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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Wed Apr 28 17:33:33 GMT 2004


>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, April 28, 2004
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>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&section=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
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
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