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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Wed May 05 13:23:14 GMT 2004
THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, May 5, 2004
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THIS WEEK'S NEWS
1. Let's Go Bananas With Amy Goodman on June 18!
2. Planes, Buses and Outsourced Automobiles
3. How Chalabi Conned the Neocons
4. Brock's Back
5. Schwarzenegger's More Feminist Side
6. Let Freedom Ring? China Says Not So Fast
7. Battle of the Photographs
8. March of the Banana Republicans
9. Is It Hot in Here, or Is It Just Me?
10. Madison Avenue Knows Best
11. Mayday for GI Janes!
12. Cheney Praises Fox News
13. What You Don't See...
14. US Image Czar Jumps Ship, Again...
15. Pentagon Indymedia?
16. Thanks for the Photo
17. Press Freedom Declines
18. The Meaning of Sovereignty
19. For Abortion Rights? Then the Terrorists Have Already Won
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1. LET'S GO BANANAS WITH AMY GOODMAN ON JUNE 18!
http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/tenth.html
Our organization, the non-profit Center for Media and Democracy, is
celebrating the tenth anniversary of our founding with a party on
Friday, June 18, from 6 to 9 p.m. in Madison, Wisconsin. Our very
special guest will be Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Please join our
staff, board and scores of supporters for an evening of great food
and fellowship. Tickets are $50/person. If you live far from
Madison you can still join us in spirit. Contribute $50 or more to
our birthday bash, and you'll receive a year's subscription to our
award-winning quarterly, PR Watch. Contribute $100 or more, and
we'll add your name as a sponsor to our official event program. For
more information email Diane at (diane /at/ prwatch.org) or call her at
(608) 260-9713.
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083729600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083729600
2. PLANES, BUSES AND OUTSOURCED AUTOMOBILES
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040504/ap_on_el_pr/bush_35
George Bush is campaigning in Ohio, as part of a two-day, nearly
300-mile bus tour. Make that a bus-and-plane tour: "Tuesday's bus
tour, about 60 miles through western Ohio, actually includes two
airplane flights - one from Detroit to Toledo and another from
Toledo to Dayton," reports Associated Press. According to Christian
Science Monitor, the Bush bus tour "seeks to generate maximum media
exposure and project a regular guy likability." The Kerry campaign
announced it was making "the largest single purchase of advertising
time in a presidential race," to air ads "that tell Mr. Kerry's
life story." Kerry himself is trying to persuade "skeptical
corporate executives that he's a business-friendly moderate,"
portraying himself as "a staunch free-trader" and defending "the
right of corporations to outsource jobs."
SOURCE: Associated Press, May 4, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083643201
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083643201
3. HOW CHALABI CONNED THE NEOCONS
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/04/chalabi/
"Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat. He had one set
of friends before he was in power, and now he's got another," says
L. Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith, now the
undersecretary of defense for policy, and a former friend and
supporter of Chalabi and his aspirations to lead Iraq. Feith, Zell
and other neoconservatives who helped plan the war with Iraq are
upset that Chalabi - the man the neocons used to call "the George
Washington of Iraq" - is cozying up to Iran and ditching his
promises to befriend Israel. "Chalabi appears to have recognized
that the neocons, while ruthless, realistic and effective in
bureaucratic politics, were remarkably ignorant about the situation
in Iraq, and willing to buy a fantasy of how the country's politics
worked. So he sold it to them," writes John Dizard. Joshua Micah
Marshall quips: "In the popular political imagination we're
familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of
intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world,
and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the
truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in
Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the
first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who
leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds. And just
think, it's on your dime and with your nation's honor."
SOURCE: Salon.com, May 4, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083643200
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083643200
4. BROCK'S BACK
http://mediamatters.org/
Former right-wing attack journalist David Brock blasted the
conservative movement in his 2002 confessional, Blinded by the
Right. Now he has launched Media Matters, a "Web-based,
not-for-profit progressive research and information center
dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting
conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." The New York Times
reports that Brock has raised $2 million dollars in an attempt to
become a liberal equivalent of Brent Bozell's right wing Media
Research Center and that Brock is working out of the office of
former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. Brock also has a new
book coming out this month, titled Republican Noise Machine:
Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy.
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083586883
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083586883
5. SCHWARZENEGGER'S MORE FEMINIST SIDE
http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=209776&site=3
PR Week's Douglas Quenqua asks: "Of the three men honored by a
women's-empowerment group in Los Angeles last week for their
'support and advocacy of the issues that are important to women,'
how many... have publicly mused over his great fortune at getting
to stick a woman's face in the toilet?" If you guessed just one -
named Arnold Schwarzenegger - you're correct. The W.O.M.E.N group
(Women Organized for Mentoring, Education and Networking) honored
the Governator for "his promotion of after-school programs."
According to a spokesperson, the group had "no discussion" of the
more than a dozen sexual harassment charges and at least one
pending lawsuit leveled against Schwarzenegger. Quenqua wonders:
"Did the muscle man exert some influence... to get rubbed the right
way, PR-wise?"
SOURCE: PR Week, May 3, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083556802
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083556802
6. LET FREEDOM RING? CHINA SAYS NOT SO FAST
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/international/asia/03chin.html
China's "censorship orders are totally groundless, absolutely
arbitrary, at odds with the basic standards of civilization, and as
counter to scientific common sense as witches and wizardry," wrote
Beijing journalism professor Jiao Guobiao in a recent article that
has been widely circulated by Internet in Beijing despite, not
unpredictably, being banned by the Communist Party's propaganda
department. "Such explicit outbursts of dissent are still rare in
China, reports Joseph Kahn. "But Mr. Jiao is not alone in
expressing frustration that, even after a long-awaited transition
to a new generation of leaders some 18 months ago, China's
political scene remains stultifying. Intellectuals, Mr. Jiao said,
are 'supposed to act like children who never talk back to their
parents.'"
SOURCE: New York Times, May 3, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083556801
7. BATTLE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18574
"The Bush administration, despite the savvy of its spinmeisters and
Hollywood-trained publicists, has lost the war of images abroad,"
writes Juan Cole. "Although it has had more success in managing war
images at home, cracks have increasingly opened up on the domestic
front as well." Recent examples have included the publication of
photos of flag-draped coffins bearing U.S. soldiers, Nightline's
program displaying the faces of the fallen, and graphic images of
abused Iraqi prisoners released on CBS's 60 Minutes II news show
that have been reproduced as stills and transmitted all over the
Internet. "The success of the American war effort depends crucially
on retaining public support in the U.S. and winning hearts and
minds in Iraq and the Arab world," Cole writes. "The images seeping
out of Iraq are undermining both, because aggression, wrong-headed
policies and incompetence have left a trail in photos. That is what
the manipulators of the media who favor perpetual war are so afraid
of."
SOURCE: AlterNet, May 3, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083556800
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083556800
8. MARCH OF THE BANANA REPUBLICANS
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18541
Have you ordered Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning
America into a One-Party State? Our new book by Sheldon Rampton and
John Stauber arrives in books stores exactly three weeks from
today. Rampton and Stauber will be hitting the road speaking at
public events in New York, Washington, London, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, Boston and other cities. You can get a tiny sneak preview
of Banana Republicans by reading an excerpt available on Alternet.
Alternet notes that "while the GOP's lock-step strategy has helped
the party achieve considerable power, its intolerance for opposing
viewpoints has led to disastrous domestic and foreign policy
decisions. Welcome to the one-party state." We'll be telling you
much more in the weeks ahead about Banana Republicans and the
authors' tour, but why wait? Order it now from your favorite
bookstore.
SOURCE: Alternet.org
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083542292
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083542292
9. IS IT HOT IN HERE, OR IS IT JUST ME?
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=517321
Professor Sir David King, the British government's chief scientist,
warned that Antarctica could become the world's only habitable
place by the year 2100. King said that the last time atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are now was 60 million
years ago, during a period of rapid global warming, when "no ice
was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to
live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life." In
America, a leaked NASA email warned that "no one... is to do
interviews or otherwise comment on" The Day After Tomorrow, a
big-budget disaster movie depicting "an instant ice age." Last
week, a NASA spokesperson "clarified" that scientists are free to
speak, but the agency has no "cooperation agreement" with the
film's producers.
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), May 2, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083470401
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083470401
10. MADISON AVENUE KNOWS BEST
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/02/politics/campaign/02ADS.html
"The spots may be optimally situated by the blunt standards of
Madison Avenue, which puts a premium on placing commercials in
programs where they will have the most emotional effects," writes
Jim Rutenberg, in an article on presidential campaign advertising.
The "optimal situation" he notes involves Iraq-focused Bush and
Kerry ads, which run "most intensely in newscasts," and as such are
"playing like running commentaries over who is better qualified to
preside over the action unfolding between the commercials." Brown
University political science professor Darrell West warned that
this advertising strategy carries some risks: "How voters are going
to see the ad is going to depend on whether the war is good or bad
that day."
SOURCE: The New York Times, May 2, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083470400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083470400
11. MAYDAY FOR GI JANES!
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/171522_draft01.html
A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Selective
Service System acting Director Lewis Brodsky, in a February 2003
proposal to Pentagon officials, recommended that the draft "be
re-engineered toward maintaining a national inventory of American
men and, for the first time, women, ages 18 through 34, with an
added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills." The
agency's public and congressional affairs director noted that they
"would have 'to market the concept' of a female draft to Congress."
After the document release, a Selective Service spokesperson called
the proposal mere "food for thought." But the agency did admit that
it "has begun designing procedures for a targeted registration and
draft of people with computer and language skills."
SOURCE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 1, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083384000
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083384000
12. CHENEY PRAISES FOX NEWS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53974-2004Apr29?language=printer
"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a
good part of my career," Vice President Dick Cheney told tens of
thousands of Republican supporters in a conference call. "It's part
of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon
those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and
try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end
up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more
accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally
involved in, than many of the other outlets."
SOURCE: Washington Post, April 30, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083297602
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083297602
13. WHAT YOU DON'T SEE...
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-media-nightline.html
Friday's "Nightline" pays tribute to U.S. servicemembers killed in
Iraq, with anchor Ted Koppel reading the names of fallen troops.
Saying the show "appears to be motivated by a political agenda
designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq,"
the Sinclair Broadcast Group is barring its ABC-affiliate stations
from airing the show. The ban affects seven media markets in six
states. ABC News "respectfully disagree[s] with Sinclair's
decision." Senator McCain (R-AZ) protested in a letter to
Sinclair's president: "Every American has a responsibility to
understand fully the terrible costs of war." Nightline's producer
remarked: "We want to remind people that each of [the dead] has a
face, has a name, had a life -- and that's all its intended to do."
According to the Center for American Progress, Sinclair executives
have donated more than $130,000 to George Bush and his allies since
2000.
SOURCE: New York Times, April 30, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083297601
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083297601
14. US IMAGE CZAR JUMPS SHIP, AGAIN...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/politics/30tutw.html
Was it the horrifiic images of US soldiers torturing and
humiliating Iraqi prisoners that caused the announcement? If so, no
mention was made of it when "Margaret D. Tutwiler, the State
Department veteran who was summoned from abroad to overhaul the
public diplomacy effort, said Thursday that she was resigning to
take a position at the New York Stock Exchange. The move was a blow
to the Bush administration's hopes to improve America's image and
better articulate its policy goals as the country faces growing
opposition to the war in Iraq and to its support of Israel's plan
to redraw its boundaries. It also highlighted the administration's
difficulty in retaining managers of public diplomacy. Ms.
Tutwiler's predecessor in the job was Charlotte Beers, a former New
York advertising executive, who resigned in March of last year. ...
An extensive report on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim
world, released in October, painted a dire picture of American
efforts to reach out to foreign countries and build support for
Washington's actions. The bipartisan report, called 'Changing
Minds, Winning Peace,' found that America's prestige had dwindled,
that its good works were largely ignored and that it lacked
strategic direction in its message."
SOURCE: New York Times, April 30, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083297600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083297600
15. PENTAGON INDYMEDIA?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/international/middleeast/29JAZE.html
Colin Powell and other U.S. officials are complaining to Middle
Eastern news executives and government officials about Al Jazeera's
and Al Arabiya's "inflammatory" reporting on Iraq. The Pentagon's
Arabic Media and Programs Unit has developed a "truth matrix" of
allegedly unfair or untrue reports. U.S. "commanders are directing
soldiers and marines to use their personal digital cameras to take
pictures of any insurgents shooting from mosques, from behind
crowds of women and children or other places that would violate the
laws of war," for Arab and Western media. Israel's Haaretz sees
things differently: "Since the start of the war, the Americans have
persecuted [Al Jazeera's] journalists - not because they report
lies, but because they are virtually the only ones who manage to
report the truth."
SOURCE: New York Times, April 29, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083211200
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083211200
16. THANKS FOR THE PHOTO
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000498198
Bill Mitchell, whose son was a U.S. Army soldier killed in Iraq
earlier this month, has written a letter to The Seattle Times
thanking the newspaper for publishing the picture of flag-draped
caskets that broke a Pentagon ban. Mitchell believes his son was in
one of the caskets shown in the now-famous photo by Tami Silicio.
"Hiding the death and destruction of this war does not make it
easier on anyone except those who want to keep the truth away from
the people," he wrote. "Things are getting worse in Iraq and if
there is anything that I can do so that other parents can be spared
the pain that is happening in my life, I will do it."
SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, April 28, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083124802
17. PRESS FREEDOM DECLINES
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51417-2004Apr28
"Freedom of the press declined substantially around the world in
2003, including a worrisome drop in Italy, according to a survey
released Wednesday by Freedom House. "Despite some specific recent
improvements, and an overall upward trend towards greater press
freedom worldwide during the late 1990s, the last two years have
seen a dramatic deterioration, said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, the
survey's managing editor. "State-directed intimidation and attempts
to influence the media are being perpetrated by governments that
seem to be increasingly unwilling to tolerate critical coverage.
SOURCE: Washington Post, April 28, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083124801
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083124801
18. THE MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/28CONF.html
"If they have sovereignty, Mr. Ambassador, what does that mean?"
Senator Hagel (R-NE) asked John Negroponte, the nominee for U.S.
Ambassador to Iraq, regarding the U.S. military siege on Fallujah.
Negroponte, who defended giving limited power to an interim Iraqi
government after June 30, told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee "he saw his major challenge as trying to avert conflicts
if the new Iraqi government objected to American military actions."
Another sovereignty question was raised yesterday when "Iraq's
United States-appointed and unelected leaders had, overnight,
abolished the old Iraqi flag" for a new one designed in London.
Many Iraqis "are convinced that their new flag is modelled on the
Israeli flag"; one political moderate said: "I will not regard the
new flag as representing me but only traitors and collaborators."
SOURCE: New York Times, April 28, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083124800
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083124800
19. FOR ABORTION RIGHTS? THEN THE TERRORISTS HAVE ALREADY WON
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-rights-abortion-hughes.html
Members of Congress and women's groups are asking long-time Bush
adviser Karen Hughes to apologize for remarks they say "liken
abortion rights advocates to those in the 'terror network'." As
hundreds of thousands rallied for reproductive rights in Washington
DC on Sunday, Hughes told CNN: "I think that after September 11,
the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we
need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life...
particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the
fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight
is that we value every life." Women's groups are changing their
message and tactics, reports the Wall Street Journal: "To counter
abortion foes' use of the pulpit, they are mining college campuses
for grass-roots organizational heft."
SOURCE: Reuters, April 27, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/April_2004.html#1083038403
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083038403
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