Hi your Interview articles are all due tomorrow. That's a reminder. I have a number of things to discuss in class and would like you to read the following articles and think about what they mean:
BIOTECH CRITIC DENIED TENURE AT UC BERKELEY
http://spinwatch.server101.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=312
Dr. Ignacio Chapela, whose research revealed contamination of native
Mexican corn with genetically engineered DNA, taught his last class
at University of California, Berkeley. Chapela was denied tenure at
Berkeley, despite "overwhelming support from his own department and
from his academic peers," GM Watch founder Jonathan Matthews
writes. Chapela had also been a critic of a $25 million research
deal between UC Berkeley and the Swiss biotechnology company
Novartis (now Syngenta). Chapela supporters believe he is being
retaliated against for his criticism of the biotech industry.
SpinWatch's Andy Rowell and Matthews exposed how Monsanto's Internet
PR company, Bivings Group, was at the very heart of the campaign to
vilify Chapela and his research.
SOURCE: SpinWatch, December 14, 2004
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3119
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DARK DAY FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20742/
"In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that
forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent
U.S. foreign policy â?? the Reagan-Bush administrationâ??s
protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of
the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s," Robert Parry of Consortium
News writes. Webb paid a high price for his "Dark Alliance" stories
written for the San Jose Mercury News. He was attacked by
journalistic colleagues and demoted by his paper, causing him to
quit. Despite CIA internal investigations that later validated much
of Webb's reporting, his career never recovered, and on Friday, Dec.
10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide. "Unintentionally,
Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had
become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the
mid-1990s," Parry writes. "Foreshadowing the media incompetence that
would fail to challenge George W. Bushâ??s case for war with Iraq
five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the
CIAâ??s confession from the American people."
SOURCE: Alternet, December 14, 2004
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3117
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THE MILITARY IS THE MESSAGE
http://nytimes.com/2004/12/13/politics/13info.html
Should "deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to
confuse an adversary" be adopted "for covert propaganda campaigns
aimed at neutral and even allied nations"? Last year, Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld accelerated "a plan to advance the goal of
information operations as a core military competency." Pentagon
spokesperson Lawrence DiRita said, "Where the enemy is clearly using
the media to help manage perceptions of the general public, our job
is not perception management but to counter the enemy's perception
management." Critics warn that the distinction between supposedly
truthful public affairs and psychological operations will be lost,
that "misleading information and falsehoods" intended for foreign
audiences "could easily be repeated by American news outlets," and
that "such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's
credibility."
SOURCE: New York Times, December 13, 2004
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3114
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SNEAKY PEET'S
http://www.cmomagazine.com/read/120104/under-the-radar.html
"Four years ago, Tom Duganâ??s company did some work for Peetâ??s
Coffee & Tea by covertly plugging a Peetâ??s promotion online,"
writes Deborah Branscum. "Heâ??d love to share the names of more
recent clients, but none of them, he says, want to speak on the
record." Stealth marketing is growing both online and offline to
promote products ranging from martinis to cell phones to TV
programs. According to Shawn Prez of the marketing agency Power
Moves, stealth techniques are especially effective with teens. "By
the time the message gets out, they donâ??t even know theyâ??ve been
hit; they donâ??t know that theyâ??ve been marketed to. All they
know is that their interest has been piqued."
SOURCE: CMO Magazine, December 2004
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3110