(From 2002 until 2005, this mailing list was called the ECCR mailing list)
[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]
[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Wed Dec 10 09:24:07 GMT 2003
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, December 10, 2003
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>sponsored by PR WATCH (www.prwatch.org)
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>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.
>
>SHARE US WITH A FRIEND (OR FIFTY FRIENDS)
>Who do you know who might want to receive Spin of the Week?
>Help us grow our subscriber list! Just forward this message to
>people you know, encouraging them to sign up at this link:
>
>http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Conservatives Start Dean Attack
>2. New Liberal Radio Network Picks Celebrity PR Man
>3. Wilkinson Returns to White House
>4. Drug Industry Spins Medical Journals Through Ghostwriters
>5. NRA-TV?
>6. Spin Doctors Examine "CSR"
>7. The Perfect Turkey
>8. Media Propagandists Convicted of Genocide in Rwanda
>9. Hollinger's Neoconservative Scandal
>10. Former H&K Exec Still Defends Iraqi Baby Killing Stories
>11. Pushing the Brain's "Buy Button"
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. CONSERVATIVES START DEAN ATTACK
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/1209shirley.htm
> "Shirley & Banister Public Affairs is supporting a $100K ad
> campaign with a PR push for the conservative-backed Club for
> Growth, which is attacking Democratic presidential front-runner
> Howard Dean in key primary states," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports.
> "The firm's national PR support to secure free media play for the
> ad comes as Dean today struck a blow to his opponents by locking up
> the endorsement of former Vice President and 2000 Democratic
> nominee Al Gore. The CFG ad likens Dean to failed Democratic
> presidential contenders George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael
> Dukakis. 'For three decades, Democratic presidential candidates
> have supported huge tax increases,' a voice over begins, over
> images of the three former nominees, which are later slapped with
> the word 'Rejected' beside their pictures. 'This year they're
> back,' it continues. The spot contends Dean says he'll raise taxes
> on the average family by more than nineteen hundred dollars a year,
> apparently through his pledge to repeal President George Bush's two
> major tax cuts since 2001." The ad began running Dec. 4 in Des
> Moines, Iowa, and Manchester, New Hampshire.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, December 9, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070946000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070946000
>
>2. NEW LIBERAL RADIO NETWORK PICKS CELEBRITY PR MAN
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=197451&site=3
> "Dan Klores Communications is helping to introduce Progress Media's
> plans for a liberal radio network to an intensely interested, but
> highly skeptical press," PR Week reports. The agency has been
> helping shape Progress Media's communications strategy. "The
> network has been billed as a way of balancing the strong influence
> of conservative talk radio, but so far media reporters have been
> wondering aloud why this would be different than other
> less-than-successful attempts at left-of-center radio programming,
> such as journalist Jim Hightower's show," PR Week writes. DKC's
> Matthew Traub explains that Progress Media would provide
> "programming 24/7" that aims to be, above all, "entertaining,
> rather than didactic." DKC's list of recent high-profile clients
> includes Paris Hilton, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Jennifer Lopez,
> Britney Spears, Mike Tyson and Lizzie Grubman. According to PR
> Week, Progress Media is presently in talks with comedians Al
> Franken and Janeane Garofalo to host programs.
>SOURCE: PR Week, December 8, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070859601
>
>3. WILKINSON RETURNS TO WHITE HOUSE
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=197442&site=3
> "Jim Wilkinson, the well-traveled utility man for the Bush
> administration's PR team, is returning to the White House," PR
> Week's Douglas Quenqua writes. "Wilkinson will craft long-term
> messaging strategy for the National Security Council in the role of
> deputy national security advisor for communications. He will report
> to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and White House
> communications director Dan Bartlett. Most recently, Wilkinson
> served as communications director for the 2004 Republican
> Convention, which will take place in New York this August. Prior to
> that Wilkinson ran communications strategy for General Tommy Franks
> at US Central Command in Qatar."
>SOURCE: PR Week, December 8, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070859600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070859600
>
>4. DRUG INDUSTRY SPINS MEDICAL JOURNALS THROUGH GHOSTWRITERS
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1101680,00.html
> "Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by
> academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of
> drug companies," the Observer reports. "The journals, bibles of the
> profession, have huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe
> and the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered
> evidence that many articles written by so-called independent
> academics may have been penned by writers working for agencies
> which receive huge sums from drug companies to plug their products.
> Estimates suggest that almost half of all articles published in
> journals are by ghostwriters. While doctors who have put their
> names to the papers can be paid handsomely for 'lending' their
> reputations, the ghostwriters remain hidden. They, and the
> involvement of the pharmaceutical firms, are rarely revealed."
>SOURCE: Observer (UK), December 7, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070773200
>
>5. NRA-TV?
>http://www.msnbc.com/news/1002051.asp?0cv=CB20
> "Hoping to spend as much as it wants on next year's elections, the
> National Rifle Association is looking to buy a television or radio
> station and declare that it should be treated as a news
> organization, exempt from spending limits in the campaign finance
> law."
>SOURCE: Associated Press, December 5, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070600401
>
>6. SPIN DOCTORS EXAMINE "CSR"
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=197492&site=1
> "Corporate social responsibility [CSR], and the role that
> communications plays within it, is a controversial subject. ... So
> when CSR agency Futerra Sustainability Communications teamed up
> with communications agency CTN, PRWeek and the IPR to run an online
> discussion on the issue on 12 November, more than 200 CSR
> practitioners and communication professionals signed in to express
> their opinions. ... The irony that one part of a communications
> business could pronounce on CSR while another division represented
> Third World dictators [See for example Burson-Marsteller.] was not
> lost on participants. 'Like all good CSR, it starts internally,'
> said one debater. 'It's very difficult to have a robust, defensible
> and enforceable CSR policy in PR if your job is to make big dirty,
> corporate cock-ups look less bad,' another added. [See for example
> Ketchum.] A further question was whether CSR was merely a fashion
> or whether a strong business case had been made that would ensure
> the field would continue to develop. Sceptics were concerned that
> companies might soon move onto a new fashion, leaving specialist
> practitioners looking at an unfriendly job market."
>SOURCE: PR Week, December 5, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070600400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070600400
>
>7. THE PERFECT TURKEY
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33090-2003Dec3.html
> The Washington Post reports the picture-perfect turkey George W.
> Bush held in front-page photos of his Thanksgiving jaunt to Baghdad
> was actually a decoration. Instead of being served slices of the
> golden-brown bird by the President, troops were served from
> cafeteria steam trays. "White House officials do not deny that they
> craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that
> these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and
> to convey qualities about him that are real," the Post writes.
> "This was effective, because it captured something about the
> president that people know is true, that he really cares about the
> soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a
> former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad.
> "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it
> doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference.
> He regularly rejects anything that is not him." In a related
> development, the White House has changed its story that there had
> been an exchange between a British Airways pilot and Air Force One
> as it flew to Baghdad. British Airways denied that its pilots had
> contacted Air Force One. In response, White House communications
> director Dan Bartlett said he'd left the wrong impression, telling
> reporters that the British Airways pilot had actually radioed the
> tower in London. British Airways again denied the story, telling
> media "that none of its pilots has come forward to acknowledge
> either making or overhearing the purported conversation."
>SOURCE: Washington Post, December 4, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070514001
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070514001
>
>8. MEDIA PROPAGANDISTS CONVICTED OF GENOCIDE IN RWANDA
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/africa/04RWAN.html
> "In the first case of its kind since the Nuremberg trials, an
> international court [convened in Tanzania] convicted three Rwandans
> of genocide for media reports that fostered the killing of about
> 800,000 Rwandans, mostly of the Tutsi minority, over several months
> in 1994. A three-judge panel said the three men had used a radio
> station and a newspaper published twice a month to mobilize
> Rwanda's Hutu majority against the Tutsi, who were massacred at
> churches, schools, hospitals and roadblocks. The court said the
> newspaper "poisoned the minds" of readers against the Tutsi, while
> the radio station openly called for their extermination, luring
> victims to killing grounds and broadcasting the names of people to
> be singled out."
>SOURCE: New York Times, December 4, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070514000
>
>9. HOLLINGER'S NEOCONSERVATIVE SCANDAL
>http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2044512
> Hollinger International Inc., a newspaper publisher caught up in a
> widening financial scandal, is looking into an investment the
> company made to a venture capital fund with links to
> neoconservative defense adviser Richard Perle and Henry Kissinger,
> both directors of the company. The investigation is part of a wider
> probe at the company which has already resulted in the resignation
> of several senior executives, including Canadian-born press baron
> Conrad Black as Hollinger International's CEO. However, Black
> remains chairman and controlling shareholder of the Chicago-based
> company, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Telegraph
> in London and The Jerusalem Post. Hollinger International is also
> reviewing its annual contribution of some $200,000 to The National
> Interest, a conservative quarterly magazine that also has links to
> Perle and Kissinger. According to PR Week, Hollinger has hired Bell
> Pottinger Communications in the UK and Kekst and Company in New
> York to handle the public relations fallout from the scandal.
>SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, December 3, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070427600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070427600
>
>10. FORMER H&K EXEC STILL DEFENDS IRAQI BABY KILLING STORIES
>http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/02/1540237
> Democracy Now! featured a debate between Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the
> account supervisor for Hill & Knowlton's PR campaign on behalf of
> "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," and John Stauber, co-author of
> Weapons Of Mass Deception and Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.
> Citizens for a Free Kuwait was a front group for the Kuwaiti
> government and royal family. Hill & Knowlton's received over ten
> million dollars to organize a massive PR campaign to make sure the
> US went to war in 1991 to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Democracy Now!
> notes that "on October 10, 1990, a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl,
> identified simply as Nayirah testified in front of the
> Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had personally witnessed
> 15 infants taken from incubators by Iraqi forces who she said,
> 'left the babies on the cold floor to die.' What was not said at
> the time is that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador
> to the US, Saud Nasir al-Sabah." This sensational baby-killing
> claim was echoed by politicians and the media to justify the US war
> against Iraq, and is credited as turning the US Senate debate in
> favor of war. Later investigations by Amnesty International,
> Physicians for Human Rights, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
> Fifth Estate, authors John MacArthur (Second Front), Randal Marlin
> (Propaganda & the Ethics of Persuasions) and others found that the
> baby killing claims could not be documented and were likely
> concocted for propaganda purposes.
>SOURCE: Democracy Now, December 2, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070341200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070341200
>
>11. PUSHING THE BRAIN'S "BUY BUTTON"
>http://www.commercialalert.org/index.php/category_id/1/subcategory_id/82/article_id/205
> Commercial Alert and prominent psychology experts sent a letter
> today to Emory University President James Wagner, requesting that
> Emory stop conducting neuromarketing experiments on human subjects.
> Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing that maps
> the brain's activation responses in order prod desires for
> particular products. It seeks, in the words of Forbes magazine, to
> "find a buy button inside the skull." According to the Commercial
> Alert letter, this marketing technique "sounds like something that
> could have happened in the former Soviet Union, for the purposes of
> behavior control. Yet it is happening right here in America."
>SOURCE: Commercial Alert, December 1, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1070254800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1070254800
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Weekly Spin is compiled by staff and volunteers at PR Watch.
>To subscribe or unsubcribe, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
>
>Daily updates and news from past weeks can be found at the
>Spin of the Day" section of the PR Watch website:
>http://www.prwatch.org/spin/index.html
>
>Archives of our quarterly publication, PR Watch, are at:
>http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues
>
>PR Watch, Spin of the Day and the Weekly Spin are projects
>of the Center for Media & Democracy, a nonprofit organization
>that offers investigative reporting on the public relations
>industry. We help the public recognize manipulative and
>misleading PR practices by exposing the activities of
>secretive, little-known propaganda-for-hire firms that
>work to control political debates and public opinion.
>Please send any questions or suggestions about our
>publications to:
>(editor /at/ prwatch.org)
>
>Contributions to the Center for Media & Democracy
>are tax-deductible. Send checks to:
> CMD
> 520 University Ave. #310
> Madison, WI 53703
>
>To donate now online, visit:
>https://www.egrants.org/donate/index.cfm?ID=2344-0|1118-0
>_______________________________________________
>Weekly-Spin mailing list
>(Weekly-Spin /at/ prwatch.org)
>http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/weekly-spin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Carpentier Nico (Phd)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17 - B-1081 Brussel - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-412.42.78
Office: 4/0/18
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Media Sociology (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.30
Office: C0.05
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ kubrussel.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------
ECCR-Mailing list
---
To unsubscribe, send an email message to (majordomo /at/ listserv.vub.ac.be)
with in the body of the message (NOT in the subject): unsubscribe eccr
---
ECCR - European Consortium for Communications Research
Secretariat: P.O. Box 106, B-1210 Brussels 21, Belgium
Tel.: +32-2-412 42 78/47
Fax.: +32-2-412 42 00
Email: (freenet002 /at/ pi.be) or (Rico.Lie /at/ pi.be)
URL: http://www.eccr.info
----------------
[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]
