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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Wed Apr 21 18:29:05 GMT 2004
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>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, April 21, 2004
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. Regulation without Representation
>2. Flag-Draped Coffins
>3. Even Less Than Cosmetic Changes
>4. Friendly Fire?
>5. Open the Government
>6. A Cost-Cost Analysis
>7. Vanunu Moves from Prison to House Arrest
>8. No, Supersize Me!
>9. Beyond Posturing
>10. Kerry Crafts His Image to Sell to Republicans
>11. Will Shill for Nukes
>12. A Not-So-Volunteer Force
>13. An Ounce of Coup Prevention Is Worth $1.2 Million
>14. Like a Bridge over Troubled Blackwater
>15. The Battle for Hearts and Minds
>16. The Jefferson Muzzles
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. REGULATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
>http://thehill.com/news/042004/agenda.aspx
> "Outsourcing, the shifting of well-paid and skilled manufacturing
> and service sector jobs overseas, has emerged as a defining issue,"
> but Republicans in the House of Representatives want to change the
> subject, according to The Hill. In mid-May, the House leadership
> will begin "eight weeks of debate and votes on what they say are
> 'populist' measures to reduce healthcare costs, eliminate red tape,
> curb abusive lawsuits, simplify the tax code, improve
> worker-training programs, enforce trade law and reshape energy
> policies." The "competitiveness agenda" also includes "a
> long-standing proposal that Congress should vote on regulatory
> actions, such as examining whether to raise the corporate average
> fuel economy standards in cars." The Competitive Enterprise
> Institute's president noted approvingly: "Regulations have become a
> form of taxation without representation."
>SOURCE: The Hill, April 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082433600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082433600
>
>2. FLAG-DRAPED COFFINS
>http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000491273
> "Last week, photos of flag-draped coffins in Kuwait containing the
> bodies of Americans killed in Iraq surfaced on scattered Internet
> sites, such as the Drudge Report," reports Charles Geraci. "The
> photos were not credited and no major news organization would touch
> them. But Sunday, a similar image appeared on the front page of The
> Seattle Times. The picture arrived amid rising debate over the Bush
> administration's strict ban on media outlets taking photos of
> soldiers' coffins offloaded at U.S. military bases."
>SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, April 19, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082347202
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082347202
>
>3. EVEN LESS THAN COSMETIC CHANGES
>http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108233580487586231,00.html
> "While U.S. regulators tend to wait for clear evidence of problems,
> the [European Union] has been moving aggressively to remove
> chemicals with the potential for trouble." Case in point:
> phthalates, a class of chemicals found in many cosmetics, which
> have been linked in animal experiments to "adverse reproductive
> effects." The industry group the Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance
> Association dismissed calls to stop using phthalates, claiming
> "this is more a matter of politics than of science." The U.S. Food
> and Drug Administration takes its lead on such matters from the
> Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel, which is "funded by the industry
> trade group." The head of the Environmental Working Group remarked:
> "It's not just the fox guarding the henhouse, it's the fox
> designing and building the henhouse."
>SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082347201
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082347201
>
>4. FRIENDLY FIRE?
>http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108239418298286699,00.html?mod=mm%5Fmedia%5Fmarketing%5Fhs%5Fleft
> Two employees of a Pentagon-funded television station were killed
> by U.S. troops in Iraq today. Al-Iraqiya correspondent Asaad
> Kadhim, driver Hussein Saleh and cameraman Bassem Kamel came under
> fire as they drove along the road to the central city of Samara.
> Kadhim and Saleh were killed, while Kamel was wounded. According to
> the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 24 Iraqi and foreign
> journalists and media workers have been killed since the U.S.
> invasion, not counting the latest deaths. Al-Iraqiya and two
> Baghdad radio stations are run by the Iraq Media Network, on behalf
> of the Coalition Provisional Authority and under U.S. Defense
> Department contracts with the San Diego, California-based company
> Scientific Applications International Corporation.
>SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082347200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082347200
>
>5. OPEN THE GOVERNMENT
>http://openthegovernment.org
> A new coalition has formed to fight the expansion of government
> secrecy at all levels of government in the United States. "Open the
> Government" which bring together groups from the worlds of
> journalism, organized labor, the environmental movement and others
> interested in open government. It has issued a report listing what
> it calls the "Ten Most Wanted" government documents on topics
> ranging from September 11 intelligence failures to contaminants in
> drinking water and gifts from lobbyists to Senators and their
> staff.
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082257658
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082257658
>
>6. A COST-COST ANALYSIS
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18768-2004Apr16.html
> "In a report analyzing the economics of protecting a threatened
> fish in the Pacific Northwest, the Bush administration this month
> deleted all references to possible monetary benefits" from
> conservation. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report included
> the estimated habitat protection cost - $230 to $300 million over
> 10 years - but omitted "55 pages that detailed the benefits of
> protecting bull trout." The benefits, according to a consulting
> firm, would include "revenue from sport fishing, reduced drinking
> water costs and increased water for irrigation farmers," totaling
> some $215 million over 20 to 30 years. A Fish and Wildlife Service
> official said the benefits analysis was deleted because "it did not
> conform to analytical standards."
>SOURCE: Washington Post, April 17, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082174401
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082174401
>
>7. VANUNU MOVES FROM PRISON TO HOUSE ARREST
>http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/16/1082055643931.html
> Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is scheduled to be released
> soon from prison after serving an 18-year sentence for blowing the
> whistle on Israel's weapons of mass destruction. However, Israel is
> also forbidding him from communicating with foreigners or moving
> about without permission and has been told that any infraction of
> these rules will land him back in prison without trial. In 1986,
> Vanunu provided photographs to back up a major story in the Sunday
> Times newspaper in London, which detailed his work for Israel's
> covert nuclear arsenal at its Dimona plant. In retaliation, an
> American Jewish woman working for Mossad, Israel's secret service,
> lured him from London to Rome, where he was kidnapped back to
> Israel, convicted of treason and espionage in a secret trial, and
> subjected to long periods in solitarity confinement.
>SOURCE: The Age (Australia), April 17, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082174400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082174400
>
>8. NO, SUPERSIZE ME!
>http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-bz.mcdonalds16apr16,0,6429613.story?coll=bal-health-headlines
> As McDonald's unveiled its latest marketing ploy - healthier menu
> options, including "Go Active!" Adult Happy Meals - one free
> enterprise and "personal freedom" activist is trying to prove that
> the fast food giant's current menu isn't so bad. Soso Whaley, an
> adjunct fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an animal
> trainer and the host of the "Camo Country Outdoors Show," has
> placed herself on a month-long McDonald's-only diet. She's also
> making a film about her experience, in direct response to Morgan
> Spurlock's unflattering documentary "Super Size Me." Whaley called
> Spurlock's film "anti-corporate," "anti-fast food" and "junk
> science." McDonald's has not endorsed Whaley's project.
>SOURCE: Associated Press, April 16, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082088003
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082088003
>
>9. BEYOND POSTURING
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1192876,00.html
> Four years ago BP - the company formerly known as British Petroleum
> - launched a $200 million ad campaign to rebrand itself as "Beyond
> Petroleum" and to strut the company's avowed commitment to
> corporate social responsibility. At its April 16 annual general
> meeting in London, however, its real face was more visible. A
> resolution proposing the company stay out of the Artic National
> Wildlife Refuge and other environmentally important areas was voted
> down, protests against cuts to health benefits for new employees
> were brushed off, and a 65-year old Azerbaijani woman campaigning
> against the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline to Turkey was not
> even allowed into the meeting.
>SOURCE: Guardian (UK), April 16, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082088002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082088002
>
>10. KERRY CRAFTS HIS IMAGE TO SELL TO REPUBLICANS
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/16/politics/campaign/16KERR.html
> Can John Kerry beat George Bush by selling himself to disgruntled
> Republican voters as the kinder, gentler, more compassionate and
> centrist candidate? After appealing to a left/liberal base during
> his primary victories juggernaut, the presumed Democratic
> presidential candidate is moving quickly to the right. "Declaring
> that he is 'not a redistribution Democrat,' Senator John Kerry told
> a group of wealthy and well-connected supporters on Thursday that
> he would soon start an aggressive campaign to define himself as a
> centrist, in hopes of peeling moderate Republicans from President
> Bush. Tacitly acknowledging his vulnerability to harsh portrayals
> in a barrage of Mr. Bush's advertisements over the past month, Mr.
> Kerry urged Democrats at a $25,000-a-plate breakfast at the '21'
> Club in Manhattan to help him paint his own portrait. ... 'We've
> got to reach out,' Mr. Kerry said. 'There are so many Republicans
> who have said to me: `You know, for the first time in my life, I'm
> going to vote for a Democrat. I'm ready to switch over.' "
>SOURCE: New York Times, April 16, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082088001
>
>11. WILL SHILL FOR NUKES
>http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-04-16/pols_feature.html
> University of Texas professor Sheldon Landsberger has admitted that
> a pro-nuclear column he submitted under his own name to the Austin
> American-Statesman was actually written by the Potomac
> Communications Group, a Washington PR firm that works for the
> nuclear power industry. "For at least 25 years," reports William
> Adler, an employee of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee
> named Theodore M. Besmann (who moonlights for Potomac
> Communications) "has had published nuclear love songs in newspapers
> across the country, under his own or others' names."
>SOURCE: Austin Chronicle, April 16, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082088000
>
>12. A NOT-SO-VOLUNTEER FORCE
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0415army.htm
> In an official notice signaling their intention to launch a new
> "recruiting and advertising program to bolster and retain ranks in
> the U.S. Army," the Pentagon, Defense Contracting Command and
> Department of the Army observe that "the market dynamics recruiters
> continue to face are as challenging as any faced in the history of
> the All-Volunteer Force," according to O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Word of
> the new Army ad campaign came just one day after Defense Secretary
> Donald Rumsfeld announced that some 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq will
> have their tours extended by at least three months. When asked if
> troop levels would decrease after 90 days, Rumsfeld replied: "You
> can't predict the future, you just simply cannot do that, so why
> bother?"
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, April 15, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082001601
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082001601
>
>13. AN OUNCE OF COUP PREVENTION IS WORTH $1.2 MILLION
>http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela-US-Iraq.html
> "The blame for all those deaths [in Iraq] has a name: George W.
> Bush," declared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday. An
> employee of the Patton Boggs lobbying and legal firm said such
> statements make their work "difficult but not impossible." Chavez
> is paying Patton Boggs more than $1 million to improve the
> Venezuelan government's image in America through media work,
> government and grassroots lobbying. According to O'Dwyer's PR
> Daily, the Venezuela Information Office has been established in
> Washington DC to "prevent the U.S. Government from intervening in
> the democratic process in Venezuela." A leaked Patton Boggs memo
> advises Chavez "to demonstrate his commitment to combating drug
> trafficking and his cooperation with Colombia in order to
> neutralize" criticisms from the U.S. State Department.
>SOURCE: New York Times, April 15, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1082001600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1082001600
>
>14. LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED BLACKWATER
>http://thehill.com/news/041404/blackwater.aspx
> "They did not go out looking for the publicity and did not ask for
> everything that happened to them," said a spokesperson for
> Alexander Strategy Group, defending their new client, Blackwater
> USA. Blackwater is the private military firm that's faced
> increasing scrutiny from members of congress, the media and the
> general public following the killing of four of its contractors in
> Fallujah, Iraq last month. Alexander Strategy Group is providing
> "crisis management" services, and will "help Blackwater provide
> input into proposed regulations circulating in the Pentagon that
> would establish rules of engagement for private security
> contractors." Blackwater is a late-comer to the PR game; the MPRI,
> Armor Holdings, SAIC and Dyncorp military companies already "pay
> top dollar for lobbyists."
>SOURCE: The Hill, April 14, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1081915200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1081915200
>
>15. THE BATTLE FOR HEARTS AND MINDS
>http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:407adee4:ef209fd542bc9f1?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4804894
> "Impartial information is increasingly hard to come by in Iraq,"
> reports Fiona O'Brien. "As fighting has intensified on the ground,
> U.S. authorities have stepped up a separate battle for public
> opinion, tightly controlling the flow of information to journalists
> whose ability to move freely in Iraq has been limited by increasing
> danger." Although U.S. military officials refuse to discuss Iraqi
> civilian casualties, other reports suggest that hundreds have died
> in the past week in Fallujah alone. Reuters footage shows "dead
> children, old men and women lying wounded in overfull makeshift
> clinics." According to Indian Journalist Rahul Mahajan, who was in
> Fallujah on Saturday and Sunday, "there's a big controversy now
> with the Arab press, Al-Jazeera, in particular reporting U.S.
> atrocities and war crimes in Fallujah, and the U.S. press tamely
> reporting Brigadier General Mark Kim's claims no such thing is
> happening. I can tell you from what I have seen with my own eyes
> that Al-Jazeera is much closer to the truth."
>SOURCE: Reuters, April 12, 2004; and Democracy Now! April 13, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1081828801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1081828801
>
>16. THE JEFFERSON MUZZLES
>http://www.tjcenter.org/muzzles.html
> The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression
> chooses April 13, the anniversary of Jefferson's birth, to issue
> its annual "Jefferson Muzzles" award to call attention to "those
> who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's
> admonition that freedom of speech 'cannot be limited without being
> lost.'" This year's awards included:
> * CBS Television, which passed on the miniseries "The Reagans"
> amid conservative pressure, and which also refused to air
> Moveon.org's 30-second commercial criticizing the Bush
> administration during the Super Bowl, while it allowed erectile
> dysfunction commercials and the halftime show featuring Janet
> Jackson's bared breast.
> * Martha Stewart's trial judge.
> * Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey, who canceled
> a 15th anniversary showing of "Bull Durham" because of opposition
> to the Iraq war by its stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
>SOURCE: Thomas Jefferson Center, April 13, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1081828800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1081828800
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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