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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Wed Nov 05 17:02:28 GMT 2003


THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, November 5, 2003
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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

1. CBS Caves to Pressure, Dumps Reagan Movie
2. Media Reform Conference Begins Friday in Madison
3. Private Sector Takes On Public Diplomacy
4. Copyright vs. Democracy
5. Sheep's Clothing
6. 'By-Passing the Media Filter' on the Iraq War
7. Media Blackout on Local Issues
8. Raped By the Globe
9. Gay-Bashing Provocateurs
10. Chemical Industry PR to Counter Health Activists
11. Puffery for Puff Daddy
12. Arson Attack on Peace Activists
13. Fox Gets the Memo
14. Bush Seeks Scapegoats for 'Mission Accomplished' Stunt
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1. CBS CAVES TO PRESSURE, DUMPS REAGAN MOVIE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/business/media/05TUBE.html?ex=1069002888&ei=1&en=2163c6474be84cfb
  TV docu-dramas, such as this Sunday's red, white and blue Iraqi war
  mythology Saving Private Lynch, always play fast and loose with the
  facts, twisting reality into fiction for entertainment's sake. But
  a much hyped CBS miniseries on Ronald Reagan drew the wrath of the
  Right, and CBS has dumped the show. The New York Times reports that
  "CBS executives ... denied they were capitulating to pressure from
  Republicans and conservative groups in moving the 'The Reagans' to
  the pay cable channel Showtime, a sister network at Viacom. The
  decision, they argued, was instead 'a moral call,' reached after
  concluding that the four-hour television movie carried a liberal
  political agenda and treated the Reagans unfairly. ... On Oct. 28,
  the Media Research Center ... wrote a letter to a list of 100 top
  television sponsors urging them to 'refuse to associate your
  products with this movie.' At around the same time Michael
  Paranzino, a former Republican Congressional staff member from
  Betheseda Md., decided to start a Web site called BoycottCBS.com.
  ... Last Friday, the Republican National Committee entered the
  fray."
SOURCE: New York Times, November 5, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1068008401
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1068008401

2. MEDIA REFORM CONFERENCE BEGINS FRIDAY IN MADISON
http://www.mediareform.net/conference.php
  Some 1,500 journalists, political reformers and citizens at large
  are convening in our home town of Madison, Wisconsin, November 7th
  - 9th for the National Conference on Media Reform. The conference
  begins Friday with a 2pm panel featuring professor Nancy Snow,
  Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and our own John Stauber, co-author
  of Weapons of Mass Deception. The dozens of speakers and performing
  artists include Bill Moyers, Al Franken, members of the US House
  and Senate, FCC Commissioners, John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, Ralph
  Nader, Janine Jackson of FAIR, Billy Bragg and many more.
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1068008400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1068008400

3. PRIVATE SECTOR TAKES ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=194146&site=3
  As the US slips in international opinion polls, some private sector
  imagemakers think its time to bolster Washington's public diplomacy
  efforts, PR Week's Douglas Quenqua reports. "Keith Reinhard,
  chairman of Omnicom ad firm DDB Worldwide, announced the formation
  of the Task Force to Mobilize American Business for Public
  Diplomacy, a collection of marketing and PR experts who've come
  together to help American corporations improve America's image in
  foreign lands." Reinhard's initial research showed that "the world
  overwhelmingly shares the same four negative perceptions about US
  companies: they exploit workers; they're a corrupting influence,
  promoting values that are in conflict with local customs; they're
  grossly insensitive and arrogant; and the practice
  hyper-consumerism, increasing profits it the only priority." "I
  looked at the data and I said, 'They're talking about companies and
  brands that mean business to me. ... All these big multinational
  companies, these are our clients,'" Reinhard told PR Week. "Our own
  company gets 61% of our revenue from outside the US. So I thought
  we could organize and address some of these perceptions."
SOURCE: PR Week, November 3, 2003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067835603

4. COPYRIGHT VS. DEMOCRACY
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1103-04.htm
  "Diebold Election Systems, which makes voting machines, is waging
  legal war against grass-roots advocates, including dozens of
  college students, who are posting on the Internet copies of the
  company's internal communications about its electronic voting
  machines," reports John Schwartz. The company's attorneys have sent
  letters threatening legal action against the students, who are
  circulating "thousands of e-mail messages and memorandums dating to
  March 2003 from January 1999 that include discussions of bugs in
  Diebold's software and warnings that its computer network are
  poorly protected against hackers." Questions are also being raised
  about whether Diebold's voting machines can be trusted to deliver
  an honest result. "Diebold has become a favorite target of
  advocates who accuse it of partisanship," Schwartz states. "Company
  executives have made large contributions to the Republican Party
  and the chief executive, Walden W. O'Dell, said in an invitation to
  a fund-raiser that he was 'committed to helping Ohio deliver its
  electoral votes to the president next year.'"
SOURCE: New York Times, November 3, 2003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067835602

5. SHEEP'S CLOTHING
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9286
  A group calling itself Partnership for the West (PFTW) was formally
  unveiled in late October and aims to influence environmental
  legislation in Washington. "The group plans to work on 'restoring a
  common sense balance to economic growth and conservation in the
  West,'" notes Bill Berkowitz, adding that this "sounds nice, until
  you see who's behind it. Claiming to be a grassroots lobby group,
  PFTW actually represents a kinder, gentler and more politically
  savvy brand of anti-environmentalism. ... The group's members
  number over a hundred, and include large interests in fossil fuel,
  logging and mining industries. ... Partnership for the West grew
  out of summit in Denver, Colorado, attended by elected officials,
  corporate representatives and long-standing anti-environmental
  organizations like the American Land Rights Association, the Blue
  Ribbon Coalition, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, and People
  for the USA. Its president, Jim Sims, is the former communications
  director for the National Energy Policy Task Force - also known as
  Cheney's secret panel - and helped craft the administration's
  energy policy." According to Scott Silver, who heads a real
  environmental group called Wild Wilderness, "These people are paid
  lobbyists and public relations consultants serving the needs of
  every imaginable sort of polluter, developer, resource extractor or
  despoiler of the environment."
SOURCE: TomPaine.com, November 3, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1067835601
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067835601

6. 'BY-PASSING THE MEDIA FILTER' ON THE IRAQ WAR
http://www.truthuncovered.com/index.cfm?ms=alternet
  As part of its PR strategy to 'by-pass the media filter' that it
  claims is distorting public perception of the Iraq war with too
  much negative reporting, the Bush administration has been granting
  interviews to smaller, more friendly media. A 'media by-pass'
  tactic of a different sort is being used by critics of the war who,
  as we've documented in our book Weapons of Mass Deception, have
  been locked out of mainstream media coverage. Alternet has
  announced that "A provocative new DVD that documents how the Bush
  Administration exaggerated the threat of Iraq, debuts today.
  Produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Robert Greenwald,
  "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About The Iraq War" takes you behind
  the scenes, as CIA, Pentagon and foreign service experts speak out
  and reveal the lies, misstatements and exaggerations that the Bush
  administration used to deceive the public." Word of the DVD is
  "going to millions of MoveOn members, Nation subscribers, Working
  Assets customers, and others as part of an unprecedented,
  simultaneous effort to bypass the film and media gatekeepers and
  take the information directly to the people."
SOURCE: Alternet, November 3, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/November_2003.html#1067835600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067835600

7. MEDIA BLACKOUT ON LOCAL ISSUES
http://www.bettercampaigns.org/press/release.php?ReleaseID=50
  Local public affairs shows account for less than one half of one
  percent of all programming on local television stations, according
  to a study released by the Alliance for Better Campaigns.
  "Broadcasters have relegated local public-affairs programming to
  the very bottom of the heap - behind cartoons, kitchenware
  specials, reruns, courtroom dramas, dating shows and late-night
  talk shows," reports Jennifer Harper. "The analysis found, for
  example, that there were three times as many 'Seinfeld' reruns as
  local public-affairs shows on TV stations nationwide. There were
  four times as many cartoon shows, seven times as many pro football
  games, nine times as many dating shows, 19 times as many late-night
  talk shows, 20 times as many courtroom dramas and 23 times as many
  soap operas."
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067830733

8. RAPED BY THE GLOBE
http://salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/10/31/kobe/index.html
  The Globe, a tabloid newspaper, is running a titillating photograph
  of alleged rapist Kobe Bryant's accuser at her high school prom.
  "In it, the woman is lifting up her prom dress to reveal a garter
  belt," notes Rebecca Traister. "The headline reads: 'Kobe Bryant's
  Accuser: Did she really say no?' Next to the photo, in half-inch
  type, is the 19-year-old woman's name." Traister interviewed
  journalism professors and magazine editors who are shocked by the
  Globe's decision. "It is misogynistic and truly exploitative to try
  to get big sales off of identifying an alleged rape victim," said
  Us Weekly's editor in chief Janice Min. "Was a woman dressed
  inappropriately? Did she ask for it? Is a sexy woman more likely to
  get raped than a non-sexy woman? These are the anachronistic,
  horrible ideas that come up because of a cover like that. Morally,
  it's wrong."
SOURCE: Salon.com, October 31, 2003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067576400

9. GAY-BASHING PROVOCATEURS
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=702
  A gay-bashing, right wing student newspaper at Roger Williams
  University in Rhode Island offers a fresh example of the
  conservative media's strategy of "publicizing censorship of their
  papers" so they can "cast themselves as the little guy up against
  the leftist establishment." The Hawk's Right Eye provoked the
  university administration into clamping down by running nasty
  attacks on Judy Shepard, whose son was beaten to death in Texas for
  being gay. After Shepard spoke on campus, HRE accused her of
  "preying on students' emotions and naivety" [sic] so that she could
  become "a mascot for the homosexual agenda." Now that the
  university has established a "publications and broadcast review
  committee" and is considering revoking HRE's funding, national
  conservative groups have swarmed to its defense, complaining of
  "harassment" and "a heavy-handed approach to silencing ideas that
  oppose the leftist orthodoxy so prevalent on college campuses."
SOURCE: Student Press Law Center, October 30, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/October_2003.html#1067490002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067490002

10. CHEMICAL INDUSTRY PR TO COUNTER HEALTH ACTIVISTS
http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=1
  Monique Harden and Nathalie Walker, two public interest lawyers,
  report that they attended "the recent conference of the American
  Chemistry Council (ACC), called 'Communicating in a Volatile
  World.' ACC is the trade association for the 180 largest
  manufacturers of chemicals in the U.S. Until recently, ACC was
  known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association. The ACC conference
  was a real eye-opener. It revealed the ACC's genuine fears about
  the accomplishments of environmental health activists. In
  particular, ACC communications staff and presenters at the
  conference conceded that the work of coalitions like the
  Collaborative on Health and the Environment and Health Care Without
  Harm has effectively raised public awareness about the health
  dangers of toxic chemicals in the environment and in consumer
  products. They also concluded that the success of these coalitions
  is due to their diversity of members and supporters who include
  community groups, environmental justice organizations, health
  professionals, and researchers who focus on body burden and
  low-dose chemical exposures, shareholder/investment institutions,
  and consumers. Here are the salient details of the various
  presentations at the conference..." 
SOURCE: Rachel's Environment & Health News, October 30, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/October_2003.html#1067490001
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067490001

11. PUFFERY FOR PUFF DADDY
http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1030klores.htm
  Dan Klores Communications, a PR firm that specializes in "crisis
  communications" for clients embroiled in scandals, is representing
  Sean ("P. Diddy") Combs, the artist formerly known as "Puff Daddy,"
  as he faces criticism for the use of sweatshop labor to manufacture
  his clothing line. "The National Labor Committee, the organization
  which targeted Kathy Lee Gifford with similar charges eight years
  ago, this week released a report detailing forced overtime without
  pay, mandatory pregnancy tests and other 'systematic human and
  worker rights violations' at a factory which producesarticles for
  Combs' 'Sean John' line," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Combs has
  been a long-time client of Klores, which encouraged him to carry a
  Bible to court during his 2001 trial for illegal gun possession in
  connection with a nightclub shooting. The PR firm has also
  represented Combs at other embarrassing moments such as his 2002
  legal battle with an ex-girlfriend over child support for their
  infant son. Other Klores clients have included Britney Spears, Mike
  Tyson and Lizzie Grubman.
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, October 30, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/October_2003.html#1067490000
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067490000

12. ARSON ATTACK ON PEACE ACTIVISTS
http://www.progressive.org/mcwatch03/mc102903.html
  Cindy Hunter and her husband, Sam Nickels, opposed Bush's war
  against Iraq and put a sign on their front porch showing the number
  of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers who have been wounded or
  killed thus far in the war. An anonymous arson responded by setting
  fire to the sign, endangering their lives and causing an estimated
  $50,000 in damages to their home. This incident is only one of
  dozens that the Progressive magazine lists on its "McCarthyism
  Watch," which monitors "the New McCarthyism that is sweeping the
  country."
SOURCE: Progressive, October 29, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/October_2003.html#1067403602
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067403602

13. FOX GETS THE MEMO
http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters#foxnews
  Charlie Reina, a former producer for Fox News, has posted a letter
  to the Poynter Institute's online journalism forum, explaining how
  the network deliberately slants the news. "Editorially, the FNC
  newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of
  management," he writes. "The pressure ranges from subtle to
  direct.  First of all, it's a news network run by one of the most
  high-profile political operatives of recent times. ... The roots of
  FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in
  the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each
  morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often,
  suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel
  responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the
  bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem
  to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo
  is behind it."
SOURCE: Poynter Online Forums, October 29, 2003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067403601

14. BUSH SEEKS SCAPEGOATS FOR 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' STUNT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29BANN.html?ex=1068435851&ei=1&en=a3423473eff9af7f
  As the propaganda that led America to attack Iraq continues to fall
  apart, President Bush is looking for scapegoats for his own PR
  stunts. "The triumphal 'Mission Accomplished' banner was the pride
  of the White House advance team, the image makers who set the stage
  for the president's close-ups. On May 1, on a golden Pacific
  evening aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, they made sure that the
  banner was perfectly captured in the camera shots of President
  Bush's speech declaring major combat in Iraq at an end. But on
  Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush publicly disavowed the
  banner... 'I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious
  advance man from my staff. They weren't that ingenious, by the
  way.' ... The banner 'was suggested by those on the ship,' [Bush
  press secretary Scotty McClellan] said. 'They asked us to do the
  production of the banner, and we did. They're the ones who put it
  up.' The man responsible for the banner, Scott Sforza, a former ABC
  producer now with the White House communications office, was
  traveling overseas on Tuesday and declined to answer questions. He
  is known for the production of the sophisticated backdrops that
  appear behind Mr. Bush with the White House message of the day,
  like 'Helping Small Business,' repeated over and over." On May 16th
  the New York Times reported that "White House officials say that a
  variety of people, including the president" came up with the
  carrier landing stunt. We wonder, is that super-sexy flight suit
  President Bush wore on its way to the Smithsonian, or the shredder?
SOURCE: New York Times, October 22, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
   http://www.prwatch.org/spin/October_2003.html#1067403600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
   http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1067403600


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