[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, February 4, 2004

>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, February 4, 2004
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Beef's Top Lobbyist Knows Bad Food
>2. How Bush Produced Phony Intelligence on Iraq
>3. PR, Journalism, Same Thing
>4. Right Wing Radio Host Axed for Criticizing Bush on Iraq
>5. It's Greener on the Swing Side
>6. Human Rights, or the Illusion Thereof
>7. Hutton Inquiry:  A Bright Future for War Propaganda
>8. Mass Deception on Iraq Weapons Continues
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. BEEF'S TOP LOBBYIST KNOWS BAD FOOD
>http://thehill.com/business/020304_profile.aspx
>   Today's issue of Hill profiles Chandler Keys, chief lobbyist for
>   the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Keys, who "helped the
>   industry steer clear of a public backlash" -- and adequate public
>   health safeguards -- following the December discovery of mad cow
>   disease in America, is described as someone who "talks tough with
>   policymakers but harbors a sentimental side." During the interview,
>   "Keys was interrupted by a phone call from the White House. Upset
>   by what he was hearing... Keys barked into the receiver, 'You're
>   giving us shit sandwiches! Shit sandwiches!'... The message was
>   clear: Don't mess with the cattlemen." The Center's John Stauber,
>   co-author of Mad Cow USA, has butted heads with the sentimental Mr.
>   Keys in debates on CNN.
>SOURCE: The Hill, February 3, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/February_2004.html#1075784401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075784401
>
>2. HOW BUSH PRODUCED PHONY INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ
>http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/iraq/1448.html
>   Our best selling book Weapons of Mass Deception was the first to
>   expose the aggressive public relations campaign used to sell the
>   American public on the war with Iraq. Recent revelations by David
>   Kay inspired our publisher to put out a news release with this
>   headline: "Chief U.S. Weapons Inspector: 'We Were Wrong'; Authors
>   of Weapons of Mass Deception: 'We Were Right." Now, despite the
>   continuing failure of the major US media to expose the deceptions
>   that sold the war, more information is coming out. The current
>   issue of Mother Jones magazine contains "The Lie Factory," an
>   investigative report by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest subtitled
>   "how Bush's secret Pentagon unit produced the false intelligence
>   that led to war." This must-read article "exposes the workings of a
>   secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's
>   war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the
>   story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more
>   hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events
>   of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion."
>SOURCE: Mother Jones, January/February, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/February_2004.html#1075784400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075784400
>
>3. PR, JOURNALISM, SAME THING
>http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=200990&site=3
>   University of Kansas' journalism school will award its prestigious
>   William Allen White Foundation Medal for "outstanding journalistic
>   merit" to PR professional and former Reagan and Bush I White House
>   press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. Previous honorees include Charles
>   Kuralt, Bob Woodward and Molly Ivins. "Marlin Fitzwater is not
>   qualified to receive the award," protested former journalism
>   professor and White Foundation trustee Bob Giles. Fitzwater joined
>   the White House at the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, "making
>   tasteless jibes about Mario Cuomo's Italian name and [later]
>   leading the verbal attacks on Bill Clinton." He worked to keep Cold
>   War tensions high in the late 1980's and said the first Gulf War
>   defended "UN security council resolutions."
>SOURCE: PR Week, February 2, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/February_2004.html#1075698001
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075698001
>
>4. RIGHT WING RADIO HOST AXED FOR CRITICIZING BUSH ON IRAQ
>http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article3.html
>   Leftists aren't the only dissenters from the war in Iraq to feel
>   the consequences of the Clear Channel's pro-war tilt. Radio talk
>   show host Charles Goyette, a Goldwater Reaganite, has been bumped
>   from his slot and expects to lose his job because he criticized the
>   Bush administration's shape-shifting case for war. "Management
>   didn't like my being out of step with the president's parade of
>   national hysteria, and the war-fevered spectators didn't care to be
>   told they were suffering illusions," he writes. "So after three
>   years, I was replaced on my primetime talk show by the Frick and
>   Frack of Bushophiles, two giggling guys who think everything our
>   tongue-tied president does is 'Most excellent, dude!'"
>SOURCE: American Conservative Magazine, February 2, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075698000
>
>5. IT'S GREENER ON THE SWING SIDE
>http://www.gristmagazine.com/daily/daily013004.asp
>   GOP pollster Frank Luntz warned in a memo to party leaders: "The
>   environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in
>   general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable."
>   The administration's recent funding boosts for its Healthy Forests
>   Restoration Act, Pacific salmon recovery programs, the Klamath
>   River Basin (previously targeted by the anti-environmental "Wise
>   Use" movement), and Great Lakes clean up have been slammed by
>   environmentalists as election year damage control targeted to swing
>   states like Oregon, Michigan and Ohio. "God help you if you're
>   waiting for EPA to clean up a toxic waste site outside of a swing
>   state," remarked National Environmental Trust president Phil Clapp.
>SOURCE: Grist Magazine, January 30, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1075438800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075438800
>
>6. HUMAN RIGHTS, OR THE ILLUSION THEREOF
>http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281391511
>   The UN is pushing for the arrest on war crimes charges of General
>   Wiranto, Indonesia's former military leader and a strong candidate
>   in July's presidential elections. Wiranto has "hired American
>   campaign advisers and published an English translation of his
>   memoirs" to "burnish his image internationally." Major U.S. law
>   firm Alston & Bird is also lobbying to improve Indonesia's image
>   "as a solid ally in President Bush's war on terror and one that is
>   committed to democracy and human rights." A&B's contract is with
>   the commissioner of P.T. Pacific Barito Timber, Indonesia's oldest
>   and largest timber company, which itself has been criticized by
>   environmental and rights groups.
>SOURCE: Financial Times, Thursday, January 29, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1075352400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075352400
>
>7. HUTTON INQUIRY:  A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR WAR PROPAGANDA
>http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=311
>   Greg Palast writes that "the future for fake and farcical war
>   propaganda is quite bright indeed. ,,, So M'Lord Hutton has killed
>   the messenger: the BBC. Should the reporter Gilligan have used more
>   cautious terms? Some criticism is fair. But the extraordinary
>   import of his and Watts' story is forgotten: our two governments
>   bent the information then hunted down the questioners. And now the
>   second invasion of the Iraq war proceeds: the conquest of the
>   British Broadcasting Corporation. Until now, this
>   quasi-governmental outlet has refused to play Izvestia to any prime
>   minister, Labour or Tory. As of today, the independence of the most
>   independent major network on this planet is under attack. 'The
>   bleak future for British journalism' portends darkness for
>   journalists everywhere - the threat to the last great open platform
>   for hard investigative reporting. And frankly, it's a worrisome day
>   for me. I'm not a disinterested by-stander. My most important
>   investigations, all but banned from US airwaves, were developed and
>   broadcast by BBC Newsnight, reporter Watts' program."
>SOURCE: www.greatpalast.com, January 28, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075266001
>
>8. MASS DECEPTION ON IRAQ WEAPONS CONTINUES
>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0401280314jan28,1,872604.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
>   For the first time yesterday, George Bush publicly "appeared to
>   back away from his once-emphatic claim that weapons of mass
>   destruction would be found in Iraq." In response to questions about
>   former chief Iraq weapons inspector David Kay's assertions that
>   Iraq destroyed its WMDs years before the U.S. invasion, Bush said
>   the war was justified because Saddam Hussein posed "a grave and
>   gathering threat to America and the world." As WMD claims further
>   lose validity, the administration is now trying "to justify the war
>   as good for humanity." Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch reported that
>   human rights claims could not justify the Iraq war, since "the war
>   was not necessary to stop... atrocities."
>SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, January 28, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1075266000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
>    http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1075266000
>
>
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