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[eccr] Re: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Wed Jul 30 09:08:18 GMT 2003
At 05:00 30/07/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, July 30, 2003
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>It is emailed free each Wednesday to subscribers.
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Citizens Boycott Sludge Conference
>2. Pentagon Says ' Get Rich Betting On Terror! '
>3. Department of Justice Plugs USA Patriot Act
>4. Weapons of Mass Deception Reviewed
>5. Qorvis Communication Quacks For Kingdom
>6. Edelman Drops British American Tobacco Account
>7. White House Fumbles On 16-Word Crisis
>8. Moran's War
>9. Miller's 2nd Draft of History
>10. Mega PR Firm Plays Role In School Reform
>11. Dissent in Stars and Stripes
>12. PR Firm Advises MIT Research Center On Privacy Issue
>13. The War of Spin
>14. Drug Industry Front Scares Seniors With Radio Ads
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. CITIZENS BOYCOTT SLUDGE CONFERENCE
>http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0728-05.htm
> Sludge researchers, activists, and rural residents exposed to land
> applied sewage sludges across the nation are boycotting today's
> summit at the Hilton Alexandria Old Town, in Alexandria, Va.,
> organized by the EPA, the Water Environment Research Foundation
> (WERF) and the New England Biosolids and Residuals Association
> (NEBRA). "We are boycotting this conference because its real
> purpose is to create an illusion that EPA and the sludge industry
> are concerned about people getting sick from sludge spreading.
> Organizers have arranged this conference while continuing to malign
> and intimidate scientists and citizens who raise concerns about
> land application," said Barbara Rubin of Neighbors Against Toxic
> Sludge. PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber exposed
> the sludge same in our 1995 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1059511606
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059511606
>
>2. PENTAGON SAYS ' GET RICH BETTING ON TERROR! '
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/28/national1653EDT0669.DTL
> "The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which
> investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other
> events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain
> intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed
> right would win profits. ... The Pentagon office overseeing the
> program, called the Policy Analysis Market, said it was part of a
> research effort 'to investigate the broadest possible set of new
> ways to prevent terrorist attacks.' ... Investors would buy and
> sell futures contracts -- essentially a series of predictions about
> what they believe might happen in the Mideast. ... [T]he Policy
> Analysis Market would be a joint program of the Pentagon's Defense
> Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, and two private
> companies: Net Exchange [and ] ... The Economist magazine. DARPA
> has received strong criticism from Congress for its Terrorism
> Information Awareness program, a computerized surveillance program
> that has raised privacy concerns. [U.S. Senator Ron] Wyden said the
> Policy Analysis Market is under retired Adm. John Poindexter, the
> head of the Terrorism Information Awareness program and, in the
> 1980s, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal."
>SOURCE: Associated Press, July 28, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1059364801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059364801
>
>3. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PLUGS USA PATRIOT ACT
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=186335&site=3
> "The Department of Justice is going on the offensive against
> critics of the USA Patriot Act," PR Week reports. Civil liberties
> advocates criticize the legislation for removing checks on law
> enforcement and undermining Constitutional rights, prompting some
> state and local governments to pass resolutions condemning the act.
> "Attorney General John Ashcroft and department spokespeople are now
> aggressively speaking out to the public and the press with an eye
> toward setting the record straight," PR Week writes. "Ashcroft used
> a trip last week to Alaska, one of the states to pass a resolution
> against the act, as an opportunity to speak out on the issue. He
> said it was understandable that the public would be concerned about
> invasions of privacy, but countered, 'We use these tools to secure
> the liberties of our citizens. We use these tools to save innocent
> lives.'" The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, says
> that insufficient surveillance powers were not the reason
> government failed to detect terrorist activities that led to the
> 9/11 attacks. "The [Congressional report on 9/11] shows that these
> new powers were not needed and that instead the government must
> effectively use those already at its disposal," said Laura W.
> Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office.
>SOURCE: PR Week, July 28, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1059364800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059364800
>
>4. WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION REVIEWED
>http://www.prwatch.org/books/wmd_reviews.html
> Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on
> Iraq, the new book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, arrives in
> bookstores on Monday, and early book reviews have already begun
> appearing. We have compiled a list of book reviews and will be
> updating it periodically.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1059198722
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059198722
>
>5. QORVIS COMMUNICATION QUACKS FOR KINGDOM
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0725saudis.htm
> "Qorvis Communication is helping Saudi Arabia lash out at critics
> who believe the 'blanked-out' section of the Congressional 9/11
> report exposes the Kingdom's involvement in the terror attacks,"
> O'Dwyer's PR reports. "The Bush Administration demanded that the
> 28-page section dealing with the role played by Saudi Arabia and
> other governments in 9/11 be omitted from the 900-page report."
> Qorvis has a $200,000 a month contract with the Kingdom for PR
> work. Saudi Arabia spent $288,000 at Patton Boggs -- a well
> connected D.C. lobbying firm and a Qorvis affiliate -- for
> scheduling and accompanying Embassy officials to meetings with
> Members of Congress and their staffers, according to a February
> 2003 O'Dwyer's story.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, July 25, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059105601
>
>6. EDELMAN DROPS BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO ACCOUNT
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0725edelman_drops_bat.htm
> "Edelman PR Worldwide, which represents the National Dialogue on
> Cancer, has dropped British American Tobacco as a client in
> Malaysia, according to The Cancer Letter of July 25," O'Dwyer's PR
> reports. "Richard and Daniel Edelman had signed a pledge that the
> firm would not work for tobacco companies when it won the
> non-profit group's account last October. Edelman's Kuala Lumpur
> office, however, helped BAT promote 'social reporting,' issuing
> press releases about scholarships for children of tobacco farmers.
> Leslie Dach, Edelman's vice chairman, terminated that project when
> contacted by a reporter from TCL. 'Our policy is that we don't do
> work for tobacco companies through our companies anywhere in the
> world,' he told the publication. Dach said the Malaysian BAT work
> slipped through the cracks," O'Dwyer's writes.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR, July 25, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059105600
>
>7. WHITE HOUSE FUMBLES ON 16-WORD CRISIS
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37481-2003Jul23.html?nav=hptop_ts
> "If President Bush's White House is known for anything, it is
> competence at delivering a disciplined message and deftness in
> dealing with bad news," Washington Post's Dan Balz and Walter
> Pincus write. "That reputation has been badly damaged by the
> administration's clumsy efforts to explain how a statement based on
> disputed intelligence ended up in the president's State of the
> Union address." The shifting White House story about it's
> references to Iraq, Niger and uranium continues to draw attention
> to the Bush administration deception. "White House allies outside
> the government have expressed surprise at the administration's
> repeated missteps over the past two weeks.... Said one senior
> administration official, 'These stories get legs when they're
> mishandled and this story has been badly mishandled.' Joe Lockhart,
> who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said he has been
> equally surprised by the way this White House has dealt with the
> controversy. 'Their every move has resulted in people being more
> interested in the story rather than less interested,' he said," the
> Post reports.
>SOURCE: Washington Post, July 24, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1059019200
>
>8. MORAN'S WAR
>http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/trans.php3?dte=2003-07-23&title=Paul+Moran+Story
> During the war in Iraq, Paul Moran, a TV cameraman for the
> Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), was killed by a suicide
> bomber. After his death, his hometown newspaper discovered that
> Moran also worked for the Rendon Group, a secretive public
> relations firm that works with the Pentagon. Now additional
> information has come to light showing that Moran played an
> important role with the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a PR front
> created by Rendon, in feeding stories to the press about Iraq's
> alleged weapons programs from Iraqi defector Adnan Ihsan Saeed al
> Haideri. "The man who helped orchestrate publicity for al-Haideri
> was Zaab Sethna, media spokesman for the INC," reports John
> Hosking. "Sethna spent more than a decade working in and around
> Iraq. Much of it with his Australian mate Paul Moran. After the INC
> helped al Haideri escape from Iraq, it was Paul Moran who was
> called in to do the one television interview that would go around
> the world."
>SOURCE: Special Broadcasting Service (Australia), July 23, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1058932801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058932801
>
>9. MILLER'S 2ND DRAFT OF HISTORY
>http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1938827
> New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun revising her first
> draft of history, some two months after her widely criticized
> stories made the case that evidence of Saddam's unconventional
> weapons was being found. In a hindsight account written July 20,
> Miller belatedly concluded that the postwar search for evidence was
> plagued by "chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes
> within and among military units, and shortages of everything. ...
> To this day, whether Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons when the
> war began remains unknown." But as William E. Jackson Jr. notes, it
> was Miller's own stories in April and May that "made it appear a
> great deal was being discovered that served to demonstrate the
> validity of the administration's major reasons for a pre-emptive
> attack. ... Only after Miller's reporting came under fire from
> reporters within the Times and in the pages of the Post -- among
> other newspapers and journals -- did the editors couple her with
> William Broad to write more skeptically about the alleged successes
> of the WMD search. ... It is puzzling that a star reporter caught
> in highly misleading reporting on WMDs would be so protected from
> the consequences of her actions. Disturbing questions are raised
> when the Times publishes big stories that travel the same winding
> road as the Bush administration on the very grave matter of why
> American soldiers were sent off to war."
>SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, July 23, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1058932800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058932800
>
>10. MEGA PR FIRM PLAYS ROLE IN SCHOOL REFORM
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0722fitz.htm
> "Civic Progress, a St. Louis-based group made up of the heads of
> the region's largest corporations, is paying Jay Lawrence, who is
> co-chairman of Fleishman-Hillard's corporate reputation management
> unit, to play a behind-the-scenes role in the city school reform
> effort," O'Dwyer's PR reports. "The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said
> the 54-year-old Lawrence, who is a senior VP at F-H, was paid
> $80,000 for his services to the school board. The paper said
> Lawrence, who has been at the school board's side at every public
> appearance since the end of June, has been coaching board members
> through an almost daily barrage of criticism, setting up media
> interviews and offering tours of the district's antiquated and
> much-maligned warehouse. F-H is also donating the equivalent of two
> full-time PR staffers to the board for the next several weeks. The
> paper said the St. Louis Public Schools already spends $314,000
> annually for PR. That includes the salary of a director, a
> coordinator, a secretary and a student intern, plus printing and
> other costs."
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, July 22, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1058846403
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058846403
>
>11. DISSENT IN STARS AND STRIPES
>http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=15991&archive=true
> "As frustration over their lengthening deployment grows among
> troops in Iraq, soldiers are smacking head-on into limits on their
> public speech," writes Steve Liewer, a correspondent for the
> European version of Stars and Stripes magazine. Troops interviewed
> in Germany and Iraq say they have been briefed to refer questions
> to a public affairs specialist and that soldiers have been getting
> in trouble for speaking out. "I'm not comfortable telling you what
> I really think, and I'm not going to lie to you, so it's better if
> I just don't say anything," said one soldier. Another commented, "I
> find it absurd that these same people we put our lives on the line
> for can punish us for having our own opinions."
>SOURCE: Stars and Stripes, July 22, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058846402
>
>12. PR FIRM ADVISES MIT RESEARCH CENTER ON PRIVACY ISSUE
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=185747&site=3
> "A privacy group is blasting a unit of the Massachusetts Institute
> of Technology for its PR plans for a controversial product-ID
> technology and other internal documents labeled confidential that
> were posted on its public website," PR Week's John Frank writes.
> Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering
> (CASPIAN) has been raising the red flag over privacy concerns
> associated with the use of tiny radio-frequency transmitting ID
> tags in consumer products. MIT's Auto-ID Center is developing the
> devise, know as an RFID tag, which is said will be used to tell
> retailers where products are. CASPIAN uncovered documents on the
> Auto-ID Center's website prepared by PR firm Fleishman-Hillard
> giving advise on how the center should handle privacy concerns and
> win public acceptance for the tags. According to PR Week, the PR
> plan recommends that external communications "convey inevitability
> of technology" and that the center develop a plan that "neutralizes
> opposition."
>SOURCE: PR Week, July 21, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1058760002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058760002
>
>13. THE WAR OF SPIN
>http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/story.asp?id=EE414626-062D-4E0B-82D7-1DE6EEBDE060
> David Kelly, the scientist whose suicide marked a tragic twist in
> the unfolding controversy over British intelligence dossiers that
> supported the war in Iraq, was "ripped apart in the middle" of a
> "war of spin," said an editor at the British Broadcasting
> Corporation. The BBC has come under intense criticism for its
> reports alleging that top British officials "sexed up" the
> dossiers, and now it is being criticized on grounds that its
> reports may have contributed to Kelly's suicide. "Yes, we had a
> role in it," the editor said. "But the BBC has looked at the way it
> has handled this entire affair and at this stage we do not believe
> we could have handled things differently." The BBC stands by its
> reporting and says it has a tape-recorded interview with Kelly, as
> well as other evidence showing that it accurately represented
> Kelly's views. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has bitterly
> criticized the BBC's reporting, is also coming under intense
> criticism as government officials fight to evade responsibility for
> outing Kelly publicly as the BBC's whistleblower. ""Some people
> can't stop spinning - even now," commented a former Labour
> minister.
>SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, July 20, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/July_2003.html#1058673600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058673600
>
>14. DRUG INDUSTRY FRONT SCARES SENIORS WITH RADIO ADS
>http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1058307010292&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154
> A bipartisan group of lawmakers has condemned a radio scare
> campaign sponsored by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. "In a bid
> to defeat legislation that would allow the 'reimportation' of
> American-made drugs from Canada and Europe, a lobby group calling
> itself the Seniors Coalition is questioning the safety of Canadian
> and European prescription drugs," the Toronto Star reports.
> Reimported drugs are cheaper for seniors to buy. The legislation is
> part of the $400 billion, 10-year overhaul of the Medicare. "A
> spokesperson for the Seniors Coalition, Christopher Butler, denied
> his group is a 'front' for the pharmaceutical industry, but he
> acknowledged receiving funding from big drug makers. He would not
> say what proportion of its budget came from the industry," the Star
> writes.
>SOURCE: Toronto Star, July 16, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1058328000
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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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: C0.05
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.30
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
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W2: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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