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December 2002

November 2002

Friday, December 13, 2002

Who's the Real Fake?: Oh what a tangled web: "Two giant companies are struggling to shut down parody websites that portray them unfavorably, interrupting internet use for thousands in the process, and filing a lawsuit that pits the formidable legal department of PR giant Burson-Marsteller against a freshman at Hampshire College," writes Paul Hardin (the freshman in question). It all began when The Yes Men, a group of activist pranksters, began to impersonate representatives of the World Trade Organization and found that corporate lawyer types actually couldn't tell the difference when they gave speeches advocating vote-selling, banning siestas in Spain, and Nazi economics - or even when someone gave a talk wearing a golden leotard with a three-foot phallus. Now the parodies have begun to proliferate, with Dow Chemical taking possession of a fake apology for Bhopal, and Burson-Marsteller discovering that Hardin owns the domain name to bursonmarsteller.com.
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Thursday, December 12, 2002

State Department Seeks PR Firm To Launch New Mag: "The State Dept. is looking for a PR firm to promote a monthly Arabic language magazine that it plans to debut in the Spring," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The magazine will be targeted at Muslims aged 18-to-35 living in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. The International Information Programs unit, which is the result of the Oct. 1999 merger of the U.S. Information Agency into the State Dept., is handling the magazine launch." Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, December 12, 2002
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The Rendon Group Is Back On The Web: "The Rendon Group, which was hired by the Pentagon to a $100K a-month contract following Sept. 11, has re-launched its website after a seven-month hiatus," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The site heralds TRG daring-do in international hot spots, such as Kuwait (during Persian Gulf I) and Colombia." Other Rendon clients include Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Trade & Development Agency, The United Nations Air Intelligence Agency, Government of Panama, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Toyota Saudi Arabia, Bosnia & Herzegovina Privatization, and Zambia Privatization Agency. Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, December 12, 2002
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Talking Back to Talk Radio: "Setting aside the shrill and nonsensical efforts of those who suggest the corporate-owned media in America is 'liberal,' the situation with regard to talk radio is particularly perplexing: It doesn't even carry a pretense of political balance," writes former radio DJ Thom Hartmann. "Average Americans across the nation are wondering how could it be that a small fringe of the extreme right has so captured the nation's airwaves?" Hartmann examines the history of talk radio and suggests that the current absence of alternative voices creates a business opportunity that broadcasters are missing: "Those stations that take the plunge into progressive talk will serve democracy by offering a loyal opposition (which Americans always appreciate), and earn healthy revenues in an industry where it's increasingly difficult to find a profitable niche. And whichever network is first to realize this simple reality and provide stations with solid progressive or Democrat talk programming will build a strong, viable, and financially healthy business." Source: AlterNet.org, December 11, 2002
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Media Spin Can Separate War From Death: "A dozen years after the Gulf War, public perceptions of it are now very helpful to the White House," media critic Norman Solomon writes in his Media Beat column. "That's part of a timeworn pattern. Illusions about previous wars make the next one seem acceptable." Reminding readers that during Operation Desert Storm reporters in the Pentagon's press pool had to submit all copy and footage for approval by their military handlers before filing a story, Solomon quotes Patrick Sloyan, who covered the Gulf War for Newsday: "In manipulating the first and often most lasting perception of Desert Storm, the Bush administration produced not a single picture or video of anyone being killed. This sanitized, bloodless presentation by military briefers left the world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death."
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What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: The congressional Joint Inquiry into September 11 is recommending revising government information policies not only to promote information sharing among government agencies, but also to expand public access to government information, because ""an alert and committed American public" could be "the most potent weapon" in the war against terrorism. This recommendation, unfortunately, comes while the Homeland Security Act, recently approved by Congress, "sets up rules that restrict the flow of information to scientists and to the general public and may actually retard progress in securing the homeland." The executive and judiciary branches of government are also doing their part to keep secrets safe from public scrutiny, with a recent court ruling that blocks public access to the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. Source: Secrecy News, December 10, 2002
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News Director Resigns Amid Underwriting Questions: The news director of Philadelphia's top public radio station, WHYY-91FM, resigned adim ethical questions surrounding news underwriting. "WHYY's president and CEO, would not say whether [former news director Bill] Fantini's resignation was connected to a story in Tuesday's Daily News that raised questions about a series of stories that were aired earlier this year. The series of environmental news reports was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which in turn is indirectly paid for by taxpayers," the Philadelphia Business Journal reports. Source: Philadelphia Business Journal, December 10, 2002
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Agency Underwriting Slants News Coverage: The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection funneled money through a non-profit organization in order to underwrite environmental reporting on Philadelphia's leading public-radio station, WHYY, reports the Philadelphia Daily News. The radio stories were supposed to take "a solution-oriented approach" according to an agreement between WHYY's news director and GreenWorks, which received $466,000 from the state agency via a Washington, D.C., public relations firm. GreenWorks paid $93,830 to WHYY to hire a reporter, who was to work with the GreenWorks staff "to identify and plan the content" of his reports. "The bulk of the state money stayed with GreenWorks, to hire three other staff members who were supposed to help [the reporter] with his research and post relevant material at a GreenWorks Web site," the Daily News writes. "The reports continued until mid-October, when Gwen Shaffer, a former GreenWorks staffer and occasional on-air contributor to WHYY, prepared a critical, first-person account of the situation for the Columbia Journalism Review." Source: Philadelphia Daily News, December 10, 2002
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Sunday, December 8, 2002

"60 Minutes" Examines US Selling of War on Iraq: CBS's promo for its program says: "Politicians have had to sell the public on going to war since Colonial times, but they never had the arsenal of advertising and communications techniques the Bush administration is using to sell a possible war on Iraq. Bob Simon reports on those techniques and those employed by the elder Bush prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Simon reminds viewers that a horrible story spread widely by the first Bush administration prior to the Gulf War about Kuwaiti babies pulled from incubators by invading Iraqis turned out not to be true. The current Bush administration may be also misinforming the public in its efforts to justify a possible second war with Saddam Hussein. ... [Simon] also interviews a former CIA agent who investigated the oft-mentioned report that hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague several months before the deadly attacks on 9/11. Despite a lack of evidence that the meeting took place, the item was cited by administration officials as high as Vice President Dick Cheney and ended up being reported so widely that two-thirds of Americans polled by the Council on Foreign Relations believe Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11." Source: CBS News, Sunday, December 8, 2002
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BP Oil's $200 Million Greenwashing Campaign: The New York Times examines BP/Amoco, the world's second largest oil company, and its $200 million PR and advertising campaign to greenwash its image. It is an "enormous corporate rebranding exercise, shortening its name from British Petroleum to BP, coining the slogan "Beyond Petroleum" and redesigning its corporate insignia. ... in came a green, yellow and white sunburst that seemed to suggest a warm and fuzzy feeling about the earth. ... But ... BP remains an oil company, deriving the vast majority of its profits from the black stuff that -- from drilling rig to oil tanker to refinery to gas station -- scars the earth, pollutes the air and eventually warms the planet. And once the company tried to convey its new identity in billboard form, the contradiction only deepened." As reported in PR Watch, BP has greenwashed itself is by partnering with green groups including the National Wildlife Federation which allowed BP to decorate its gas stations with NWF toys and logos. Source: New York Times, December 8, 2002
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Saturday, December 7, 2002

Beers' Pro-US PR Offensive Employs Writers & TV Show: "The Bush administration has recruited prominent American writers ... in a campaign started after 9/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic interests. ... The Smith-Mundt Act ... bars the domestic dissemination of official American information aimed at foreign audiences. The essays can, however, be read on a government Web site intended for foreigners... ." The anthology is "complementing efforts by Charlotte Beers, a former Madison Avenue advertising executive who is now under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to sell the United States to often hostile Muslim populations. Her campaign includes Next Chapter, a television show broadcast by the Voice of America in Iran, a worldwide traveling exhibition of photographs of the ravaged World Trade Center site by Joel Meyerowitz, the distribution of videos spotlighting tolerance for American Muslims and a pamphlet showing Muslims as part of mainstream American life." The article on Next Chapter calls it part of "a new spin on old-fashioned American propaganda ... a multimillion-dollar public diplomacy campaign ... to soften anti-American feelings." Source: New York Times, December 7, 2002
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Washington Post Repeats Iraqi Baby-Killing PR Hoax In HBO Preview: Tonight's HBO movie "Live from Baghdad" has journalists repeating the false Iraqi-baby-killing scam perpetrated by Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990. That outrageous stunt before a make-believe congressional committee was part of a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign funded by Kuwait to make sure the US went to war. The crying teenage witness "Nayirah" seen in tonight's HBO film was actually the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. A year later journalists documented that her babies-thrown-from-incubators testimony was false, but most people still remember it as true. TV critics including Tom Shales of the Washington Post are giving the PR scam new life and a new spin. Shales writes that in tonight's HBO film "The horror wreaked on Kuwait is brought back vividly during a sequence in which [CNN producer Robert] Wiener and his team travel to Kuwait to investigate allegations that Iraqi troops had ripped babies out of incubators as part of their plundering -- remember? Too late, Wiener realizes that he and CNN have been duped by the Iraqis for propaganda purposes and that they were allowed into Kuwait only so the Iraqis could use them to help discredit the incubator allegations." But who was and is duping whom? Hill & Knowlton PR duped Shales and the rest of the nation back in 1990 and now tonight's HBO piece will reinforce that Big Lie. For the REAL story of the baby-killing PR scam read the on-line excerpt from our book Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. Source: Washington Post, December 7, 2002
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Cheerleading for War on TV, Resisting It Online: While Fox News and other mainstream media often seem to be cheerleading for a US attack on Iraq, an alternative media website is providing information, analysis and anti-war advocacy that is kept off the Boob Tube. Check out Alternet's Iraq News Log which says that "a unilateral strike against Baghdad is both unwarranted and potentially disastrous. This content file offers readers breaking news, the best analysis, activism resources, and timely information they need to resist this precipitous rush to war." Source: www.alternet.org, December 7, 2002
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Friday, December 6, 2002

Saudi PR/Lobby Firms Dodging Congressional Subpoenas: O'Dwyer's reports that top PR and lobby firms for the Saudis are dodging subpoenas from the Congressional Committee on Government Reform. Says the O'Dwyer website (now only accessible by subscription, but well worth the fee), "Michael Petruzzello, head of Qorvis Communicatins and Jack Deschauer of Patton Boggs, were not found at their offices or homes by U.S. Marshals, according to The New York Sun. A lawyer for Jamie Gallagher of the Gallagher Group stalled Congressional staffers until too late in the day for agents to serve a subpoena, reports The New York Post. The firms have claimed their documents are privileged under the Vienna Convention on Consular Records. Representative Burton (R-Ind.) is investigating cases of children born of mixed U.S./Saudi parents who were allegedly kidnapped to Saudi Arabia." Source: www.odwyerpr.com, December 6, 2002
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Qorvis PR in Turmoil Over Saudis, Three Partners Quit: "Saudi Arabia's latest public relations problem may be with its public relations firm. Three of the founding partners in the Washington firm, Qorvis Communications, have announced that they are leaving, and associates say their departure reflects a deep discomfort in representing the government of Saudi Arabia against accusations that Saudi leaders have turned a blind eye to terrorism. The firm, hired by the Saudi government in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, has been paid about $200,000 a month to help the Saudis bolster their battered image with the American public. The most prominent of the departing executives is Judy Smith, a former White House deputy press secretary who became the spokeswoman for Monica Lewinsky during President Clinton's impeachment ... . She and the other departing partners - Bernie Merritt and Jim Weber, two longtime Republican Party strategists - announced on Wednesday that they were leaving Qorvis to join a New York-based consulting and public relations firm, Clark & Weinstock. Spokesmen for the Saudi Embassy and Qorvis did not return phone calls for comment." Source: New York Times, December 6, 2002
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Thursday, December 5, 2002

Iraqis Killing Babies? HBO Recycles 'Nayirah' PR Hoax: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) warns that "the fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in 'Live from Baghdad,' the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. HBO and CNN are both owned by the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate. ... In the film, the story is turned upside down, portrayed as a deft public relations move by the Iraqi government, who grant CNN access to Kuwait in a calculated attempt to discredit the rumors that their soldiers were pulling babies from incubators. ... 'Live from Baghdad' is a dramatization, not a documentary, but it is being presented by HBO as a 'behind-the-scenes true story' of the Gulf War and is being released at a crucial political moment." For the REAL true story of the 'Nayirah' baby killing PR scam, orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton, read How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf from our book Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. Source: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
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Wednesday, December 4, 2002

The Dow of Satire: During the past two days, PR Watch received emails alerting us of an unbelievable press release from Dow Chemical. "DOW ADDRESSES BHOPAL OUTRAGE, EXPLAINS POSITION," read the release headline. "Many individuals within Dow feel tremendous sorrow about the Bhopal disaster," the release read. However, Dow has "responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible." The release directs people to the website "www.dow-chemical.com" for Dow's statement on Bhopal. But what readers were really being directed to was a clever spoof of the real Dow website. According to the straight-faced spoof, "Cleaning up Bhopal could open up Dow to greater liability than the moral weight of this issue can justify from a profitability standpoint. As we look at the situation today, few people outside of India really remember Bhopal, or that Union Carbide was at fault for the accident. Even fewer realize that Dow bought Union Carbide." The joke must not have gone over well at Dow, because at the time of this posting the site had been taken down.
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Drug Companies Profit from Deceptive Ads: "Some companies have repeatedly disseminated misleading advertisements for prescription drugs, even after being cited for violations, and millions of people see the deceptive commercials before the government tries to halt them, Congressional investigators said today. The investigators, from the General Accounting Office, said Pfizer, for example, had continued to make misleading claims in advertisements for its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, despite several letters from the Food and Drug Administration in the last four years. In a new report, the accounting office said that drug company advertising appeared to produce a significant increase in the use of prescription drugs, as well as higher drug spending. The report criticized delays in the enforcement of federal standards for the accuracy of drug advertising and attributed much of the delay to a recent change in procedure by the Bush administration that lengthens the review process." Source: New York Times, December 4, 2002
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'Tis the Season of Urgent Fundraising Appeals: Since its founding nine years ago, the Center for Media & Democracy remains the world's only organization dedicated to investigating and exposing special interest propaganda. In those nine years, we've published 36 issues of our award-winning quarterly, PR Watch. CMD staff members have written three acclaimed books and spoken to thousands of people in most states and many countries. We've conducted hundreds of interviews, from the smallest radio stations to the largest TV networks, and with newspapers including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Unfortunately, however, success in our mission does not guarantee our survival. On the contrary, it places greater demands upon us. That's why we hope you'll take a moment right now to visit our online donation page and send a contribution so that our work can continue. The Center has survived as a spunky, underfunded organization thanks to a small but dedicated staff. We refuse grants from businesses and government to maintain our independence, so personal contributions from people like you are crucial in funding our work. Source: December 4, 2002
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Tuesday, December 3, 2002

One Nation Under Fox: There's something "incredibly creepy" about Fox TV mogul Roger Ailes, writes Michael Wolff: "He looks the way you imagine the man behind the curtain looking: That is, he doesn't care about how he looks (which is, as it happens, gray and corpulent). He understands it's all manipulation." Wolff examines the techniques that Ailes has used to turn his right-wing network into a ratings phenomenon: "Fox is not really about politics (CNN, with its antiseptic beltway p.o.v., is arguably more about politics than Fox). It certainly isn't arguing a consistent right-wing case. Rather, it's about having a chip on your shoulder; it's about us versus them, insiders versus outsiders, phonies versus non-phonies, and, in a clever piece of postmodernism, established media against insurgent media. ... In the conventional-wisdom swamp of television, this passes for serious counter-programming. "
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The Fake Parade: Outside the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in August in Johannesburg, there were poor street vendors and farmers holding signs and wearing t-shirts reading: "Save the Planet from Sustainable Development", "Say No To Eco-Imperialism", "Greens: Stop Hurting the Poor" and "Biotechnology for Africa." The problem, according to environmental reporter and activist Jonathan Matthews is that the anti-environmentalist demonstration was organized by the corporations that environmentalist wanted to be held accountable. "The counterattack takes place via a contrarian lens, one that projects the attackers' vices onto their target. Thus the problem becomes not Monsanto using questionable tactics to push its products onto a wary South, but malevolent agents of the rich world obstructing Monsanto's acceptance in a welcoming Third World," Matthews writes. Source: The Freezerbox, December 3, 2002
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Monday, December 2, 2002

The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA: "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq," writes Robert Dreyfuss. "Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war." Much of the pro-war faction's information comes from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a PR front group established in the early 1990s by the Rendon Group. "But most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil," Dreyfuss writes. "The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else." Source: The American Prospect
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Colombian Journalist Gets Applause, But No Coverage: "Colombian journalist Ignacio Gomez told a roomful of America's most influential journalists Tuesday how Washington-supported Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is connected to drug traffickers and how U.S. military trainers helped organize a massacre in his country," reports Lucy Komisar. "Among the 1,000 guests at the Committee to Protect Journalists' annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria grand ballroom were NBC's Tom Brokaw, CBS's Dan Rather, Time-Warner's Walter Isaacson, Reuters CEO Thomas Glocer and executives and reporters from the nation's major TV networks, newspapers and newsmagazines. Gomez, 40, has twice gone into exile after death threats. The media 'stars' applauded him for his courage. But did they put his revelations into print or on air? If you didn't see the stories he recounted in the American press, don't be surprised." Source: American Reporter, December 2, 2002
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The Perils of Court Reporting: Bob Woodward's reporting on the Watergate story made him a journalistic legend, but his reliance on secret sources troubles Richard Blow. "Among journalists who care about nagging details like accuracy, there will also be the inevitable handwringing over Woodward's dubious reporting methods, the fact that he writes from a fly-on-the-wall perspective yet never identifies his sources," Blow writes. "Speaking anonymously allows people to say things that they don't have to be held accountable for, and without accountability there is no impediment to spinning, manipulating and just plain using the reporter." This is particularly evident, Blow says, in Woodward's recent book about President Bush, which paints Bush as "a wise, determined executive, a master at manipulating and motivating the world-weary Washington insiders around him, a visionary leader who wants to use the war on terrorism to effect world peace and the end of human suffering. ... You have to give George Bush credit for one thing. He was smart enough to figure out how to play Bob Woodward like a maestro, and now he has the hagiography to show for it." Source: TomPaine.com, December 2, 2002
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