In the news
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- Documents Reveal Intelligence "Fixing" Before Iraq War: Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush administration officials exaggerated what U.S. intelligence agencies were reporting about Iraqi weapons, according to Congressional investigations. But even before that exaggeration, the intelligence reports had been skewed by an administration eager for war, according to recently declassified documents. For example, the CIA's white paper on "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Program" was supposedly based on the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). But drafts of the CIA paper existed in July 2002, "long before the NIE was even requested by Congress." There are few differences between the early draft and final paper, mostly made "to insert more charges" about Iraqi weapons activities, "or to sharpen them. ... Little of the text shows the kind of approach characteristic of intelligence analysis."
- NCI: Tobacco Advertising, Smoking in Movies Contribute to Smoking Rates: Philip Morris and the tobacco industry in general have long insisted that cigarette advertising has no influence whatsoever in getting people to start smoking, claiming it only influences existing adult smokers to change brands. But this week the National Cancer Institute published an extensive, 684-page monograph that evaluates current evidence regarding the power of the media to both encourage and discourage tobacco use. NCI concluded that smoking in the movies causes more children to start smoking, saying "the depiction of cigarette smoking in movies is pervasive" and "the total weight of evidence ... indicates a causal relationship between exposure to depictions of smoking in movies and youth initiation."
- In Iraq, the U.S. Military Needs to Tell Its Story Better: The U.S. military is in the process of hiring a public relations firm, to help it carry out "information operations" in Iraq, "to counter insurgent misinformation tactics." The one-year contract may be extended for up to three years and cost up to $300 million. "Public affairs executives speaking on background said the contract has elicited a lot of attention from Washington agencies because of its potential size," reports PR Week, "but that firms with previous experience working in dangerous, high-security environments in Iraq -- such as Lincoln Group, The Rendon Group and MPRI -- would have an inside track on winning the bid."
- Have a Coke and a Greenwash: Coca-Cola wants you to think of it as green. That's why its public relations firm, Manning, Selvage & Lee, promoted the premiere of the soft drink company's film "Environmental Champions" at the Beijing Olympics complex. The film profiles the "environmental achievements" of seven participants in the Olympic Torch Relay, including "the first American male to ski to the South Pole." Coke "plans to leverage the ... film beyond the Olympics by making it available to field communications teams throughout the world."
- Merck Makes Science Sell: An analysis of Merck internal documents concluded that the pharmaceutical company carried out a clinical study of Vioxx in 1999, "primarily to support a marketing campaign before the drug's launch." Merck stated that the study was done "to test side effects of the painkiller Vioxx," which was pulled from the market in 2004, after being linked to an increased risk of heart attacks. The 1999 study compared Vioxx to the widely-used painkiller Naproxen, in order "to accelerate uptake and advocacy for Vioxx," according to the Merck documents, which were disclosed during litigation.
- Anti-Union Groups Run Orwellian Ads: The Center for Union Facts, one of lobbyist Rick Berman's front groups, is railing against the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would "allow employees at a work place to unionize as soon as a majority signs cards expressing support to join a union." Labor rights advocates say the bill is needed, because of employer intimidation and union-busting tactics. Berman's Center, as the "Employee Freedom Action Committee," says the bill would allow "union bosses" to "stand over workers' shoulders and use coercion." It's launched a $30 million campaign, including radio, television, print and online ads and "a substantial grassroots organizing effort."
- Yet Another Kind of Fake News: As more newspapers and other media outlets cut staff, public relations and advertising make gains. The Minnesota-based firm ARAnet provides "free print and Web content. ... More than 65 of the nation's top 100 newspapers, including the Star Tribune, use" ARAnet content, which "carries client messages." ARAnet president Scott Severson says his firm provides "high-quality consumer content" that "just happen[s] to be underwritten by our clients." ARAnet clients pay $4,500 for content creation, tracking and reporting; media outlets use it for free. One ARAnet article "offered to auto sections" was sponsored by Lexus.
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The Weekly Radio Spin
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Weekly Radio Spin: IndyMac Staffers Bank on PR: Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at sustainable greenhouse gas emissions, the politics of banking and those wily union bosses. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," how John Rendon waves the U.S. flag. Podcasters can subscribe to XML feed on http://www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!
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Recent blogs on PR Watch
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- Anne Landman reviews the latest bout of "pinkwashing", with numerous companies trying to boost sales by associating their products with the fight against breast cancer. See Pinkwashing: Can Shopping Cure Breast Cancer? (June 11);
- Sheldon Rampton scritinises the review of former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan's new book by John Stodder, one of the two former Fleishman-Hillard consultants convicted in May 2006 of multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud in a scheme to overbill the city of Los Angeles for public relations consulting services. See McClellan and the Ethics of Spin (June 5).
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Editor's pick of the week
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Mark J. Penn, the worldwide CEO of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller and former "chief Strategist" with Hillary Clinton's failed campaign to be selected as Democratic Party's nominee for President, is back in the news after The Atlantic Monthly published some of his campaign memos. In one Penn wrote that "a very strong weakness" for Barack Obama was that "his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values." Recently Penn has defended negative political campaign ads John McCain's likening Barack Obama to celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. "This year, you can expect a tough political season and plenty of negative ads. Done fairly, they serve a legitimate role," he wrote. |
Projects for citizen editors
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*Probing the Pentagon Pundit Documents: Remember the New York Times expose on the Pentagon's use of retired military officers who frequently appear as "military analysts" on television and radio news shows? The program was launched in 2002 to help sell the Iraq war, but soon expanded to other controversial issues. Most of the 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon documents used to document the illegal propaganda program haven't been analyzed or reported on. But now, thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy, those documents are now text searchable! Help us dig out the gems in the emails between Pentagon PR staffers, talking points and briefing transcripts. How did the Pentagon use the program to spin Guantanamo Bay or military operations in Afghanistan? Are John McCain or John Murtha mentioned in the Pentagon documents? What about Fox News or PBS? CMD has converted the Pentagon documents so that you can search them by keyword, and posted them on our SourceWatch site. Have a look -- some ideas to help you get started are here -- and post what you find on relevant SourceWatch articles.
- If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here and here. Hold onto your hat, have fun, and thanks for your help!
- And if you would like to work on something else, take a look at some of our earlier citizen journalism projects here. Have fun, and thanks for your help!
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Forums for communication
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- Join the Discussion: Forums for Communication on SourceWatch: The SourceWatch staff has created two forums for citizen journalists on SourceWatch to communicate with each other about what's going on in the site: a Yahoo group and a Community Portal. The Community Portal is a place where you can find announcements by staff and citizen editors, links to important policies and help pages and categories of outstanding tasks and projects identified by readers and editors, such as articles that need updating, expanding or fixing. The Yahoo group is meant primarily for sysops and other editors who are most concerned with the administration of the site and facilitating the contributions of the users, but both the group and the community portal are open to everyone to view and post. SourceWatch is only as strong as its community of editors, so please dive in and let us know what you think.
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Popular articles over the last week
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With the U.S. election primary season dominating news headlines, it is no surprise that pages on the 2008 Presidential election campaign are amongst the most popular pages over the last week. Heading the list are those on Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, the main campaign issues, Congresspedia's Superdelegate Transparency Project and the Economic Stimulus Bill of 2008.
Other popular pages include those on the Heartland Institute, a corporate-funded think tank which this week convened a meeting of global warming skeptics in New York; the article on Corporate Social Responsibility and the profile on the military contractor, Blackwater USA.
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What they're saying about SourceWatch
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"A truly impressive project based on cutting edge web technology." David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.
"The troublemakers at the Center for Media and Democracy, for example, point to dozens of examples of "greenwashing," which they defined as the "unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government or even a non-government organization to sell a product, a policy" or rehabilitate an image. In the center's view, many enterprises labeled green don't deserve the name.—Jack Shafer, "Green Is the New Yellow: On the excesses of 'green' journalism", Slate, July 6, 2007.
"As a journalist frequently on the receiving end of various PR campaigns, some of them based on disinformation, others front groups for undisclosed interests, [CMD's SourceWatch] is an invaluable resource."—Michael Pollan author of The Botany of Desire
"Thanks for all your help. There's no way I could have done my piece on big PR and global warming without the CMD [Center for Media and Democracy] and your fabulous websites."—Zoe Cormier, journalist, Canada
"The dearth of information on the [U.S.] government [lobbying] disclosure forms about the other business-backed coalitions comes in stark contrast to the data about them culled from media reports, websites, press releases and Internal Revenue Service documents and posted by SourceWatch, a website that tracks advocacy groups." Jeanne Cummings, 'New disclosure reports lack clarity", Politico, April 29, 2008.
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