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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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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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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)
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