---------------------------------------------------------------------
THIS WEEK'S NEWS
1. Al Iraqiya Fails To Be 'Independent' News Source
2. Ogilvy & Mather Charged With Bilking White House
3. Martha Stewart's PR Push
4. Meat Industry PR Scramble To Respond to Mad Cow
5. Sludge Slippage
6. Rebranding Bush
7. USDA PR Chief Flacked for the Beef Industry
8. Another Award for Bill O'Reilly
9. "Inside Baseball" from the Outside In
10. 2003 Spin of the Year: WMDs
11. Krugman's Resolutions
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. AL IRAQIYA FAILS TO BE 'INDEPENDENT' NEWS SOURCE
https://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=9508
The U.S. funded Iraqi Media Network was supposed to bring
"independent" journalism to a "liberated" Iraq. The reality,
however, is that IMN's Al Iraqiya radio and television station are
failing, according to CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee. The stations,
run by top CIA contractor Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC), seem almost irrelevant given the more popular
satellite news channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya and the common
criticism that "Al Iraqiya has no news. Just yesterday's
information." Working under Coalition Provisional Authority
guidelines, Al Iraqiya reporters are barred from reporting anything
that might incited violence. Many who worked for SAIC on the IMN
project blame the CPA for the network's failure. Veteran network
news foreign correspondent Don North called Al Iraqiya 'Project
Frustration' when he quit in July. "IMN has become an irrelevant
mouthpiece for CPA propaganda, managed news and mediocre programs.
I have trained journalists after the fall of tyrannies in Bosnia,
Romania and Afghanistan. I don't blame the Iraqi journalists for
the failure of IMN. Through a combination of incompetence and
indifference, CPA has destroyed the fragile credibility of IMN,"
North wrote recently.
SOURCE: CorpWatch, January 6, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073365201
2. OGILVY & MATHER CHARGED WITH BILKING WHITE HOUSE
http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0106om.htm
The U.S. has indicted executives from Ogilvy and Mather, a PR and
advertising agency, for participating in an "extensive scheme to
defraud the U.S. Government by falsely and fraudulently inflating
the labor costs that Ogilvy incurred" for its work on a media
campaign for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. According
to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, O&M's anti-drug media campaign work was part
of a five-year $684 million dollar project. The government claims
it was overcharged by O&M from May 1999 to April 2000. "The White
House, last month, decided not to renew O&M's anti-drug contract.
It will put the business up for review in a bid to improve
'transparency.' O&M can re-bid," O'Dwyer's writes. †
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, January 6, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073365200
3. MARTHA STEWART'S PR PUSH
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-stewart0104,0,1560047.story
"Weeks before a federal judge is set to open Martha Stewart's trial
on charges of obstructing justice and securities fraud, the case
already is being tried in the court of public opinion," writes
James T. Madore. According to Roberg G. Heim, a former Securities
and Exchange Commission attorney, "A very extraordinary aspect of
the Martha Stewart case is the amount of public relations efforts
that she and her team are making in an attempt to clear her name."
SOURCE: Newsday
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073331382
4. MEAT INDUSTRY PR SCRAMBLE TO RESPOND TO MAD COW
http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=198740&site=3
"Meat-industry trade groups were scurrying during the recent
holiday season to coordinate key messages and media lists as they
responded to reports of mad cow disease rearing its head in the
Western US," PR Week's John Frank writes. PR staffers at the
American Meat Institute and the National Cattlemen's Beef
Association, working with PR giant Burson-Marsteller, handled a
flood of media calls over the Christmas holiday. AMI's top
spokeswoman Janet Riley invited NBC News into her kitchen on
Christmas day to tape "her preparing beef for dinner in an effort
to demonstrate her faith in the safety of the beef supply," PR Week
reports. The US Department of Agriculture held daily press
briefings, which were followed by "technical briefings" for the
press held by NBCA. "Key message points the industry was stressing
revolved around the safety of the US beef supply and the extent of
efforts underway to track down how the disease reached US shores,"
PR Week reports.
SOURCE: PR Week, January 5, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073278800
5. SLUDGE SLIPPAGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/03/national/03SLUD.html
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has denied a petition from
73 labor, environment and farm groups calling for an immediate
moratorium on land-based uses of sewage sludge - a practice that we
exposed in our 1994 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. "The
rejection of the petition followed an announcement by the agency in
October, after five years of analysis and study, that it would not
regulate dioxins in land-applied sludge," reports the Associated
Press. "Dioxins are a class of organic chemicals that EPA studies
show pose a possible cancer risk in humans, but the agency said in
its October statement that the danger was minimal. The latest
announcements by the EPA come a year and a half after a panel of
the National Research Council, in a review the agency had asked
for, criticized what the council described as outdated science in
the agency's assessment of health risks from treated sludge used as
fertilizer." Just to show it isn't completely irresponsible,
though, the EPA promises to study the problem further and someday
may regulate 15 other toxic chemicals in sludge that currently
aren't on its watch list. Meanwhile the sludge wars continue at the
local level, with communities in Texas and Louisiana fighting
unbearable odors, groundwater contamination, and toxic pathogens
from sludge, while in Ohio, sludge critics are dismissed as "a lot
of kooks."
SOURCE: Associated Press and New York Times, January 2-3, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1073118824
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073118824
6. REBRANDING BUSH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1115313,00.html
"The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change
and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional
diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for
peace," the Guardian reports. The British paper writes that recent
signs indicate a shift from military action to diplomatic
engagement as seen in recent interactions between the U.S. and
North Korea, Libya and Iran. Washington analysts see this as an
election year strategy, acknowledging the White House finds itself
in a delicate situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, given
continuing violence and the glacial transition to democracy in Iraq
and Afghanistan. "With elections 11 months away, Mr Bush does not
want to be vulnerable to claims that he has presided over a
warmongering strategy that has left Americans little safer than
September 11 2001. His shift follows an established pattern in
Washington of politicians moving to the centre during an election
year," the Guardian writes.
SOURCE: Guardian (UK), January 3, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073106000
7. USDA PR CHIEF FLACKED FOR THE BEEF INDUSTRY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/opinion/02SCHL.html
Eric Schlosser, author of the hugely popular bestseller Fast Food
Nation, notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's PR point
person on mad cow disease, Alisa Harrison, flacked for the beef
industry. "Before joining the department, Ms. Harrison was director
of public relations for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association,
the beef industry's largest trade group, where she battled
government food safety efforts, criticized Oprah Winfrey for
raising health questions about American hamburgers, and sent out
press releases with titles like 'Mad Cow Disease Not a Problem in
the U.S.' ... Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal
agency more completely dominated by the industry it was created to
regulate. Dale Moore, Ms. Veneman's chief of staff, was previously
the chief lobbyist for the cattlemen's association." Meanwhile, the
federal government is failing to take the only steps that will
solve the mad cow crisis in America: a total ban on feeding
slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and testing tens of millions of
cattle. John Stauber says 'it's the cow feed, stupid!'
SOURCE: New York Times, January 2, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/January_2004.html#1073019600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1073019600
8. ANOTHER AWARD FOR BILL O'REILLY
http://www.pandagon.net/archives/00002229.htm
Bill O'Reilly, who famously falsely claimed to be the winner of two
Peabody Awards, has finally won something for real -- top spot on
Pandagon.net's list of "the 20 most annoying conservatives of
2003." According to Pandagon webmasters Ezra Klein and Jesse
Taylor, O'Reilly "had a hard time getting on this list. I mean, if
you take away the 'wetback' commentary, and the 'joke' that a black
boys choir was out in the parking lot stealing hubcaps, and the
lawsuit against Al Franken, and the embarassing performance at the
C-SPAN Book News conference, and the threatening to beat up the son
of a 9/11 victim, and the lying about where he grew up, and the
whole Peabody Awards thing, and the false 'Fair and Balanced'
promise, and the fact that he's a grade-A asshole that most
conservatives don't like, and the insistence that anyone who
doesn't appear on his show is afraid of him, and the faux-everyman
demeanor, and the continuing jihads against Jesse Jackson, rap
music, George Clooney, Al Franken, the United Way, Europe,
Hollywood, Bill Moyers, the entire American left, Canada and
PepsiCola, AND that he lies constantly about being a
conservative...well, he still belongs on the list, actually."
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072995815
9. "INSIDE BASEBALL" FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/01/01/inside_baseball.html
Jay Rosen thinks coverage of the 2004 presidential election is
shaping up as an exercise in "Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow!
Horse Race Forever!" In this time-dishonored tradition of political
journalism, reporters use sports as a metaphor for reporting on
politics, relying for insights on political insiders who have
learned how to spin the "race" as a game of "inside baseball." The
result: "An army of sentries encircles the game, guarding every
situation from which a glimmer of fresh truth might be allowed to
escape."
SOURCE: PressThink, January 1, 2004
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072933200
10. 2003 SPIN OF THE YEAR: WMDS
http://www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_terrorism/doc3672.html
The Guerrilla New Network has "picked†the
administration's†packaging and sale of the case for war based on
Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as our
Spin of the Year. The case has turned out to be so flimsy that the
administration has been forced to backtrack and deflect questions
about the still missing weapons. Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair
this summer that it was a 'bureaucratic' decision to focus on the
WMD, and even Rumsfeld has repeatedly contradicted specific claims
he made to reporters in the run-up to the invasion."
SOURCE: Guerrilla News Network, December 31, 2003
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072846800
11. KRUGMAN'S RESOLUTIONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/26/opinion/26KRUG.html
Columnist Paul Krugman is wondering if the news media will take its
job seriously when reporting on the 2004 elections and offers some
suggestions to reporters: "Don't talk about clothes." "Actually
look at the candidates' policy proposals." "Beware of personal
anecdotes." "Look at the candidates' records." "Don't fall for
political histrionics." "It's not about you." Although this is all
pretty basic advice, concludes, "I don't really expect my
journalistic colleagues to follow these rules. ... But history will
not forgive us if we allow laziness and personal pettiness to shape
this crucial election." Journalism professor Jay Rosen thinks that
Krugman "should be this year's Pulitzer Prize columnist" for "his
courage and relentlessness" but also thinks his advice is likely to
go ignored.
SOURCE: New York Times, December 26, 2003
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/December_2003.html#1072414801
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1072414801
Posts
