(From 2002 until 2005, this mailing list was called the ECCR mailing list)
[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]
[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Wed Apr 28 17:33:33 GMT 2004
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, April 28, 2004
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>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. US-Funded INC Faces GAO Probe For Propagandizing
>2. Chernobyl Political Fallout Continues
>3. Be Careful What You Draw
>4. A Shot at the News
>5. The Selling of Everything
>6. Two-party Epistemology
>7. Greenwashing Koch Industries
>8. Rendon Groups Helps Afghan Government With Image
>9. Big Pharma's Poison Pill
>10. Baby, It's You
>11. California Panel Blasts Virtual Voting
>12. Fired for a Photo
>13. And Now, a Word from Our Earth Day Sponsor
>14. The Sounds of Silence
>15. PRSA Talks the Ethical Talk
>16. A Dirty Trickster's Bush Bonanza
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. US-FUNDED INC FACES GAO PROBE FOR PROPAGANDIZING
>http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/27/1434258
> The controversial Iraqi National Congress will be the subject of a
> probe by Congress' General Accounting Office for using U.S.
> taxpayer money to convince U.S. citizens to support an Iraq
> invasion, according to Knight Ridder reporters Warren P. Strobel
> and Jonathan S. Landay. The group, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, set up
> the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, a non-profit front group that
> was not subject to the same lobbying restrictions as the INC.
> Longtime INC representative Francis Brooke is named as ILAC's
> principal founder. State Department officials say the INC, which
> received $18 million in U.S. funds between 1998-2003, violated an
> agreement that they wouldn't spend the money "attempting to
> influence the policies of the United States Government or Congress,
> or propagandizing the American people." Strobel told Democracy Now!
> that the INC in June 2002 sent a memo to the Senate Appropriations
> Committee boasting that their efforts had resulted in 108 news
> stories on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It
> turns out, however, most of the defectors INC provided to reporters
> as sources for their stories were fabricators.
>SOURCE: Democracy Now! April 27, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083038402
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083038402
>
>2. CHERNOBYL POLITICAL FALLOUT CONTINUES
>http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24891/story.htm
> "People living in the affected villages are very distressed because
> the information they receive... is inconsistent," an International
> Atomic Energy Agency official said about the world's worst nuclear
> accident. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
> "spewed a cloud of radioactivity"; the amount of radiation
> released, the distance it traveled, and its health and
> environmental impacts remain in dispute. An IAEA Chernobyl Forum is
> now compiling "authoritative, transparent statements" for next
> year's UN General Assembly. One nuclear engineer who studied
> Chernobyl has warned: "The IAEA is in the business of promoting
> nuclear energy, not discouraging it." Earlier IAEA studies were
> "sharply criticized in scientific journals"; in 2000, the agency
> stated "there is no evidence of a major public health impact" from
> the Chernobyl radiation.
>SOURCE: Reuters, April 27, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083038401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083038401
>
>3. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU DRAW
>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001913678_prosser27m.html
> A 15-year-old boy in Prosser, Washington has been interrogated by
> the U.S. Secret Service about anti-war drawings he turned in to his
> art teacher. One drawing depicted President Bush's head on a stick.
> Another depicted Bush as a devil launching a missile, with a
> caption reading "End the war - on terrorism." Kevin Cravens, a
> friend of the boy's family, criticized the Secret Service
> investigation. "If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as
> a threat to the president, then we are living in '1984,'" Cravens
> said.
>SOURCE: Seattle Times, April 27, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083038400
>
>4. A SHOT AT THE NEWS
>http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=208862&site=3
> "It is designed to circumvent the campaign-finance restrictions,
> which would bar us from communicating to our members before
> elections," explained a National Rifle Association spokesperson
> about the pro-gun lobby group's recently launched news service.
> NRA's executive vice president asked, "Who's to say [Disney, GE or
> Time Warner AOL are] any more legitimate?" PR guru Paul Holmes
> applauds NRAnews.com as "a clever response to a wrong-headed piece
> of legislation," and opines: "Fox News already has shown that
> there's no requirement for even the pretense of objectivity." Duke
> University journalism professor Susan Tifft disagrees: "For lobbies
> and private interests to wrap themselves in the cloak of
> dispassionate news gathering when what is actually being practiced
> is PR and political advocacy is the ultimate cynical act."
>SOURCE: PR Week, April 26, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082952001
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082952001
>
>5. THE SELLING OF EVERYTHING
>http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=40348
> Citing a recent poll which found 65% of respondents feel
> "constantly bombarded with too much" advertising and 61% think
> marketing is "out of control," Commercial Alert's director writes:
> "The main reason, I suspect, is that the [marketing] industry
> abides no limits or boundaries... [the] implicit message is a total
> lack of respect for our time, our privacy, our attention, our peace
> of mind, and not least for our concerns about our kids." Two
> examples: ads on magazine spines and "a growing number of marketers
> [who] want to persuade the nation's print magazines to open the
> text of their editorial pages to product placements." With
> pharmaceutical marketing budgets up 21% last year, drug makers are
> using "more aggressive marketing tactics," according to a Young &
> Rubicam Advertising executive.
>SOURCE: Advertising Age, April 26, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082952000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082952000
>
>6. TWO-PARTY EPISTEMOLOGY
>http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#108287521120764481
> In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a new survey
> by the University of Maryland shows that 57 percent of the American
> people continue to believe Saddam Hussein gave "substantial
> support" to al-Qaeda before the war with Iraq. "Why would so many
> Americans cling to patently false beliefs?" asks history professor
> Juan Cole. "One can only speculate of course. But I would suggest
> that the two-party system in the US has produced a two-party
> epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we
> know. If it were accepted that Saddam had virtually nothing to do
> with al-Qaeda, that he had no weapons of mass destruction (nor any
> significant programs for producing them), and that no evidence for
> such things has been uncovered after the US and its allies have had
> a year to comb through Baath documents - if all that is accepted,
> then President Bush's credibility would suffer. For his partisans,
> it is absolutely crucial that the president retain his credibility.
> Therefore, rather than face reality, they re-jigger it to create a
> fantasy world in which Saddam and Usamah are buddies (as in the
> Jimmy Fallon/ Horatio Sanz skits on the American comedy show,
> Saturday Night Live), and in which David Kay (of whom respondents
> say they've never heard) never recanted his earlier belief that the
> WMD was there somewhere. ... It is bad for the country for policy
> to be made based on falsehoods, and it is even worse for failed
> policies not be be recognized as such because the public clings to
> myths. ... If nearly half the country cannot even see that things
> are going badly wrong in Iraq, one despairs that anyone will work
> up the political will to try to fix the problems before it is too
> late."
>SOURCE: Juan Cole's Informed Comment weblog, April 25, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082865600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082865600
>
>7. GREENWASHING KOCH INDUSTRIES
>http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/8499610.htm
> "Flanked by 'Survivor' champions Ethan Zohn and Jenna Morasca and
> two Washington Redskins cheerleaders, a leading D.C.
> environmentalist took time on Earth Day to thank Wichita-based Koch
> Industries," reports Alan Bjerga. Doug Siglin, head of the
> Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Anacostia River Initiative, praised
> Koch for helping pick trash out of the Potomac and Anacostia
> rivers. But while Koch colleagues heaped praise on the company,
> critics wondered whether the event wasn't designed to clean up
> Koch's image as much as the river. "You hate to sound cynical when
> someone's doing something good," said Brandon deMelle, an analyst
> with th Environmental Working Group. "But given Koch's history, you
> have to wonder." Koch's track record on the environment includes
> the largest pollution penalty ever assessed by the Environmental
> Protection Agency, as well as lawsuits over groundwater pollution
> in Minnesota, escaping benzene gas in Texas and oil leaks in six
> states.
>SOURCE: Wichita Eagle, April 23, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082692804
>
>8. RENDON GROUPS HELPS AFGHAN GOVERNMENT WITH IMAGE
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/international/asia/17AFGH.html?pagewanted=print&position=
> "The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to counsel and coordinate
> communications for Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai," O'Dwyer's
> PR Daily reports. "The U.S., according to the New York Times, wants
> to bolster the leadership of Karzai by promoting 'visible signs of
> reconstruction.' The paper reports that Karzai's government, in
> recent weeks, has issued 'choreographed announcements about
> hundreds of schools and clinics to be built or rehabilitated in the
> next few months.' Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the
> country's defacto CEO, made a media splash on April 17 with a
> ceremony to celebrate the planting of 850,000 trees as part of the
> 'greening of Kabul' campaign." But Afghanistan is far from the
> success story that the Bush administration has been projecting,
> according to a recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh. An
> unpublished report commissioned by the Pentagon found that "the
> victory in Afghanistan was not, in the long run, a victory at all,"
> Hersh writes.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, April 23, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082692803
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082692803
>
>9. BIG PHARMA'S POISON PILL
>http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=4922249§ion=news
> The British medical journal The Lancet published a review of "six
> published and six unpublished trials" studying antidepressant use
> by children that concluded that, in most cases, "the risks exceeded
> the benefits." More disturbingly, the review found evidence that
> pharmaceutical companies "had been aware of problems but did not
> reveal them." In a memo leaked last month from GlaxoSmithKline, the
> company warned, "negative trial results could not be released"
> because it would damage the "profile" of the drug. An earlier
> review of cancer drug trials found that 5 percent of pharmaceutical
> industry studies reported negatively on the drug under examination,
> compared to 38 percent of studies carried out by independent labs.
>SOURCE: Reuters, April 23, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082692802
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082692802
>
>10. BABY, IT'S YOU
>http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=208950&site=3
> A survey of youth marketers, PR and advertising professionals found
> that, while respondents say children are "unable to make
> intelligent choices as consumers" until nearly 12 years old, it's
> OK to market to seven year olds. Just over 60 percent of those
> surveyed say advertising targets children at too young an age, but
> others feel "educational purposes" and brand loyalty justify
> targeting three year olds. The president of The Wonder Group, a
> youth-marketing agency, said: "When we do research, the parents
> want the child to know about the product... As a marketer do you
> really care that the consumer is getting exactly the message you
> want or can recognize the brand? They point to Tony the Tiger."
>SOURCE: PR Week, April 23, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082692801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082692801
>
>11. CALIFORNIA PANEL BLASTS VIRTUAL VOTING
>http://informationweek.securitypipeline.com/news/19200043
> "A California elections panel examining computerized voting
> machines has unanimously recommended that machines using
> touch-screen technology be banned in some California counties,"
> reports W. David Gardner. "This is further evidence that attempts
> across the nation to upgrade and safeguard voting procedures won't
> be implemented in time for the November elections." Diebold
> Elections Systems, which manufactures voting machines, came in for
> particular criticism. "I'm disgusted by the actions of this
> company," said Marc Carrel, a panel member. Diebold may face
> criminal charges for violating state election laws.
>SOURCE: TechWeb News, April 23, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082692800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082692800
>
>12. FIRED FOR A PHOTO
>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001909527_coffin22m.html
> Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of
> flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in
> Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times, has been fired along with
> her husband. Her employer, a private contractor, says it decided to
> fire her after receiving a complaint from the military about her
> violation of the Pentagon ban on images of soldiers' caskets.
> Silicio says she feels "like I was hit in the chest with a steel
> bar and got my wind knocked out." She took the photo, she said, to
> help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion
> that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning
> the soldiers home.
>SOURCE: Seattle Times, April 22, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082606401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082606401
>
>13. AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR EARTH DAY SPONSOR
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/opinion/22JOHN.html
> "Through concerted marketing and public relations campaigns...
> 'greenwashers' attract eco-conscious consumers and push the notion
> that they don't need environmental regulations because they are
> already environmentally responsible. Greenwashing appears in
> misleading product labels like 'all natural' and 'eco-friendly'; in
> television commercials showing S.U.V.'s rolling peacefully through
> the wilderness; and in the co-opting of environmental buzzwords
> like 'sound science' and 'sustainability'," writes Geoffrey Johnson
> in a New York Times op/ed. Today, "petroleum powers [Marathan Oil
> and ChevronTexaco], big-box developers [Wal-Mart], old-growth
> loggers [Sierra Pacific] and chemically dependent coffee companies
> [Starbucks] [are] trying to paint their public image green" by
> sponsoring local Earth Day celebrations across the country.
>SOURCE: New York Times, April 22, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082606400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082606400
>
>14. THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25451-2004Apr19.html
> "Americans seeking to know what President Bush said in his phone
> conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this
> month went to the obvious place: the Kremlin," writes Dana Milbank.
> "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of
> secrecy and repression, has become more transparent that the White
> House, symbol of freedom and democracy... Agence France-Presse
> White House correspondent Olivier Know has proposed a slogan for
> the Bush team: 'When we have something to announce, another country
> will announce it'." Milbank notes that the White House has also
> refused to confirm meetings with foreign dignitaries, domestic
> trips, overseas diplomatic appointments and T-ball games announced
> by others.
>SOURCE: The Washington Post, April 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082433602
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082433602
>
>15. PRSA TALKS THE ETHICAL TALK
>http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/04/20/prsa_ryan.html
> The Public Relations Society of America has issued a statement
> saying that video news releases (VNRs) should no longer use
> signoffs like the one that got Karen Ryan into hot water: "In
> Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." According to the PRSA
> statement, "This has caused some confusion among people who
> question whether someone who is not actually a reporter should be
> identified in a manner that could suggest that he or she is a
> journalist. While this is often done when VNRs are produced, we
> agree that this can be considered confusing and/or misleading."
> PRSA also says that "Television stations airing VNRs should
> identify sources of the material." The Campaign Desk web site,
> which has done some of the best reporting on the Karen Ryan affair,
> says it is "too early to tell if these changes will actually reduce
> the number of VNRs that end up running as news - or even eliminate
> the practice of using PR reps to impersonate reporters. But it
> seems safe to say that hereafter, PR companies, government
> agencies, and corporations will proceed with a little more caution
> in using this particular tactic."
>SOURCE: PressThink, April 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082433601
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082433601
>
>16. A DIRTY TRICKSTER'S BUSH BONANZA
>http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0416/barrett.php
> "Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics,
> has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling
> force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry," reports Wayne
> Barrett. "Stone's booming business in such a federally regulated
> enterprise makes his recent pro bono orchestration of Al Sharpton's
> double-edged presidential campaign an even stranger covert caper.
> Stone financed and helped organize Sharpton's campaign in the
> Democratic presidential primary, prompting speculation that
> Sharpton was actually a stealth Republican operative working to
> weaken the party's chances in the general election. "Stone has a
> history of bizarre political operations, beginning with his
> Watergate-era infiltration of the McGovern campaign," Barrett
> notes. He explores Stone's current "double-agent role" in Indian
> gaming, which "mirrors his seemingly bizarre orchestration of the
> Sharpton scam. Both are just the latest sagas in Stone's exotic
> career of self-serving misdirection."
>SOURCE: Village Voice, April 19, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082347203
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082347203
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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
F: ++ 32 (0)2/412.42.00
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
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.28.61
Office: C0.05
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
European Consortium for Communication Research
Web: http://www.eccr.info
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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]
