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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Wed May 26 09:46:25 GMT 2004
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, May 26, 2004
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. "Banana Republicans" Wage War at Home
>2. Brand Name: "War President"
>3. First, Do No Harm
>4. As the Coalition Crumbles
>5. The Depressed Press
>6. Beware the Big Box Bullies
>7. The Doors of Perception of Conflicts of Interest
>8. Economic Protection Agency
>9. It's a Small OneWorld, After All
>10. Celebrate (or Protest) Somewhere Else
>11. Department of the Fourth Estate
>12. The Decriminalization of Dissent
>13. Utterly Out of Favor
>14. Crude Warnings
>15. GAO Video "News" Rebuttal
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. "BANANA REPUBLICANS" WAGE WAR AT HOME
>http://www.bananarepublicans.org/excerpt.html
> "Notwithstanding their stated aversion to 'big government,' now
> that they have become the government [right wing Republicans] have
> not hesitated to expand its powers in precisely those areas that
> are most threatening to individual freedoms ... . The likelihood
> that those powers will be abused has increased, moreover, as the
> conservative movement accuses its ideological adversaries of
> 'treason,' 'terrorism' and 'un-Americanism;' threatening
> long-standing traditions of tolerance and diversity. ... In sum,
> the direction in which forces in the GOP are moving looks - at
> times absurdly, at times ominously - similar to the 'banana
> republics' of Latin America: nations dominated by narrow corporate
> elites, which use the pretext of national security to violate the
> rights of their citizens." [This is an excerpt of our new book
> Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America into a
> One-Party State, now in thousands of bookstores. Please buy a copy
> and also help us to publicize the book by emailing this excerpt to
> your family, friends and co-workers. All proceeds from Banana
> Republicans support the research and education work of our
> non-profit Center for Media and Democracy.]
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085544000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085544000
>
>2. BRAND NAME: "WAR PRESIDENT"
>http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108543803159820080,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
> How is Bush-Cheney '04 like a marketing campaign? "In 2000, Mr.
> Bush shattered fund-raising records... by recruiting supporters to
> join a program called the Pioneers, fund-raisers who pledged to
> raise at least $100,000. This year, the campaign is broadening its
> reach by going for both higher-end and lower-end targets, just as
> marketers launch new products to capture different slices of the
> market." These include "Rangers" (who raise $200,000), "Super
> Rangers" ($300,000), and "Mavericks" ($50,000), younger donors
> "heretofore dismissed as being insufficiently rich or politically
> active." Since the Federal Election Commission decided not to
> regulate groups separate from but aligned with political parties,
> the GOP is establishing "527 groups" to counter liberal 527s like
> MoveOn.org or The Media Fund, with the help of PR pro Craig
> Shirley, original "Pioneer" James Francis, Jr., and direct mail
> specialist Tom Synhorst.
>SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085457601
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085457601
>
>3. FIRST, DO NO HARM
>http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108542637575019786,00.html?mod=mm%5Fhs%5Fmarketing%5Fstrategy
> "As food companies look for ways to cash in on the nation's
> obsession with healthy eating, an increasing number are copying
> marketing tactics that long have been used by the pharmaceuticals
> industry: They are pitching their products directly to doctors. The
> hope is that doctors will start recommending specific foods - and
> even brand names - to patients," reports the Wall Street Journal.
> Fruit juice makers, meat and seafood suppliers, and large companies
> like Pepsi and General Mills are "pitching" MDs, with some even
> "rewarding doctors for recommending their products." The Revival
> Soy snack company "has sales representatives visit doctors' offices
> to drop off samples ... [and] pamphlets encouraging doctors to
> 'pseudo-prescribe Revival.'" Patients aren't the only target
> audience. "Physicians employed by food companies are presenting
> information at medical conferences," the Journal reports.
>SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085457600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085457600
>
>4. AS THE COALITION CRUMBLES
>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524309
> A leaked internal British Foreign Office memo warns: "Heavy-handed
> U.S. military tactics in Fallujah and Najaf ... have fuelled both
> Sunni and [Shia] opposition to the coalition and lost us much
> public support outside Iraq." Moreover, "the scandal of the
> treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib has sapped the moral authority
> of the coalition inside Iraq and internationally." News of the memo
> comes as Members of Parliament are "calling on Tony Blair to
> distance London from Washington" and just after Newsweek reported
> on the "military friction" from the "'doctrinally' different
> approaches" of British and U.S. forces in Iraq. One thing's clear:
> "the UK will boycott the upcoming trial of Saddam [Hussein] if
> there is any risk of the former dictator being put to death."
>SOURCE: The Independent (UK), May 24, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085371202
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085371202
>
>5. THE DEPRESSED PRESS
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50403-2004May23.html
> The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press' recent survey
> of nearly 550 national and local media workers finds journalists
> "unhappy with the way things are going in their profession these
> days." The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes, "Two-thirds of
> national media staffers, and 57 percent of the locals, believe that
> profit pressures are seriously hurting news coverage. Nearly half
> of national journalists say the press is too timid." In fact, 55
> percent of national press felt that the media's treatment of George
> Bush was not critical enough. In a perhaps-related finding,
> "national news media ... express considerably less confidence in
> the political judgment of the American public than they did five
> years ago."
>SOURCE: Washington Post, May 24, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085371201
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085371201
>
>6. BEWARE THE BIG BOX BULLIES
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4127282,00.html
> In its annual list of the most endangered U.S. historic places, the
> National Trust for Historic Preservation included the entire state
> of Vermont, "because of plans for several new Wal-Mart Supercenters
> across the state." Trust president Richard Moe explained, "Vermont
> is uniquely a state of small towns, and many of these downtowns
> would be decimated," by plans to quadruple Wal-Mart's presence in
> the state "to at least 1.3 million square feet in seven new
> stores." Dismissing the Trust's characterization, Wal-Mart's
> community affairs manager Mia Marsten said, "We are asking for and
> getting local input" on the new stores. The Trust encourages
> Vermonters to "persuade Wal-Mart and other large retailers to adapt
> the way they do business so as to enhance existing communities."
>SOURCE: Guardian Unlimited (UK), May 24, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085371200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085371200
>
>7. THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
>http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E11676%7E2164693,00.html
> The Denver Post reports that one "hallmark" of the Bush
> administration is a rapidly spinning revolving door. There are
> "more than 100 high-level officials ... who [now] govern industries
> they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates.
> ... In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have
> helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that
> benefit their former industries." These include "a former
> meat-industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a
> former drug-company lobbyist who influences prescription-drug
> policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while still accepting
> payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps
> determine how much of the West those former clients can use for oil
> and gas drilling."
>SOURCE: Denver Post, May 23, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085284800
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085284800
>
>8. ECONOMIC PROTECTION AGENCY
>http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-plywood21may21,1,7550783.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
> "EPA decisions now have a consistent pattern: disregard for
> inconvenient facts, a tilt toward industry, and a penchant for
> secrecy," said longtime Environmental Protection Agency official
> Eric Schaeffer, who quit the agency in protest in 2002. He was
> responding to a new decision to exempt wood products plants from
> controls on emissions of formaldehyde, a chemical linked to cancer
> and leukemia. In making the decision, the EPA "relied on a risk
> assessment generated by a chemical industry-funded think tank, and
> a novel legal approach recommended by a timber industry lawyer. The
> regulation was ushered through the agency by senior officials with
> previous ties to the timber and chemical industries," reports the
> Los Angeles Times.
>SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085112002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085112002
>
>9. IT'S A SMALL ONEWORLD, AFTER ALL
>http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20040521-0019-ca-sierraplan.html
> The Department of Agriculture ruled that the U.S. Forest Service
> did not violate federal law when it paid $90,000 to PR firm
> OneWorld Communications to promote increased logging in
> California's Sierra Nevada forests. The "Forests with a Future"
> campaign claimed that today's forests have denser tree growth than
> in the past, and that increased logging is needed to reduce
> wildfire threats. The department's general counsel wrote, "The
> Forest Service seems to be explaining and defending its policies
> and responding to arguments against those activities - a legitimate
> activity." Two members of Congress had questioned whether the PR
> firm contract violated a federal ban on public funds going "to pay
> a publicity expert."
>SOURCE: Associated Press, May 21, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085112001
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085112001
>
>10. CELEBRATE (OR PROTEST) SOMEWHERE ELSE
>http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/05/21/bostons_party_gets_a_new_spin/
> The Boston Globe reports that the Democratic National Convention
> Host Committee's message has changed over the past month, from
> "Celebrate Boston" to "Let's Work Around It." "The desire to make
> the convention a community celebration is rubbing up against
> security precautions ordered for the first political convention
> since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks," the Globe writes.
> Protest restrictions at both the Boston Democratic and New York
> Republican conventions are raising concerns. An American Civil
> Liberties Union senior staff counsel remarked, "It's a false
> premise to say protest equals terrorists or a security risk." But
> security - and the desire "to avoid the sort of image fallout
> sustained from riots at Chicago's 1968 Democratic convention and
> from the activist free-for-all at Seattle's 1999 World Trade
> Organization meeting" - is driving the restrictions.
>SOURCE: The Boston Globe, May 21, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085112000
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085112000
>
>11. DEPARTMENT OF THE FOURTH ESTATE
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42960-2004May20.html
> Marcela Sanchez reports, "The Bush administration is stepping up
> the pressure on [Venezuelan] President Hugo Chavez. State
> Department officials say they are talking with U.S. editorial
> writers, hoping to send a clear message to Chavez through the
> press: let the recall referendum happen or face the consequences."
> An anonymous senior State Department official told Washington Post
> editors and reporters that Chavez supporters' challenges to the
> presidential recall effort are "a consolidation of a dictatorship."
> Sanchez writes that future U.S. action "will be shaped by ... the
> anti-Castro focus of top policy makers and commercial and big
> business interests. ... The demise of the referendum would
> obviously be bad news for Venezuela. But any U.S. unilateral
> intervention would be worse news."
>SOURCE: Washington Post, May 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085025604
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085025604
>
>12. THE DECRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT
>http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/8709124.htm
> In a rare "directed verdict" issued less than three days into the
> trial, the environmental group Greenpeace was found not guilty of
> the 19th century crime of "sailor mongering." A Miami federal judge
> found that activists who boarded a ship six miles from the Port of
> Miami-Dade did not break the 1872 law, which requires the ship be
> "about to arrive." The ship was carrying some 70 tons of mahogany
> from the Brazilian rain forest. One lawyer remarked that the case
> brought against Greenpeace by the U.S. Department of Justice "must
> be woefully inadequate." Greenpeace director John Passacantando
> called the ruling "a victory for the American tradition of peaceful
> protest" but warned the case "showed the extent to which the
> government will go to criminalize free speech."
>SOURCE: Miami Herald, May 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085025603
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085025603
>
>13. UTTERLY OUT OF FAVOR
>http://counterpunch.org/chalabi05202004.html
> "In dawn raids today, American troops surrounded Ahmed Chalabi's
> headquarters and home in Baghdad, put a gun to his head, arrested
> two of his aides, and seized documents," Andrew Cockburn writes.
> "Only five months ago, Chalabi was a guest of honor sitting right
> behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union. What brought about
> this astonishing fall from grace of the man who helped provide the
> faked intelligence that justified last year's war?" According to
> Newsweek, "Bush administration officials say the latest
> intelligence indicates [Chalabi] may have been supplying the
> Iranians with information on U.S. security operations in Iraq that
> could 'get people killed.'" Chalabi later said the U.S. must leave
> Iraq: "Let my people go. ... It is time for the Iraqi people to run
> their affairs."
>SOURCE: CounterPunch, May 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085025602
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085025602
>
>14. CRUDE WARNINGS
>http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25186/story.htm
> High gas prices are drawing politicians' attention. "Democratic
> proposals range from a temporary halt in shipments to it to
> releasing a portion of the crude" oil in the 660 million barrel
> U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for some price relief, Reuters
> reports. But George Bush told reporters, "We're at war. We face a
> tough and determined enemy on all fronts, and we must not put
> ourselves in a worse position in this war. And playing politics
> with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would do just that." Instead,
> he urged Congress to pass the stalled energy bill, which activists
> call "corporate welfare in the guise of a national energy policy."
> Last week, U.S. climate change negotiator Harlan Watson said that
> the Bush administration's climate change policy was
> misunderestimated: "We need to get our message out better."
>SOURCE: Reuters, May 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085025601
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085025601
>
>15. GAO VIDEO "NEWS" REBUTTAL
>http://thehill.com/news/052004/medicare.aspx
> Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office,
> determined that video news releases (VNRs) touting the new Medicare
> law, which ran as news reports on some 40 stations, violated a ban
> on government funded "publicity and propaganda." The Hill notes,
> "VNRs are standard practice in the public-relations industry and
> local news reports often rely on them. ... However, the GAO said in
> its decision, 'our analysis of the proper use of appropriated funds
> is not based upon the norms in the public relations and media
> industry.'" O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes, "Video PR pros said many
> reports [of the Medicare VNR scandal] were off base or simply
> ignorant as to how TV news is produced ... [or] somewhat
> hypocritical, in that VNRs are simply video versions of written
> press releases, which are widely used."
>SOURCE: The Hill, May 20, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1085025600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1085025600
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
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