[eccr] Fwd: The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, January 7, 2004

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, January 7, 2004
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Al Iraqiya Fails To Be 'Independent' News Source
>2. Ogilvy & Mather Charged With Bilking White House
>3. Martha Stewart's PR Push
>4. Meat Industry PR Scramble To Respond to Mad Cow
>5. Sludge Slippage
>6. Rebranding Bush
>7. USDA PR Chief Flacked for the Beef Industry
>8. Another Award for Bill O'Reilly
>9. "Inside Baseball" from the Outside In
>10. 2003 Spin of the Year:   WMDs
>11. Krugman's Resolutions
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. AL IRAQIYA FAILS TO BE 'INDEPENDENT' NEWS SOURCE
>https://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=9508
>   The U.S. funded Iraqi Media Network was supposed to bring
>   "independent" journalism to a "liberated" Iraq. The reality,
>   however, is that IMN's Al Iraqiya radio and television station are
>   failing, according to CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee. The stations,
>   run by top CIA contractor Science Applications International
>   Corporation (SAIC), seem almost irrelevant given the more popular
>   satellite news channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya and the common
>   criticism that "Al Iraqiya has no news. Just yesterday's
>   information." Working under Coalition Provisional Authority
>   guidelines, Al Iraqiya reporters are barred from reporting anything
>   that might incited violence. Many who worked for SAIC on the IMN
>   project blame the CPA for the network's failure. Veteran network
>   news foreign correspondent Don North called Al Iraqiya 'Project
>   Frustration' when he quit in July. "IMN has become an irrelevant
>   mouthpiece for CPA propaganda, managed news and mediocre programs.
>   I have trained journalists after the fall of tyrannies in Bosnia,
>   Romania and Afghanistan. I don't blame the Iraqi journalists for
>   the failure of IMN. Through a combination of incompetence and
>   indifference, CPA has destroyed the fragile credibility of IMN,"
>   North wrote recently.
>SOURCE: CorpWatch, January 6, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073365201
>
>2. OGILVY & MATHER CHARGED WITH BILKING WHITE HOUSE
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0106om.htm
>   The U.S. has indicted executives from Ogilvy and Mather, a PR and
>   advertising agency, for participating in an "extensive scheme to
>   defraud the U.S. Government by falsely and fraudulently inflating
>   the labor costs that Ogilvy incurred" for its work on a media
>   campaign for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. According
>   to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, O&M's anti-drug media campaign work was part
>   of a five-year $684 million dollar project. The government claims
>   it was overcharged by O&M from May 1999 to April 2000. "The White
>   House, last month, decided not to renew O&M's anti-drug contract.
>   It will put the business up for review in a bid to improve
>   'transparency.' O&M can re-bid," O'Dwyer's writes.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, January 6, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073365200
>
>3. MARTHA STEWART'S PR PUSH
>http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-stewart0104,0,1560047.story
>   "Weeks before a federal judge is set to open Martha Stewart's trial
>   on charges of obstructing justice and securities fraud, the case
>   already is being tried in the court of public opinion," writes
>   James T. Madore. According to Roberg G. Heim, a former Securities
>   and Exchange Commission attorney, "A very extraordinary aspect of
>   the Martha Stewart case is the amount of public relations efforts
>   that she and her team are making in an attempt to clear her name."
>SOURCE: Newsday
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073331382
>
>4. MEAT INDUSTRY PR SCRAMBLE TO RESPOND TO MAD COW
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=198740&site=3
>   "Meat-industry trade groups were scurrying during the recent
>   holiday season to coordinate key messages and media lists as they
>   responded to reports of mad cow disease rearing its head in the
>   Western US," PR Week's John Frank writes. PR staffers at the
>   American Meat Institute and the National Cattlemen's Beef
>   Association, working with PR giant Burson-Marsteller, handled a
>   flood of media calls over the Christmas holiday. AMI's top
>   spokeswoman Janet Riley invited NBC News into her kitchen on
>   Christmas day to tape "her preparing beef for dinner in an effort
>   to demonstrate her faith in the safety of the beef supply," PR Week
>   reports. The US Department of Agriculture held daily press
>   briefings, which were followed by "technical briefings" for the
>   press held by NBCA. "Key message points the industry was stressing
>   revolved around the safety of the US beef supply and the extent of
>   efforts underway to track down how the disease reached US shores,"
>   PR Week reports.
>SOURCE: PR Week, January 5, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073278800
>
>5. SLUDGE SLIPPAGE
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/03/national/03SLUD.html
>   The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has denied a petition from
>   73 labor, environment and farm groups calling for an immediate
>   moratorium on land-based uses of sewage sludge - a practice that we
>   exposed in our 1994 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. "The
>   rejection of the petition followed an announcement by the agency in
>   October, after five years of analysis and study, that it would not
>   regulate dioxins in land-applied sludge," reports the Associated
>   Press. "Dioxins are a class of organic chemicals that EPA studies
>   show pose a possible cancer risk in humans, but the agency said in
>   its October statement that the danger was minimal. The latest
>   announcements by the EPA come a year and a half after a panel of
>   the National Research Council, in a review the agency had asked
>   for, criticized what the council described as outdated science in
>   the agency's assessment of health risks from treated sludge used as
>   fertilizer." Just to show it isn't completely irresponsible,
>   though, the EPA promises to study the problem further and someday
>   may regulate 15 other toxic chemicals in sludge that currently
>   aren't on its watch list. Meanwhile the sludge wars continue at the
>   local level, with communities in Texas and Louisiana fighting
>   unbearable odors, groundwater contamination, and toxic pathogens
>   from sludge, while in Ohio, sludge critics are dismissed as "a lot
>   of kooks."
>SOURCE: Associated Press and New York Times, January 2-3, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1073118824
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073118824
>
>6. REBRANDING BUSH
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1115313,00.html
>   "The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change
>   and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional
>   diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for
>   peace," the Guardian reports. The British paper writes that recent
>   signs indicate a shift from military action to diplomatic
>   engagement as seen in recent interactions between the U.S. and
>   North Korea, Libya and Iran. Washington analysts see this as an
>   election year strategy, acknowledging the White House finds itself
>   in a delicate situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, given
>   continuing violence and the glacial transition to democracy in Iraq
>   and Afghanistan. "With elections 11 months away, Mr Bush does not
>   want to be vulnerable to claims that he has presided over a
>   warmongering strategy that has left Americans little safer than
>   September 11 2001. His shift follows an established pattern in
>   Washington of politicians moving to the centre during an election
>   year," the Guardian writes.
>SOURCE: Guardian (UK), January 3, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073106000
>
>7. USDA PR CHIEF FLACKED FOR THE BEEF INDUSTRY
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/02SCHL.html
>   Eric Schlosser, author of the hugely popular bestseller Fast Food
>   Nation, notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's PR point
>   person on mad cow disease, Alisa Harrison, flacked for the beef
>   industry. "Before joining the department, Ms. Harrison was director
>   of public relations for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association,
>   the beef industry's largest trade group, where she battled
>   government food safety efforts, criticized Oprah Winfrey for
>   raising health questions about American hamburgers, and sent out
>   press releases with titles like 'Mad Cow Disease Not a Problem in
>   the U.S.' ... Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal
>   agency more completely dominated by the industry it was created to
>   regulate. Dale Moore, Ms. Veneman's chief of staff, was previously
>   the chief lobbyist for the cattlemen's association." Meanwhile, the
>   federal government is failing to take the only steps that will
>   solve the mad cow crisis in America: a total ban on feeding
>   slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and testing tens of millions of
>   cattle. John Stauber says 'it's the cow feed, stupid!'
>SOURCE: New York Times, January 2, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1073019600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073019600
>
>8. ANOTHER AWARD FOR BILL O'REILLY
>http://www.pandagon.net/archives/00002229.htm
>   Bill O'Reilly, who famously falsely claimed to be the winner of two
>   Peabody Awards, has finally won something for real -- top spot on
>   Pandagon.net's list of "the 20 most annoying conservatives of
>   2003." According to Pandagon webmasters Ezra Klein and Jesse
>   Taylor, O'Reilly "had a hard time getting on this list. I mean, if
>   you take away the 'wetback' commentary, and the 'joke' that a black
>   boys choir was out in the parking lot stealing hubcaps, and the
>   lawsuit against Al Franken, and the embarassing performance at the
>   C-SPAN Book News conference, and the threatening to beat up the son
>   of a 9/11 victim, and the lying about where he grew up, and the
>   whole Peabody Awards thing, and the false 'Fair and Balanced'
>   promise, and the fact that he's a grade-A asshole that most
>   conservatives don't like, and the insistence that anyone who
>   doesn't appear on his show is afraid of him, and the faux-everyman
>   demeanor, and the continuing jihads against Jesse Jackson, rap
>   music, George Clooney, Al Franken, the United Way, Europe,
>   Hollywood, Bill Moyers, the entire American left, Canada and
>   PepsiCola, AND that he lies constantly about being a
>   conservative...well, he still belongs on the list, actually."
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072995815
>
>9. "INSIDE BASEBALL" FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
>http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/01/01/inside_baseball.html
>   Jay Rosen thinks coverage of the 2004 presidential election is
>   shaping up as an exercise in "Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow!
>   Horse Race Forever!" In this time-dishonored tradition of political
>   journalism, reporters use sports as a metaphor for reporting on
>   politics, relying for insights on political insiders who have
>   learned how to spin the "race" as a game of "inside baseball." The
>   result: "An army of sentries encircles the game, guarding every
>   situation from which a glimmer of fresh truth might be allowed to
>   escape."
>SOURCE: PressThink, January 1, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072933200
>
>10. 2003 SPIN OF THE YEAR:   WMDS
>http://www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_terrorism/doc3672.html
>   The Guerrilla New Network has "picked the
>   administration's packaging and sale of the case for war based on
>   Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as our
>   Spin of the Year. The case has turned out to be so flimsy that the
>   administration has been forced to backtrack and deflect questions
>   about the still missing weapons. Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair
>   this summer that it was a 'bureaucratic' decision to focus on the
>   WMD, and even Rumsfeld has repeatedly contradicted specific claims
>   he made to reporters in the run-up to the invasion."
>SOURCE: Guerrilla News Network, December 31, 2003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072846800
>
>11. KRUGMAN'S RESOLUTIONS
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/26/opinion/26KRUG.html
>   Columnist Paul Krugman is wondering if the news media will take its
>   job seriously when reporting on the 2004 elections and offers some
>   suggestions to reporters: "Don't talk about clothes." "Actually
>   look at the candidates' policy proposals." "Beware of personal
>   anecdotes." "Look at the candidates' records." "Don't fall for
>   political histrionics." "It's not about you." Although this is all
>   pretty basic advice, concludes, "I don't really expect my
>   journalistic colleagues to follow these rules. ... But history will
>   not forgive us if we allow laziness and personal pettiness to shape
>   this crucial election." Journalism professor Jay Rosen thinks that
>   Krugman "should be this year's Pulitzer Prize columnist" for "his
>   courage and relentlessness" but also thinks his advice is likely to
>   go ignored.
>SOURCE: New York Times, December 26, 2003
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1072414801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072414801
>
>
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