting Office report "U.S. Public Diplomacy: State
> Department Expands Efforts but Faces Significant Challenges,"
> public affairs officers felt they had "insufficient resources" to
> do their job and that administrative tasks were "burdensome." GAO
> also found that one fifth of officers assigned overseas lacked the
> language skills to do their job.
>SOURCE: Australian Financial Review, September 5, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1062734400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062734400
>
>10. SCORE ONE FOR CONSPIRACY THEORISTS
>http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2003_08_31.html#001032
> "Gosh, I thought this was just some lunatic conspiracy theory,"
> comments Tom Tomorrow, the world's best cartoonist. (We're not just
> saying that because he drew the cover art for several of our
> books.) We thought it was a conspiracy theory too, but now the New
> York Times is reporting that "Top White House officials personally
> approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including
> relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the United States in the days
> after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when most flights were still
> grounded." The Snopes web site, which normally does a good job of
> debunking urban legends, should also have to eat some crow for the
> ferocity with which it ridiculed Michael Moore for talking about
> this back when everyone, us included, thought this was too
> outrageous to be true.
>SOURCE: This Modern World, September 4, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1062648003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062648003
>
>11. THE CHAIRMAN SPEAKS
>http://www.ojr.org/ojr/law/powell.php
> FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has spearheaded efforts to abolish
> limits on media concentration, recently spoke to Newt Gingrich's
> Progress and Freedom Foundation and shared his thoughts with the
> Online Journalism Review. Thanks to the Internet, he says, "the
> problem in society is not concentration and scarcity [of
> information media] but actually abundance, fragmentation and hyper
> competition. There's so much of it the audience is getting
> fragmented across so many different media that they're very hard to
> reach and hold onto. When I was a kid, there were three networks.
> and if you had me you could hold me a while. My kids swing that
> remote control like it's a pistol, and two seconds into a show, if
> they are not entertained, you're gone. ... If you're an advertiser
> chasing my son, you're trying to chase him around this whole
> electronic sphere. It's because there's so much, because it's so
> fragmented." (And that's a problem?)
>SOURCE: Online Journalism Review, September 4, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1062648002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062648002
>
>12. THE ROLLBACK MACHINE
>http://www.gristmagazine.com/muck/muck090403.asp
> "Democrats and moderate Republicans alike are accusing Bush of
> having the worst environmental record in history -- of
> surreptitiously tearing down the regulatory framework that yielded
> vast improvements in the nation's air and water quality and land
> conservation over the last 30 years," writes Amanda Griscom. In
> response to growing criticism of its environmental policies, the
> administration has "made every effort to finesse its
> public-relations strategy, but none whatsoever to change its
> approach to environmental policies themselves. ... The same
> high-level image-makers who had Bush somersaulting onto an aircraft
> carrier on its way home from the Persian Gulf have also been
> meticulously controlling the public image of Bush's environmental
> agenda."
>SOURCE: Grist, September 4, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062648001
>
>13. LOSING PROPOSITION
>http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/09/04/un/
> "Let me make sure I've got this right," says Gary Kamiya. "After
> being insulted, belittled and called irrelevant by the swaggering
> machos in the Bush administration, the United Nations is now
> supposed to step forward to supply cannon fodder for America's
> disastrous Iraq occupation - while the U.S. continues to run the
> show? In other words, the rest of the world is to send its troops
> to get killed so that a U.S. president it fears and despises can
> take the credit for an invasion it bitterly opposed."
>SOURCE: Salon.com, September 4, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062648000
>
>14. AL-JAZEERA'S HERE
>http://english.aljazeera.net
> The Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera has launched its
> English-language web site, five months after hackers brought down a
> temporary site at the height of the Iraq war.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1062604555
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062604555
>
>15. U.S. RUSHED POST-SADDAM PLANNING
>http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030903-120317-9393r.htm
> "A secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays the blame for
> setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process that
> 'limited the focus' for preparing for post-Saddam Hussein
> operations," the Washington Times' Rowan Scarborough reports. "The
> report, prepared last month, said the search for weapons of mass
> destruction was planned so late in the game that it was impossible
> for U.S. Central Command to carry out the mission effectively." The
> Times writes it obtained a copy of the "secret" report "Operation
> Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned." "The report also provides
> a classified timeline of events from September 11 leading to war.
> It says that on Aug. 29, 2002, Mr. Bush 'approves Iraq goals,
> objectives and strategy,'" Scarborough writes.
>SOURCE: Washington Times, September 3, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062561601
>
>16. EPA'S REVOLVING DOOR
>http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6684143.htm
> "Two top Environmental Protection Agency officials who were deeply
> involved in easing an air pollution rule for old power plants just
> took private-sector jobs with firms that benefit from the changes,"
> Knight Ridder's Seth Boronstein reports. "Days after the changes in
> the power-plant pollution rule were announced last week, John
> Pemberton, the chief of staff in the EPA's air and radiation
> office, told colleagues he would be joining Southern Co., an
> Atlanta-based utility that's the nation's No. 2 power-plant
> polluter and was a driving force in lobbying for the rule changes.
> Southern Co., which gave more than $3.4 million in political
> contributions over the past four years while it sought the changes,
> hired Pemberton as director of federal affairs." Also departing EPA
> is Ed Krenik, associate administrator for congressional affairs.
> Krenik joined Bracewell & Patterson, a top Houston-based law firm
> that coordinated lobbying for several utilities on easing the
> power-plant pollution rule and houses the Electric Reliability
> Coordinating Council, which advocated for rule changes the EPA just
> enacted. The revolving door goes both ways. Another EPA air and
> radiation administrator, Jeffrey Holmstead, previously worked as a
> lawyer and lobbyist for chemical companies and industry groups
> seeking looser pollution standards.
>SOURCE: Knight-Ridder, September 3, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1062561600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062561600
>
>17. BILL O'REILLY DECIDES, YOU SHUT UP
>http://slate.msn.com/id/2087706/
> "Fox News channel talk show host Bill O'Reilly says 'shut up' the
> way other people say 'um,'" observes Jack Shafer. "On his daily
> show, The O'Reilly Factor, he uses it as a place-holder for an idea
> still formulating in his brain. As a way to begin a sentence, end
> it, or punctuate it. ... He's even heaved this impolite language at
> entire nations, demanding they recuse themselves from the
> international conversation. In the half-decade his top-rated show
> has been on the air, he's called for the muzzling of practically
> everybody. At the rate O'Reilly is going, he'll be the only person
> allowed to speak in a couple of years."
>SOURCE: Slate, August 28, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1062043202
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
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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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