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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, Wednesday, September 1, 2004
Wed Sep 01 07:35:57 GMT 2004
>THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, September 1, 2004
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>sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
>further information about current public relations campaigns.
>It is emailed free each Wednesday to subscribers.
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>1. GCI Groups Does RNC PR
>2. Swift Boat Vets' Book Gets PR Help
>3. PR 101 - How to Slime a War Hero
>4. Gone Fishing for Publicity
>5. Keeping Jesus Off Camera
>6. Ghostwriters for Bush
>7. Auto Industry Front Group Opposes California Clean Air Proposal
>8. Block the Vote
>9. Press Conference From Hell
>10. This Song Is Your Song
>11. Media to Blame for Swift Boat Hype
>12. More Ads, Less Journalism
>13. Lower than Journalists
>14. Greenwashing Ford's SUVs
>15. Political Football
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>1. GCI GROUPS DOES RNC PR
>http://www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=4426&typeid=1
> "The New York City Host Committee for the Republican National
> Convention has retained GCI Group to provide on-site media services
> for members of the press throughout the convention," PR trade
> publication the Holmes Report writes. "GCI Group will be working
> from the James A. Farley Building, which will house 10,000 members
> of the media during the convention. 'The advantage of having the
> media covering the convention in one location is that it allows the
> Host Committee to provide excellent services to the press,' said
> Host Committee president Kevin Sheekey. 'Perhaps the most
> important service we will provide to reporters is the ability to
> access helpful information about the convention and New York City
> quickly and easily, and we are very happy that the GCI Group will
> be providing this vital service.'"
>SOURCE: Holmes Report, August 30, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093838401
>
>2. SWIFT BOAT VETS' BOOK GETS PR HELP
>http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0830novak.htm
> "Conservative columnist Bob Novak has touted the Swift Boat
> Veterans for Truth book Unfit for Command without revealing that
> his son heads marketing and PR for its publisher," O'Dwyer's PR
> Daily reports. The New York Times writes that Novak has "lauded"
> the book in his syndicated columns and on CNN's 'Crossfire.'
> "Unmentioned in Mr. Novak's columns and television appearances,
> however, is a personal connection he has to the book: his son, Alex
> Novak, is the director of marketing for its publisher, the
> conservative publishing house Regnery," the Times writes.
>SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub. req'd), August 30, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093838400
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093838400
>
>3. PR 101 - HOW TO SLIME A WAR HERO
>http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/19695/
> The Swift Boat attack on Kerry uses a classic [third party]
> propaganda tactic: have PR professionals [such as Merrie Spaeth]
> organize and launch a well-funded smear attack, an ad hominem
> barrage against Kerry's integrity, and do it through a front group
> with enough separation from the Bush campaign to pretend
> independence. Then use the right-wing echo chamber to keep the
> issue alive and churning, spitting plenty of mud and confusion.
> It's a strategy that is virtually guaranteed to hurt Kerry in the
> polls.
>SOURCE: Alternet
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093704619
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093704619
>
>4. GONE FISHING FOR PUBLICITY
>http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2004/08/27/fishing_ad/index.html
> Anglers on their way into the north woods of Wisconsin this Labor
> Day weekend won't be seeing one important message about the Bush
> administration's environmental record. This month Environment 2004
> tried to place an advertisement on two billboards along a Wisconsin
> highway that declared, "Mercury. It's what's for dinner. Served up
> by the Bush Administration." The ads were refused by the billboard
> company, Lamar Advertising of Central Wisconsin.
>SOURCE: Salon.com, August 28, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093665601
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093665601
>
>5. KEEPING JESUS OFF CAMERA
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/28/MNG4G8G43C1.DTL
> "Don't expect to see the reverends Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or
> Franklin Graham at the podium during next week's Republican
> National Convention, whose planners hope to keep fire, brimstone
> and the Christian Right offstage at Madison Square Garden. About
> the only big name Christians making prime-time noise at Madison
> Square Garden at next week's Republican gathering will be Third
> Day, a popular [pro-Bush] evangelical Christian rock band. .. .
> Some say the prominent role of Christian conservatives at the 1992
> convention turned moderate voters away from the Republican ticket.
> This year, President Bush's campaign strategists have made
> extraordinary efforts to mobilize conservative evangelical and
> conservative Catholic voters -- hoping the president's stand
> against abortion rights and same-sex marriage will get them to the
> polls and into the Republican column. But the four-day convention
> that opens in New York on Monday will highlight moderate
> Republicans -- such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and
> Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz."
>SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093665600
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093665600
>
>6. GHOSTWRITERS FOR BUSH
>http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000619873
> The Daily Kos recently uncovered an astroturf (fake grassroots)
> initiative by the George W. Bush campaign, which generated
> ghostwritten letters to the editor that found their way into at
> least 60 newspapers. This isn't the first time that the Bush
> administration has tried this trick, as we've reported in the past.
> According to Editor and Publisher, however, the National Conference
> of Editorial Writers (NCEW) is now taking the issue seriously. "On
> its NCEW e-mail listserv, some 600 subscribers who are mostly
> editorial page writers and editors, can alert one another of
> suspicious letters," writes Charles Geraci. "In fact, this is the
> most consistent topic on the listserv." Meanwhile, the Columbia
> Journalism Review's Campaign Desk critiques the Washington Post's
> coverage of the topic, showing how an "obsession with
> 'even-handedness'" led the Post to falsely claim that the Kerry
> campaign is doing the same thing.
>SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, August 27, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093579200
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093579200
>
>7. AUTO INDUSTRY FRONT GROUP OPPOSES CALIFORNIA CLEAN AIR PROPOSAL
>file:///Users/lauramiller/Desktop/Ad%20Firm%20Targets%20Emissions%20Proposal.html
> "A public relations firm with ties to the automobile industry has
> launched ads suggesting that a proposed California rule to cut
> carbon dioxide exhaust could cause more people to die in traffic
> accidents," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Starring 'Squeezy the
> Clown,' the radio and newspaper advertisements by the Sport Utility
> Vehicle Owners of America use humor to make a questionable claim:
> The regulation to combat global warming will compel auto companies
> to make smaller vehicles, forcing California families into
> diminutive cars and trucks that could endanger their lives. ... But
> SUV Owners of America is not a grass-roots organization. It is run
> by Strat@comm, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm whose
> clients have included General Motors, DaimlerChrysler and Ford, as
> well as the auto industry's two major trade groups."
>SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093492802
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093492802
>
>8. BLOCK THE VOTE
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33798-2004Aug25.html
> The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
> (NAACP) and other civil rights leaders say the Republican Party is
> mounting a campaign to keep African-Americans and other minority
> voters away from the polls this November. "In recent years, many
> minority communities have tended to align with the Democratic
> Party," states a new report cosponsored by the NAACP and People for
> the American Way. "Over the past two decades, the Republican Party
> has launched a series of 'ballot security' and 'voter integrity'
> initiatives which have targeted minority communities. ...Voter
> intimidation is not a relic of the past, but a pervasive strategy
> used with disturbing frequency in recent years. Sustaining the
> bright promise of the civil rights era, and maintaining the dream
> of equal voting rights for every citizen requires constant
> vigilance, courageous leadership, and an active, committed and
> well-informed citizenry." (We've reported ourselves on efforts at
> voter suppression in our latest book, Banana Republicans: How the
> Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State.)
>SOURCE: Washington Post, August 26, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093492801
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093492801
>
>9. PRESS CONFERENCE FROM HELL
>http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000810.php
> "I don't know what the news is from the rest of Iraq or even what's
> going on with the governor of Najaf," writes Chris Albritton, a
> freelance journalist who has been covering the fighting in Iraq. "I
> do know what's happening with the police department, however.
> They're raiding the Sea of Najaf hotel and rounding the 100 or so
> journalists at gunpoint and subjecting them to mass arrest."
> Albritton describes his recent experience, when police "raided the
> hotel and forced all the journalists out onto the street. We were
> terrified. The cops yelled at us and pointed their weapons toward
> us. Several large trucks were waiting and knew we would be loaded
> onto them. Then they started shooting. ... BANG BANG! They fired
> their weapons just over our heads forcing us to crouch." The
> reporters were hauled off to the police station, where they were
> treated to what Albritton describes as "the most bizarre press
> conference of my life." The police chief informed them that "The
> Shrine would be stormed tonight, ... and we would be allowed to get
> on a bus and go visit it tomorrow to see the damage the Mahdi Army
> had done to it. The Sistani protesters in Kufa were really Mahdi
> guys and they had to be killed. Oh, and thank you for coming."
> Albritton says the Najaf police are "like the old regime, only less
> disciplined. They're terrifying and they're the most dangerous
> element in this conflict. ... The police here have been engaging in
> a systematic intimidation of us for three weeks now. The governor
> of Najaf has reportedly threatened to jail journalists who don't
> write down exactly what he says when he says it in interviews."
>SOURCE: Back to Iraq, August 26, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093492800
>
>10. THIS SONG IS YOUR SONG
>http://news.com.com/JibJab+beats+copyright+rap/2100-1026_3-5322970.html?tag=st.pop
> Ludlow Music, a humor-challenged company that claimed to own the
> rights to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," has dropped its
> lawsuit against JibJab Media, the Web animators who adapted
> Guthrie's song to create a wildly popular parody of the U.S.
> presidential campaign.
>SOURCE: CNET, August 25, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093406403
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093406403
>
>11. MEDIA TO BLAME FOR SWIFT BOAT HYPE
>http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000851.asp
> While the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth may have a questionable
> grasp of the facts, it has been extraordinarily sophisticated in
> its manipulation of the media," observes the Columbia Journalism
> Review's Campaign Desk weblog. "To understand why this campaign has
> been hijacked by a small group of veterans bearing a thirty-year
> old grudge, it's worth examining the institutional susceptibilities
> of a campaign press corps that allowed the SBVFT's accusations to
> take on a life of their own. The SBVFT may have put themselves in
> the game, but it's a flawed media that made them stars. Campaign
> Desk has written many times about the perils of 'he said/she said'
> journalism, the practice of reporters parroting competing rhetoric
> instead of measuring it for veracity against known facts. In the
> wake of the first SBVFT spot early this month, cable news programs
> for the most part offered viewers two talking heads, one on each
> side of the issue, to debate the merits of the claims. Verifiable
> facts were rarely offered to viewers -- despite the fact that
> military records supporting Kerry's version of events were readily
> available. Instead of acting as filters for the truth, reporters
> nodded and attentively transcribed both sides of the story,
> invariably failing to provide context, background, or any sense of
> which claims held up and which were misleading. ... There have been
> dozens of press failures during this presidential campaign. But
> this one ... has to rank as a low point."
>SOURCE: Campaign Desk, August 25, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093406402
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093406402
>
>12. MORE ADS, LESS JOURNALISM
>http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11504
> "Continuing a twenty-year trend that has seen advertising expenses
> skyrocket as traditional political party organizing has fallen by
> the wayside, the total for political ads this election year is
> estimated by most industry analysts at over $1.5 billion, $400
> million of which will be spent by the presidential campaigns,"
> report Sakura Saunders and Ben Clarke. "Over the last 24 years,
> broadcast TV advertising alone has increased from $90 million to
> over a $1 billion. At roughly the same pace that advertising
> revenue has grown, broadcast TV coverage of substantive electoral
> issues has dwindled. Network convention coverage, for example, has
> fallen from around 100 hours in 1980 to approximately 18 hours this
> year."
>SOURCE: Corpwatch, August 25, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093406401
>
>13. LOWER THAN JOURNALISTS
>http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=554501
> Among the professions "less popular than journalism," notes Bill
> Hagerty, the "furtive world of public relations" is considered by
> many people to be "a black art, inferior only to child
> slave-trading or body-snatching." He cites a recent survey showing
> that British journalists hold PR people in especially low esteem.
> Nevertheless, he notes, "indications are that PR and publicists are
> becoming increasingly more influential and powerful."
>SOURCE: Independent (UK), August 24, 2004
>More web links related to this story are available at:
> http://www.prwatch.org/spin/August_2004.html#1093320002
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093320002
>
>14. GREENWASHING FORD'S SUVS
>http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0823-11.htm
> "The launching of the 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid this fall marks an
> auto industry first: the coupling of a hybrid electric engine,
> containing the most energy-efficient fuel system available, with an
> SUV, the least efficient class of passenger vehicle," writes
> Geoffrey Johnson. The Escape Hybrid won't do much to improve the
> environment, and Ford isn't expected to make money on it either.
> Johnson concludes that Ford, which has the worst fleetwide fuel
> economy of any major U.S. auto manufacturer, is engaged in "a
> clear-cut case of 'greenwashing.' Ford hopes to mold a public
> perception that Ford has gone green, that the company is a model of
> corporate responsibility. ... In the end, the slick images and
> exaggerated claims of greenwashing by Ford and others divert our
> attention from the corporate-fueled environmental destruction
> taking place all around us. And that means that greenwashing, far
> from promoting a better world, is itself a serious environmental
> problem."
>SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1093147200
>
>15. POLITICAL FOOTBALL
>http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/writers/08/19/iraq/
> Iraqi soccer players at the Olympic games in Greece are angered at
> the Bush campaign for using the Iraqi Olympic team in Bush's latest
> re-election campaign advertisements. "Iraq as a team does not want
> Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," said Iraqi
> midfielder Salih Sadir. Another player, Ahmed Manajid, had even
> stronger words: "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so
> many men and women?" Manajid said. "He has committed so many
> crimes." Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl interviewed the
> players. "To a man," he reports, "members of the Iraqi Olympic
> delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head
> Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi
> athletes and?was killed ?four?months?after the U.S.-led coalition
> invaded Iraq?in March 2003, is no longer in power. But they also
> find it offensive that Bush is using ?Iraq for his own gain when
> they do not support his administration's actions."
>SOURCE: Sports Illustrated, August 19, 2004
>To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
> http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1092888001
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
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