[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, September 24, 2003

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, September 24, 2003
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Key Phrase Dropped From Dodgy Dossier
>2. Pesticide & Lawn-Care Groups Plan National Campaign
>3. Drug Company Vies For Media Spotlight
>4. Bush Covers Up Climate Research
>5. Listening To The Wrong Iraqi
>6. Bush's 9/11 Admission Gets Little Play
>7. Cheney's Conflict With The Truth
>8. Big Lie On Iraq Comes Full Circle
>9. Qorvis Covers For Kingdom
>10. No Proof Connects Iraq to 9/11, Bush Says (Finally)
>11. Who Owns the Airwaves?
>12. Republicans Highlight 'Progress' In Iraq
>13. The Incredible Shrinking Big Impact
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. KEY PHRASE DROPPED FROM DODGY DOSSIER
>http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3493982
>   "The British intelligence chief responsible for a pre-war dossier
>   on Iraq's weapons dropped a key sentence from it days before
>   publication after prompting from Downing Street," Reuters reports.
>   "The offending sentence stated that former Iraqi President Saddam
>   Hussein was prepared to use chemical and biological weapons 'if he
>   believes his regime is under threat.'" John Scarlett, chairman of
>   the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee, told the inquiry into the
>   suicide of Iraq weapons expert David Kelly that the phrase was
>   dropped from the September 2002 dossier on Iraq at the suggestion
>   of Jonathan Powell, chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
>   "The revelation that Powell ordered the sentence to be omitted
>   raises fresh doubts over the intervention of Blair's office in the
>   compilation of the September dossier," Reuters reports.
>SOURCE: Reuters, September 23, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1064289600
>
>2. PESTICIDE & LAWN-CARE GROUPS PLAN NATIONAL CAMPAIGN
>http://www.lawnandlandscape.com/news/news.asp?ID=1740
>   An alliance of pesticide and lawn-care industry associations and
>   companies, calling itself the Evergreen Foundation (EF), has raised
>   over $200,000 in seed money for a "national marketing campaign to
>   consumers throughout the United States to promote the economic,
>   environmental and lifestyle benefits of healthy landscapes and
>   green spaces at home, work and play," Lawn & Landscape magazine
>   reports. "Careful use of pesticides and fertilizers, prudent use of
>   water, managing noise and air pollution are among the issues the EF
>   plans to tackle in its campaign. There are coordinated activist
>   efforts in such areas as Canada to New York state, Minnesota and
>   western states to curtail or even eliminate pesticides and
>   fertilizers, severely restrict the use of water and lawns and other
>   efforts detrimental to the green industry and consumers, the
>   foundation believes," L&L writes. Financial contributors to the
>   campaign include Associated Landscape Contractors of America, Bayer
>   Environmental Science, John Deere, Dow AgroSciences, Lawn Doctor,
>   Syngenta, The Toro Co., Turfgrass Producers International, and Weed
>   Man USA among others.
>SOURCE: Lawn & Landscape, September 22, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1064203201
>
>3. DRUG COMPANY VIES FOR MEDIA SPOTLIGHT
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=190459&site=3
>   While the Food and Drug Administration is hearing testimonies on
>   direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs, one
>   pharmaceutical giant is hoping to gets its spin on drug market in
>   the news. The FDA is reviewing DTC guidelines that cover the $2.7
>   billion that the pharmaceutical industry now spends annually on
>   television, radio and print advertising. Since 1997, drug companies
>   have been able to pitch their products directly to the public,
>   raising concerns about patients demanding drugs they don't need or
>   that are inappropriate. Taking advantages of the news hook, "Pfizer
>   has quietly launched a proactive media-relations initiative to
>   highlight what the company feels are the positive aspects of DTC,"
>   PR Week reports. Pfizer has sent out approximately 75 binders
>   containing studies and "surveys from Harvard and MIT, the FDA, and
>   the National Medical Association, as well as some 'myth versus fact
>   sheets'" to media outlets. "It's your classic PR tactic," said
>   Michal Fishman, director of US pharmaceuticals PR for Pfizer. "This
>   is us saying, 'Hi, we're out here. Use us to get the whole story.'"
>SOURCE: PR Week, September 22, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1064203200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1064203200
>
>4. BUSH COVERS UP CLIMATE RESEARCH
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1046363,00.html
>   "White House officials have undermined their own government
>   scientists' research into climate change to play down the impact of
>   global warming," Paul Harris reports in the Observer. "Emails and
>   internal government documents obtained by The Observer show that
>   officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the
>   problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative
>   lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government
>   scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that
>   pollution is an issue." Evidence includes an email from the
>   Competitive Enterprise Institute to the White House Council on
>   Environmental Quality that "reveals how White House officials
>   wanted the CEI's help to play down the impact of a report last
>   summer by the government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
>   in which the US admitted for the first time that humans are
>   contributing to global warming. ... The email discusses possible
>   tactics for playing down the report and getting rid of EPA
>   officials, including its then head, Christine Whitman. ... The CEI
>   is suing another government climate research body that produced
>   evidence for global warming. The revelation of the email's contents
>   has prompted demands for an investigation to see if the White House
>   and CEI are co-ordinating the legal attack."
>SOURCE: London Observer, September 21, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1064116800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1064116800
>
>5. LISTENING TO THE WRONG IRAQI
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/20/opinion/20PHIL.html
>   "Critics say the Bush administration had no plan for postwar Iraq.
>   In fact, before the war, hundreds of Iraqis were involved in
>   discussions with Washington about securing and stabilizing their
>   country after military action," David Phillips writes in the New
>   York Times. Phillips, deputy director of the Center for Preventive
>   Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, continues, "Today's
>   difficulties are not the result of a lack of foresight, but rather
>   of poor judgment by civilians at the Pentagon who counted too much
>   on the advice of one exile -- Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National
>   Congress -- and ignored the views of other, more reliable Iraqi
>   leaders."
>SOURCE: New York Times, September 20, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1064030400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1064030400
>
>6. BUSH'S 9/11 ADMISSION GETS LITTLE PLAY
>http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1982860
>   When Bush at long last went on record saying there was "no evidence
>   that [Saddam] Hussein was involved with the September 11th"
>   attacks, it seemed like a big story. Of the top US newspapers,
>   however, only the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times put the
>   story on the front page, Editor & Publisher reports. After
>   declaring last week that "the media had failed in its duty to
>   correct the public misperception," E&P reports, "an analysis of
>   most major American newspapers found the story either buried deep
>   within the paper -- or completely absent." For example, USA Today
>   put the story on page 16; the New York Times, page 22; and the
>   Washington Post, page 18. The Wall Street Journal and the New York
>   Post ran no story on Bush's statement. "The story was even more
>   dramatic because Bush's remarks came on the heels of an assertion
>   to the contrary made by Vice President Dick Cheney Sunday on NBC's
>   'Meet the Press,'" E&P writes.
>SOURCE: Editor & Publisher, September 19, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063944003
>
>7. CHENEY'S CONFLICT WITH THE TRUTH
>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/19/cheneys_conflict_with_the_truth/
>   "In 'Meet the Press' last Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney said,
>   'Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president,
>   I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my
>   financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of
>   any kind and haven't had now, for over three years.' That is the
>   latest White House lie,'" the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson
>   writes. On Tuesday, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) drew attention
>   to Cheney's US Office of Government Ethics public financial
>   disclosure sheets. According to the filings, Cheney received
>   $162,392 in deferred salary in 2002 from Halliburton, the oil and
>   military contracting company he ran before running for vice
>   president. In 2001, Cheney received $205,298. He also is still
>   holding 433,333 stock options. "Five years ago, America was in a
>   tizzy over President Clinton's 'That depends on what the meaning of
>   is, is.' That was over lying about sex. For that, Clinton was
>   impeached. Now, we have a vice president who tells America he has
>   severed his ties even as his umbilical cord doubles his salary. To
>   him, it depends what the meaning of i$, i$," Jackson writes.
>   Halliburton has already amassed $2 billion in no-bid, no-ceiling
>   contracts in Iraq.
>SOURCE: Boston Globe, September 19, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063944002
>
>8. BIG LIE ON IRAQ COMES FULL CIRCLE
>http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel19.html
>   "Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief (director of
>   communications, in the current parlance), once said that if you are
>   going to lie, you should tell a big lie," Chicago Sun-Times' Andrew
>   Greeley writes. "That may be good advice, but the question remains:
>   What happens when people begin to doubt the big lie? Herr Goebbels
>   never lived to find out. Some members of the Bush administration
>   may be in the process of discovering that, given time, the big lie
>   turns on itself. ... 'War on terror' is a metaphor. It is not an
>   actual war, like the World War or the Vietnamese or Korean wars. It
>   is rather a struggle against fanatical Islamic terrorists,
>   exacerbated if not caused by the conflict in Palestine. When one
>   turns a metaphor into a national policy, one not only
>   misunderstands what is going on, one begins to slide toward the big
>   lie. One invades Iraq because one needed a war."
>SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times, September 19, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063944001
>
>9. QORVIS COVERS FOR KINGDOM
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0919saudis_bomb.htm
>   "Saudi Arabia is denying a published report that it is interested
>   in developing a nuclear weapon, according to a statement released
>   by its PR firm, Qorvis Communications," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports.
>   The UK's Guardian, citing unidentified sources, reported that top
>   officials in Riyadh are considering acquiring nuclear capabilities
>   as a defensive strategic option for the kingdom. "Until now, the
>   assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to
>   remain under the US nuclear umbrella. But the relationship between
>   Saudi Arabia and the US has steadily worsened since the September
>   11 attacks," the Guardian writes. According to O'Dwyer's, the
>   Qorvis-distributed statement said reports "that the Kingdom is
>   seeking nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are motivated by
>   malice and have no grounding in the truth."
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, September 19, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1063944000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063944000
>
>10. NO PROOF CONNECTS IRAQ TO 9/11, BUSH SAYS (FINALLY)
>http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-2connectsep18,1,6724214,print.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
>   "President Bush said Wednesday that there was no proof tying Saddam
>   Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, amid mounting criticism that
>   senior administration officials have helped lead Americans to
>   believe that Iraq was behind the plot," the Los Angeles Times' Greg
>   Miller writes. "Bush's statement was the latest in a flurry of
>   remarks this week by top administration officials after Vice
>   President Dick Cheney resurrected a number of contentious
>   allegations about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda in an appearance on NBC's
>   'Meet the Press' on Sunday. ... Bush's comments were his most
>   direct on the issue to date. He drew a clear distinction between
>   alleged Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and the lack of evidence of Iraqi
>   involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. That is a distinction
>   administration officials did not emphasize in the months before the
>   war. ... A reading of the record shows that while senior
>   administration officials stopped short of accusing Hussein of
>   complicity in the attacks, they frequently alluded to the
>   possibility of such a connection, and consistently cast the
>   relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda in stronger terms than many
>   in the intelligence community seemed to endorse."
>SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063857600
>
>11. WHO OWNS THE AIRWAVES?
>http://www.openairwaves.org/telecom/analysis/default.aspx
>   Curious about who owns your local media, telephone and cable
>   company? The Center for Public Integrity has created a searchable
>   database that contains basic information on every radio and
>   television station in America as well as every cable television
>   system and telephone company. You can search by company, by call
>   sign or by area. Searchers will find basic information on some of
>   the most important telecommunication companies, including a brief
>   corporate profile and basic financial information. This dataset
>   also includes all industry sponsored trips by FCC officials between
>   May 1995 and March 2003 (including $84,921 in trips by FCC Chairman
>   Michael Powell to places such as Las Vegas, New Orleans, Honolulu
>   and London).
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063802212
>
>12. REPUBLICANS HIGHLIGHT 'PROGRESS' IN IRAQ
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=189895&site=3
>   "Determined to change the tone of the national debate over Iraq,
>   the White House and Republicans in Congress launched a tightly
>   coordinated effort last week to begin providing the media with
>   stories of American progress in the still-turbulent country," PR
>   Week's Douglas Quenqua reports. "Members of Congress came back
>   [from the August recess] with this sense of frustration that the
>   positive stories weren't being told, or at least weren't being
>   heard," said Roy Blunt, communications director to House majority
>   leader Tom Delay (R-TX). "On the House side, you have 229
>   Republican members who can be a very powerful megaphone that hasn't
>   been utilized." The effort is aimed to help get passed Bush's
>   request for $87 billion for Iraq and to counter flagging public
>   opinion concerning the US occupation. White House communications
>   director Dan Bartlett is working with GOP "message leaders" to
>   develop new tactics. "National security advisor Condoleezza Rice
>   was dispatched to the Foreign Press Center on Wednesday to
>   highlight accomplishments in Iraq, including the number of Iraqis
>   now participating in the patrolling of their own country," Quenqua
>   writes.
>SOURCE: PR Week, September 15, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063598401
>
>13. THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BIG IMPACT
>http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20030915_579.html
>   In August, the White House announced what it called a "big impact"
>   plan to overwhelm and silence critics of its failure to find Iraqi
>   weapons of mass destruction, with former UNSCOM inspector David Kay
>   assigned to compile a big, impactful report that would answer
>   questions once and for all. According to a Monday report on ABC
>   News, however, a draft version of Kay's report provides no solid
>   evidence that Iraq had such arms when the United States invaded.
>   Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix now believes Iraq
>   destroyed all its weapons 10 years ago. That hasn't stopped
>   administration officials like Dick Cheney from continuing efforts
>   at spin control. FAIR/Extra! has compiled some examples of the role
>   that journalists themselves played in hyping the WMD story.
>SOURCE: ABC News, September 15, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/September_2003.html#1063598400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1063598400
>
>
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