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[eccr] The Weekly Spin, May 11, 2005

Mon May 16 09:18:01 GMT 2005


>THE WEEKLY SPIN, May 11, 2005
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>The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to
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>THIS WEEK'S NEWS
>
>
>== BLOG POSTINGS ==
>1. Why Armstrong Williams Wants Us To Forgive and Forget
>
>== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
>1. Job Opening for CMD Webmaster
>2. Media Training Booms in Middle East
>3. Fake News as Free Speech
>4. "Ecomagination": Beyond Electric
>5. Weird Science
>6. Pro-Nuclear Rhetoric Meltdown
>7. Avoiding Non-Combat (Not Non-Combatant) Deaths
>8. It's Her Lobbying Firm, Too
>9. Pop Music Propaganda
>10. KFC Tries Silencing More Than The Chickens
>11. One Small Step Towards Full Disclosure
>12. PR Firms Don't Grow on Trees
>13. Let the Lobbyists Soar
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>== BLOG POSTINGS ==
>
>1. WHY ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS WANTS US TO FORGIVE AND FORGET
>by Bob Burton
>   There's an old PR trick that if bad news can't be suppressed, its
>   release should be stalled until late on a Friday afternoon or just
>   before a holiday break. It's a trick that served the U.S. Department
>   of Education well when, late on Friday April 15, it released its
>   Office of Inspector General's damning final  report into the
>   $240,000 Armstrong Williams contract to promote the No Child Left
>   Behind (NCLB) legislation.
>        The strategy behind the late Friday afternoon news dump is
>   simple: most media outlets will be squeezed for space to cover a
>   late-breaking story, looming deadlines will ensure harried
>   journalists don't have time to get much further than the executive
>   summary, and by the time Monday rolls around, it will be seen as
>   stale news by editors with the attention span of a gnat.
>        Reading the 20-page report, which was prompted by Greg Toppo's
>   exposé on the Williams contract in USA Today, it's easy to see why
>   the Education Department wanted to bury it. The report chronicles
>   the deception, bungling and mismanagement behind the Williams
>   contract.
>For the rest of this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3632
>
>== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
>
>1. JOB OPENING FOR CMD WEBMASTER
>http://www.prwatch.org/webmaster
>   The Center for Media and Democracy is looking for a webmaster to
>   help develop its online activism projects, including the PR Watch
>   website (www.prwatch.org) and SourceWatch (www.sourcewatch.org).
>   Candidates should have a strong knowledge of HTML, PHP and MySQL, as
>   well as some experience with CSS. Experience in online activism and
>   fundraising is also strongly desired, and experience with open
>   source software including specifically Civicspace/Drupal and
>   MediaWiki is helpful. For a detailed job description, visit
>   www.prwatch.org/webmaster. Please send resume and letter of
>   application by May 27 to: CMD, 520 University Ave., Suite 227,
>   Madison, WI 53703; email (editor /at/ prwatch.org). No phone calls, please.
>SOURCE: Center for Media and Democracy
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3659
>
>2. MEDIA TRAINING BOOMS IN MIDDLE EAST
>
>   "Newsroom managers throughout the Middle East recognize the need for
>   improved standards among the region's journalists, and training
>   programs are proliferating," writes Gordon Robinson, director of the
>   Middle East Media Project, in the summary to his report "Tasting
>   Western Journalism: Media Training in the Middle East." (PDF)
>   Robinson finds that media training is turning into a "large and
>   growing business" paid for, in part, by U.S. funds, including the
>   Departments of State and Defense, the U.S. Agency for International
>   Development, the National Democratic Institute for International
>   Affairs and the International Republican Institute. Britain, the
>   European Union and Japan also support media training programs as
>   well as private foundations like John S. and James L. Knight
>   Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. "Some,
>   however, question the utility of it all. By some estimates as much
>   as $30 million was spent on media training in the Balkans and, by
>   some accounts, things are worse now than they were before the
>   well-meaning Westerners arrived. Moreover, the training environment
>   in the Middle East now involves many of those same players. So in
>   the Middle East, it needs to be asked when the money is spent, what
>   the trainees really will take back to their newsrooms," Robinson
>   writes.
>SOURCE:
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3658
>
>3. FAKE NEWS AS FREE SPEECH
>http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=237944&site=3
>   PR Week reports on the video news release industry's response to
>   Senator Byrd's one-year measure and the Truth in Broadcasting Act,
>   both of which require disclaimers for pre-packaged "news" segments.
>   The CEO of D S Simon Productions believes "the temporary amendment
>   was preferable to the permanent ban because it is tied to specific
>   spending." The CEO of Medialink said of the Truth in Broadcasting
>   Act, "I think this is a law written by people not in the
>   broadcasting or PR business," and warned that the legislation "could
>   limit free speech." The president of the Radio-Television News
>   Directors Association called the legislation "unnecessary," since
>   the "accepted standard is to clearly identify material from outside
>   sources." She also said that "government regulation of news content"
>   would be "unprecedented and unconstitutional."
>SOURCE: PR Week (sub. req'd.), May 9, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3656
>
>4. "ECOMAGINATION": BEYOND ELECTRIC
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050901169.html
>   General Electric began "heavily advertising" its "new company-wide
>   environmental initiative" called "ecomagination." Its goals are "to
>   decrease pollution from its products and to double research and
>   development spending on cleaner technologies." (According to Grist"
>   target="_blank">Grist, one TV ad "features scantily clad models
>   dusted with soot," as an announcer says, "Thanks to
>   emissions-reducing technologies from GE, the power of coal is
>   getting more beautiful every day.") The "ecomagination" launch
>   followed a year of "planning and packaging," and was assisted by
>   Edelman, O'Dwyer's reported. Some environmentalists "praised the
>   effort for having measurable performance targets" and addressing
>   global warming. The Sierra Club's Hudson River Program was less
>   enthusiastic. "When you scratch beneath the public relations
>   surface, I'm afraid they have unfinished business in terms of
>   environmental protection," said director Chris Ballantyn, referring
>   to GE's stalling on cleaning up PCBs that leaked into the Hudson
>   from its factories.
>SOURCE: Washington Post, May 10, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3655
>
>5. WEIRD SCIENCE
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1480279,00.html
>   "It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss
>   the evidence for climate change," writes George Monbiot. He traces a
>   claim by botanist David Bellamy, that the world's glaciers "are not
>   shrinking but in fact are growing." The World Glacier Monitoring
>   Service verified to Monbiot that "most of the world's glaciers are
>   retreating." Monbiot tracks Bellamy's claim to a self-published book
>   by a "former architect," then to a Lyndon LaRouche-associated
>   magazine, then to online mentions by climate change skeptic
>   Professor Fred Singer, the Cooler Heads Coalition and National
>   Center for Public Policy Research, among others. Singer cites a 1989
>   Science article, which, according to Monbiot, doesn't exist.
>   Finally, Bellamy misrepresented his faulty source, due to a typing
>   error. The UK Times also reports on bad science - a study funded by
>   Dow Chemical Company claiming their employees have "favourable
>   mortality patterns" compared to the general population, despite high
>   incidences of "an asbestos-related lung cancer."
>SOURCE: The Guardian, May 10, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3654
>
>6. PRO-NUCLEAR RHETORIC MELTDOWN
>http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1479279,00.html
>   As predicted, the British government has launched a post-election
>   push for more nuclear power stations. The Director-General of Energy
>   Policy advised incoming ministers to raise the issue now, as "it is
>   generally easier to push ahead on controversial issues early in a
>   new parliament." The Nuclear Industry Association is lobbying for
>   ten new reactors, "to combat climate change." The Independent
>   reports that one-third of the members of the British Committee on
>   Radioactive Waste Management "have serious conflicts of interest."
>   Four of 12 members are paid consultants to firms employed by the
>   committee. Yet, "Ministers recognise that to gain public support for
>   a pro-nuclear policy, they first have to resolve the problem of what
>   to do with existing nuclear waste." The New York Times reports that
>   nuclear energy will not reduce oil imports, as President Bush has
>   claimed, because less than three percent of oil consumed in the
>   United States goes towards electricity production.
>SOURCE: The Observer, May 8, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3653
>
>7. AVOIDING NON-COMBAT (NOT NON-COMBATANT) DEATHS
>http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=237943&site=3
>   Concerned at rising rates of soldiers' non-combat deaths, the U.S.
>   Army Combat Readiness Center hired two PR firms, Pario and Reingold,
>   to "sell" safety measures. The three-year, $800,000 campaign will
>   include "brochures, web teasers, and movie trailers to play in the
>   Army theater," as well as messages for "the Army's news and
>   television services." In its research, Pario found that "safety
>   messages don't resonate with young people who believe they are
>   invincible, but they are still concerned about the safety of their
>   peers." Pario's CEO said, "Don't let your unit down - that's what
>   resonates. It's safety, but we do it without saying safety." From
>   fiscal year 2004 to 2005, "aviation and off-duty ground accidents in
>   the Army have risen more than 17%."
>SOURCE: PR Week (sub. req'd.), May 9, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3652
>
>8. IT'S HER LOBBYING FIRM, TOO
>http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1115528661236920.xml
>   Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd
>   Whitman has opened a consulting firm, the Whitman Strategy Group,
>   "whose first client is a chemical company negotiating with the EPA
>   over the cleanup of arsenic-contaminated soil at a factory near
>   Buffalo, N.Y." The company, FMC Corporation, "is responsible for 136
>   Superfund sites across the country," "has been subject to 47 EPA
>   enforcement actions," and has, over the past seven years, "spent
>   more than $16.5 million on lobbying." Whitman hasn't worked directly
>   with FMC, but said she would probably help them "improve their
>   image" and gain "access to the people they need to speak to." Eileen
>   McGinnis, formerly "Whitman's chief of staff at the EPA," is "the
>   only partner at Whitman's firm who has worked with FMC" to date.
>   McGinnis called FMC "a good corporate citizen."
>SOURCE: The Star-Ledger (New Jersey), May 8, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3651
>
>9. POP MUSIC PROPAGANDA
>http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/3/peinVOA.asp
>   While U.S. propaganda for foreign audiences is nothing new,
>   questions of how to promote U.S. policy and polish the U.S. image
>   persist. Radio Sawa, a U.S. supported radio channel broadcast in the
>   Middle East, combines Arabic and Western pop music with news written
>   by Voice of America staff. "Itâ¬"s tough to independently assess
>   Sawa content from afar, but program summaries and interview
>   transcripts from the State Department help," the Columbia Journalism
>   Review's Corey Pein writes. "Sometimes, the questions asked by Sawa
>   correspondents are more revealing than the answers:
>      * "Can you please state what is our stated policy towards the
>   fence that the Israelis are building right now?
>      * "What is the U.S. going to do, in order to swipe away this
>   illusion and this fear of the Arabs and the Iraqis of something
>   called the 'U.S. occupation,' which is not really what the U.S. is
>   doing in Iraq? "Iraqis accustomed to road checkpoints and
>   house-by-house raids may not easily be convinced that they are
>   living through an 'illusion' of occupation. And whatever 'our'
>   policy is, 'fence' is a loaded term for the concrete wall snaking
>   through Israel and Palestine," Pein writes.
>SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3649
>
>10. KFC TRIES SILENCING MORE THAN THE CHICKENS
>http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30701/story.htm
>   Two members of the animal welfare committee of Yum Brands Inc, KFC's
>   parent company, resigned after being asked to sign a confidentiality
>   agreement which would have required them to refer all media
>   inquiries to KFC's corporate headquarters. Over the last three years
>   Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University and Dr. Ian Duncan
>   of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, have advised KFC on
>   improving animal welfare standards. Both objected to the proposed
>   agreement as amounting to censorship. "I feel very strongly that I
>   can talk freely to the press about how the program's working, what's
>   been going on with the program," Grandin told Reuters. Duncan said
>   that his reading of the agreement was that "If someone phoned me up
>   and said 'You are on the KFC animal welfare committee,' I was bound
>   to say 'No comment'."
>SOURCE: Reuters, May 6, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3648
>
>11. ONE SMALL STEP TOWARDS FULL DISCLOSURE
>http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=8378804
>   For one year, U.S. government agencies will be banned "from issuing
>   video news releases that do not clearly identify" the government as
>   the source of the footage. Congressional members "agreed to include
>   the measure in an emergency spending bill," which is why the
>   restriction expires after one year. The Truth in Broadcasting Act,
>   scheduled for a Senate Commerce committee hearing on May 12, would
>   make the ban permanent. The Center for Media and Democracy and the
>   media reform group Free Press urged lawmakers not only to pass
>   permanent restrictions, but also to ban the covert airing of both
>   government- and corporate-funded "fake news."
>SOURCE: Reuters, May 3, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3647
>
>12. PR FIRMS DON'T GROW ON TREES
>http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=522
>   The U.S. Forest Service "is weighing replacement of 100 of its
>   public information staff with private public relations firms,"
>   according to documents obtained by Public Employees for
>   Environmental Responsibility. The move is in response to "pressure
>   from the Bush White House to put more federal jobs out to bid by
>   private contractors in order to 'increase the cost-effectiveness of
>   Forest Service work.'" By June 30, the agency will review 100 of its
>   700 public affairs, communications and graphics positions, to
>   determine whether they should be outsourced. PEER's Jeff Ruch
>   warned, "Civil servants are under a legal obligation to tell the
>   public the truth while PR firms specialize in shading it." Last
>   year, the Forest Service's PR contract with OneWorld Communications
>   was criticized for, among other things, brochures deemed "very
>   misleading" by environmental groups that promoted increased logging
>   in the Sierra Nevada.
>SOURCE: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, May 5, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3646
>
>13. LET THE LOBBYISTS SOAR
>http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/042805/ashcroft.html
>   Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is opening a lobbying
>   firm, the Ashcroft Group, to provide "strategic consulting, security
>   and internal investigative services, and crisis counseling" to
>   countries, corporations, and industry and political associations.
>   According to a spokesperson, the new firm expects "to grow rapidly."
>   Ashcroft Group staff include David Ayres, formerly Ashcroft's chief
>   of staff, and Juleanna Glover Weiss, a lobbyist at the Clark &
>   Weinstock firm, where she "helped the Iraqi Governing Council's U.S.
>   rep on 'messaging'," according to O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Previously,
>   Glover Weiss was Vice-President Dick Cheney's press secretary. The
>   Center for Responsive Politics' Larry Noble said Ashcroft is
>   "clearly trading off the whole anti-terrorism and 9/11 aspect of his
>   being attorney general. ... I think he'll probably find it very
>   profitable."
>SOURCE: The Hill, May 1, 2005
>For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
>http://www.prwatch.org/node/3641
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Weekly Spin is compiled by staff and volunteers at the
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>Daily updates and news from past weeks can be found at the
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