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[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Wed Jan 15 08:22:15 GMT 2003
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, January 15, 2003
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>sponsored by PR WATCH (www.prwatch.org)
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
>further information about current public relations campaigns.
>It is emailed free each Wednesday to subscribers.
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Supreme Court Takes Nike Case On Corporate PR
>2. Censorship Becomes Publicity for Emma Goldman Project
>3. Hill & Knowlton Works for Saudi Oil
>4. "Detroit Project" Won't Play in Detroit
>5. Program As Advertisement: Somebody Has to Pay for TV
>6. Learning from the PR Industry
>7. Bhopal Bloopers
>8. Will 'Dolphin-Safe' Tuna Really Mean 'Dolphin-Dead' ?
>9. Beware the Fat Man
>10. BAT Kills Millions, But in a Socially Responsible Manner
>11. Anti-Environmentalist Lomborg a 'Junk Scientist'
>12. Just Say No to S.U.V.s
>13. The Corporate World's Top 10 Bottom Feeders
>14. A Lesson in U.S. Propaganda
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. SUPREME COURT TAKES NIKE CASE ON CORPORATE PR
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/11/MN194481.DTL
> The US Supreme Court will rule in Nike vs. Kasky whether Nike's
> statements on the working conditions in its Asian factories are
> commercial speech and subject to truth-in-advertising laws. Nike
> appealed a May 2002 California Supreme Court decision that says
> when a corporation makes "factual representations about its own
> products or its own operations, it must speak truthfully." Nike
> says that the First Amendment protects its statements. Thirty-two
> media companies and organizations -- including the New York Times,
> the Washington Post, the Tribune Company, the Hearst Corporation,
> ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and the National Association of Broadcasters --
> have filed a brief on behalf of Nike. They argue that reporters
> would not be able to get company executives to talk freely about
> their industry because of a fear of lawsuits if a company is
> believed to be lying and that this would squelch free and open
> public debate. Activists at organizations like
> ReclaimingDemocracy.org, however, see this defense as a red
> herring. They characterize the case as a question of corporate
> personhood and argue that corporations do not have a Constitutional
> right to free speech.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042606959
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042606959
>
>2. CENSORSHIP BECOMES PUBLICITY FOR EMMA GOLDMAN PROJECT
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/education/14BERK.html?ex=1043553501&ei=1&en=9bd21bf195bd3b83
> Front page attention in the New York Times is priceless publicity.
> Heavy-handed censorship at UC Berkeley has backfired, landing a
> fundraising appeal by the school's Emma Goldman Papers Project on
> the Times front page. "Goldman died in 1940, more than two decades
> after being deported to Russia with other anarchists in the United
> States who opposed World War I. Now her words are the source of
> deep consternation once again, this time at the University of
> California, which has housed Goldman's papers for the past 23
> years. In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression,
> university officials have refused to allow a fund-raising appeal
> for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be mailed because it quoted
> Goldman on the subjects of suppression of free speech and her
> opposition to war. The university deemed the topics too political
> as the country prepares for possible military action against Iraq."
>SOURCE: New York Times, January 14, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042520400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042520400
>
>3. HILL & KNOWLTON WORKS FOR SAUDI OIL
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0113aramco.htm
> "Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, has turned to Hill
> and Knowlton to devise its communications strategy," reports
> O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "H&K's communications counsel comes as fear
> spreads of a big spike in energy prices triggered by the U.S.
> invasion of Iraq." Hill & Knowlton is the PR firm notorious for its
> deceptive PR campaign in 1990 to promote the first U.S. war in the
> Persian Gulf.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, January 13, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042434000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042434000
>
>4. "DETROIT PROJECT" WON'T PLAY IN DETROIT
>http://www.freep.com/news/metro/dicker10_20030110.htm
> Detroit TV stations are refusing to broadcast the Detroit Project's
> TV ads linking terrorism to gas-guzzing SUVs, and industry-funded
> think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute have jumped
> in to attack the ads. Actually, the marketing link between SUVs and
> violence may run deeper than the Detroit Project realizes. The SUV
> craze got its start thanks to the first war in the Persian Gulf,
> which inspired automakers to adapt military vehicles for the
> consumer market. As even Fortune magazine admits, the auto industry
> has been deliberately marketing rollover-prone gaz-guzzlers as
> vehicles of aggression that appeal to consumers' "reptilian"
> instincts. Small wonder that, according to the industry's own
> market research, "the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's
> most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a
> jerk its driver is likely to be."
>SOURCE: Detroit Free Press, January 10, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042174801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042174801
>
>5. PROGRAM AS ADVERTISEMENT: SOMEBODY HAS TO PAY FOR TV
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/business/media/10TUBE.html?ex=1043207478&ei=1&en=27c46b55255b92da
> "A leading television producer and two major advertisers have
> joined forces to present a live variety show with no commercial
> interruptions. Instead, the advertising messages will be
> incorporated into the show. The advertisers, which so far include
> Pepsi and Nokia phones, are buying six hours of air time to create
> what the program's producer, Michael Davies, called 'a
> contemporary, hip Ed Sullivan show' for the youth-oriented WB
> Network, part of AOL Time Warner. ... Although the network
> commercial is far from extinct - advertising spending increased for
> television in the last year - many executives are concerned that a
> decline in the effectiveness of the 30-second commercial could rock
> the economic foundation of broadcast television, which depends on
> advertising as its main source of revenue. ... Donny Deutsch, the
> chairman of Deutsch Advertising, said: 'The 30-second commercial is
> not doomed, certainly not in our lifetimes. Somebody is going to
> pay for TV. But advertisers have to be more and more creative,
> whether with product placement or something like they're doing with
> this show.' "
>SOURCE: New York Times, January 10, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042174800
>
>6. LEARNING FROM THE PR INDUSTRY
>http://world-information.org/wio/readme/992003309/1040225515/print
> PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton participated in December in the
> World Information Conference in Amsterdam, which explored both
> positive and negative aspects of new information technologies. An
> interviewer captured his thoughts on some things that grassroots
> movements can learn from the PR industry: "There is an interesting
> seepage that's always going on as they try to control the thinking
> of others but they are forced to adopt a lot of the language and
> the symbolism of the people they are opposing. That has always been
> a very interesting aspect of PR. In a real way, at the very moment
> that they are trying to control others they themselves are losing
> control."
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042145423
>
>7. BHOPAL BLOOPERS
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2003/01/09/bhopl.DTL&type=printable
> "Dow Chemical and Dow's PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, tried to shut
> down some parody sites and ended up bringing themselves a heap of
> negative publicity," writes Joyce Slaton. It all began when the Yes
> Men, impersonating Dow, created a site detailing Dow's
> responsibility in the Bhopal disaster. When Dow and B-M responded
> with legal threats, the story "was covered by tickled journalists
> from the London Times, The New York Times and many other sources
> and organizations, including Greenpeace. ... The upshot is that
> thousands upon thousands more people heard about Bhopal and the
> shameful conduct of both Dow and Burson-Marsteller than would have
> had the stung corporations not chosen to respond with threats."
>SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, January 9, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042088401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042088401
>
>8. WILL 'DOLPHIN-SAFE' TUNA REALLY MEAN 'DOLPHIN-DEAD' ?
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/politics/09TUNA.html?ex=1043138968&ei=1&en=2bfe5402143c7282
> "Two former government scientists who spent years investigating
> stress in dolphin populations charged this week that superiors at
> their federally financed laboratory shut down their research
> because it clashed with policy goals of the Clinton and Bush
> administrations. The scientists ... said their research indicated
> that the practice of chasing and encircling dolphins to catch tuna
> exposed the dolphins to dangerous amounts of stress. The
> accusations, by Dr. Albert Myrick, a wildlife biologist, and Dr.
> Sarka Southern, a research associate, came days after the Bush
> administration relaxed the criteria for declaring tuna netted by
> Mexican and other foreign fishing boats to be 'dolphin safe.' In
> making that declaration last week, Commerce Secretary Donald L.
> Evans said that chasing and corralling dolphins and the tuna that
> often accompany them into purse nets had 'no significant adverse
> impact' on the dolphins. The ruling cleared the way for Mexican and
> other Latin American tuna producers to place a dolphin-safe label
> on cans for American shelves."
>SOURCE: New York Times, January 9, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042088400
>
>9. BEWARE THE FAT MAN
>http://www.maisonneuve.org/print_article.php?article_id=5
> Theater student Natalie Alvarez takes a close look at Jonathan
> Ressler's "guerrilla advertising" company, Big Fat, Inc. In order
> to bypass consumer skepticism about advertising, Ressler hires
> "real people" to talk up his clients' products in bars, parks and
> other public places. "We plant a group of people in a bar or other
> public setting and instruct them to use a brand, perform a ritual,
> repeat a sound bite, and involve others in the activity," Ressler
> explains. As these "secret agents of capitalism" invade our daily
> routines, Alvarez ponders the blurred boundaries between illusion
> and reality, theater and life. "It's The Truman Show," says an
> advertising executive. "Did your wife marry you because she loves
> you, or because she wants you to buy a certain brand of soap?"
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042054340
>
>10. BAT KILLS MILLIONS, BUT IN A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE MANNER
>http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2002Q4/bat.html
> Bob Burton and Andy Rowell deconstruct the "social responsibility
> report" of British American Tobacco, the world's second largest
> tobacco company, in the latest PR Watch. Among their findings,
> "BAT's social report disclosed that three of its employees had been
> killed and 37 involved in serious accidents during 2001, but
> omitted any estimate of the number of people who had been killed or
> seriously affected by consuming its products. ... If BAT had
> complied with this component of the GRI guidelines, its social
> responsibility report would have included the approximate one
> million people expected to die prematurely each year for the next
> three decades from using its products--a figure that Action on
> Smoking and Health derives from World Health Organization
> estimates." (Our subscribing members received this issue already
> last month. Please consider becoming a subscriber. Donations from
> people like you are what make our work possible.)
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042046387
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042046387
>
>11. ANTI-ENVIRONMENTALIST LOMBORG A 'JUNK SCIENTIST'
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/europe/08SKEP.html?ei=1&en=3c8bb853f84a9fa2&ex=1043041728&pagewanted=print&position=bottom
> As we detail in our book Trust Us, We're Experts , 'junk science'
> is a PR pejorative used by corporations to smear environmentalists
> and public interest scientists. Danish professor and author Bjorn
> Lomborg has been a darling of corporate lobbyists and front groups,
> as PR Watch has reported most recently in our article on a 2002
> meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce. Yesterday the
> Washington Post reported that Lomborg and his book 'The Skeptical
> Environmentalist' have been "denounced by a panel of his country's
> top scientists for engaging in 'scientific dishonesty.' " The Post
> also noted that " The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the
> Economist and other publications praised the Danish professor, who
> dismissed many environmental concerns as 'phantom problems created
> and perpetuated by a self-serving environmental movement.' A
> Washington Post book reviewer concluded that the book was 'a
> magnificent achievement.' "
>SOURCE: Washington Post, New York Times
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2003.html#1042045013
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042045013
>
>12. JUST SAY NO TO S.U.V.S
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/business/media/08SUVS.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
> "This is George," a girl's voice says. "This is the gas that George
> bought for his S.U.V." The screen then shows a map of the Middle
> East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil
> that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The picture
> switches to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are
> the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George
> fills up his S.U.V." The ads, modeled after the Drug Council's TV
> commercials alleging that drug users support terrorism, are the
> brainchild of author and columnist Arianna Huffington. But some TV
> stations are refusing to run them.
>SOURCE: New York Times, January 8, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1042002001
>
>13. THE CORPORATE WORLD'S TOP 10 BOTTOM FEEDERS
>http://www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=2960&typeid=2
> PR industry analyst Paul Holmes notes that the corporate scandals
> of last year created a "chronic crisis, as constituents -
> shareholders, employees, regulators, the public at large - began to
> question whether the entire American corporate system was
> hopelessly corrupt." (As an indicator of how bad things got, Holmes
> was forced to combine Enron, Worldcom and Tyco into a single item
> in his "top 10" list of the year's worst PR disasters.)
> "Ordinarily," Holmes writes, "such an epidemic of ill-considered
> corporate behavior would have elevated the role of the senior
> corporate communications executive to a permanent place in the
> CEO's inner circle, and provided a bonanza of new business for
> public relations firms. But in 2002, those gains conspicuously
> failed to materialize." Maybe that's because the scandals run so
> deep that PR can't fix them. "There was no way to spin the kind of
> outrageous personal and institutional behavior that gave rise to
> these crises," Holmes writes.
>SOURCE: Holmes Report, January 6, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1041829204
>
>14. A LESSON IN U.S. PROPAGANDA
>http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=14877
> Last week U.N. weapons inspectors swooped in to inspect the Iraqi
> manufacturing plant that U.S. planes bombed in 1991. Iraq said the
> plant made infant milk formula; the U.S. said it made biological
> weapons. Mark Crispin Miller examines the evidence and concludes
> that Iraq's version was correct. Nevertheless, "Iraq, in trying to
> publicize the targeting of its civilian infrastructure, had engaged
> in clumsy propaganda (which backfired in the West), while the US
> counter-propaganda was apparently disinformation (which succeeded).
> As we sit and wait for another war against Iraq, we should remember
> this triumphant bit of spin - and all the other winning lies of
> Operation Desert Storm."
>SOURCE: Alternet, January 3, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1041570001
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University Brussels
Studies on Media, Information & Telecommunication (SMIT)
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
Office: C0.04
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
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