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[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, July 9, 2003
Wed Jul 09 06:53:20 GMT 2003
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, July 9, 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.
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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"
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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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