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THIS
WEEK'S NEWS
== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. Congress vs. The President
2.
"Vets for Freedom" Fight for Rove and Lieberman
== SPIN OF THE DAY
==
1. CMD's 'Fake TV News' Report Fuels FCC Investigation
2. Some Like It
Hot
3. Ben Santer Speaks (While "Global Climate Coalition" Slinks into History)
4. BP's Adman Got Suckered by His Own Scripts
5. The Blogs of
War
6. More Net Neutrality Front Groups
7. VFF Loves GI Joe
8.
Spinning an Iraq Oil Kickbacks Confession
9. Restless Drug Promotion
10.
McHummer
11. U.S. Spreads Its Diplomacy Around
12. Making Cuba Libre, for
Public Relations
13. PsyOps: The Other Middle East Air
War
--------------------------------------------------------------------
==
BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. CONGRESS VS. THE PRESIDENT
by Conor Kenny
About two weeks ago, on July 26, 2006, the American Bar Association
issued
a report condemning President Bush's use of "signing
statements." These
statements are essentially a "P.S." written
underneath his signature on a
piece of legislation that states how
he interprets and intends to enforce
the law. (This is part of the
Unitary Executive Theory.)
The ABA
is not happy about this. From the press release for the
report:
"Presidential signing statements that assert President
Bush¹s authority to
disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted
by Congress undermine the rule
of law and our constitutional system
of separation of powers... To address
these concerns, the task force
urges Congress to adopt legislation enabling
its members to seek
court review of signing statements that assert the
President¹s
right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress, and
urges
the President to veto bills he feels are not
constitutional."
The ABA asked and it shall receive: two days later
Sen. Arlen
Specter (R-Pa.) filed a bill that would allow the House or
Senate to
file a lawsuit to have the Supreme Court rule on the
constitutionality of signing statements.
Here's where Congresspedia
comes in. I called Sen. Specter's
office and confirmed that while the bill
has been referred to
Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee, there has yet to
be a hearing
and no other Senators have signed up to be cosponsors. So,
where do
members of the Senate stand on Specter's bill? Citizen
journalists,
help us find out.
For the rest of this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5078
2.
"VETS FOR FREEDOM" FIGHT FOR ROVE AND LIEBERMAN
by John Stauber
The
Republican lobby group Vets for Freedom is the 2006 equivalent
of Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican 527 committee whose
attack
advertisements in battleground states helped sink John Kerry
in the 2004
presidential race by smearing him as a phony war hero
and a traitor to his
country.
Vets for Freedom (VFF) made lame claims to be
"non-partisan"
when in early 2006 it first appeared out of the blue online
and in
op-ed pieces in the New York Times and other major papers and in
TV
interviews. An investigation of the group by citizen journalists at
SourceWatch and by the Buffalo News blew the VFF claim of
non-partisanship
out of the water. For instance, the Buffalo News
revealed in June that
former White House flack Taylor Gross, who
left Scott McClellan's office in
2005 to start his own PR firm,
represented VFF and pitched them to papers
as non-partisan
journalists who would embed for these newspapers and
report
accurately and cheaply for them from Iraq. Now the camouflage
has
fallen completely off. Vets for Freedom has registered itself as a
527 committee and is going to run a full page advertisement in
Connecticut's Hartford Courant on behalf of Joe Lieberman's renegade
run
for re-election to the US Senate as a 'stay the course in Iraq'
candidate.
For the rest of this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5077
==
SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. CMD'S 'FAKE TV NEWS' REPORT FUELS FCC
INVESTIGATION
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401006.html
The Washington Post reports, "The Federal Communications Commission
has
sent letters to 77 television broadcasters, asking whether their
stations
had properly labeled 'video news releases' ... before
broadcasting them.
... The FCC inquiry follows an April study by the
watchdog group Center for
Media and Democracy that found that 77
stations had aired video news
releases without properly labeling
them. ... The survey's 'fake news'
spots, as the center calls them,
were produced by corporations, such as
Panasonic Corp. and General
Motors Corp. and trade groups. ... '[T]he
investigation is really
important because otherwise stations won't take
seriously the
disclosure laws that are already on the books,' the
study's
co-author, Diane Farsetta, said in an interview. 'The current
practice is such a flagrant breach of the disclosure laws, we're
happy that
it looks like the FCC is putting some teeth in them.'"
The ongoing fake TV
news scandal is being widely covered in print
press such as Bloomberg,
Reuters, Ad Age and others. (Maybe TV news
outlets are waiting to receive a
VNR about the FCC investigation?)
SOURCE: Washington Post, August 15,
2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5087
2.
SOME LIKE IT HOT
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/boudreaux/s_465727.html
Numerous climate change skeptics have spent most of the two decades
denying
increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations were
anything to worry
about. Donald J. Boudreaux, the chairman of the
Department of Economics at
George Mason University and an Adjunct
Scholar at the Cato Institute, takes
a different tack. Referring to
a recent New York Times report on increasing
human longevity,
Boudreaux attributes the change to the economic
productivity of
"capitalism." Turning to climate change, he argues that
"it's a
perfectly legitimate stance for truly reasonable people to
conclude
that the best policy regarding global warming is to neglect it
--
and let capitalism continue to make us healthier and
wealthier."
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2006
For more information
or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5085
3.
BEN SANTER SPEAKS (WHILE "GLOBAL CLIMATE COALITION" SLINKS INTO HISTORY)
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2006/aug/policy/pt_santer.html
It "was one of the most vicious attacks I have ever seen on the
integrity
of a scientist," says one scientist on how the energy
industry used to
treat federal global climate expert Ben Santer.
Santer's "heresy" was a
1995 report, known as the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Second Assessment and the following
words: "The balance of evidence
suggests a discernible human
influence on global climate." At that time,
more than 70 groups from
the American Petroleum Institute to Union Carbide,
painted their
target (and rhetoric) on Santer. The Global Climate Coalition
set an
early standard for front groups and astroturf, and accused Santer
of
"scientific cleansing" when the world was reeling from Bosnia's
"ethnic cleansing." Now the GCC is defunct and Santer's work has
been
afffirmed by sophisticated new testing, models and technology.
Santer
reflects: "I was a messenger bearing news that some very
powerful people
did not want to hear. So they went after the
messenger. ... I just happened
to get in the way and had to be
discredited." Today, says Santer, "All of
us--policymakers, public,
media, and scientists--have important roles in
[climate change]
debate. Let's hope it takes place sooner rather than
later."
SOURCE: Environmental Science & Technology Online News, August 9,
2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5083
4.
BP'S ADMAN GOT SUCKERED BY HIS OWN SCRIPTS
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/opinion/14kenney.html
BP is the most successful oil company at greenwashing its own image.
Unfortunately for BP, the recent news about its massive oil leak in
Alaska
and the shutting down of its corrosive pipelines have
revealed the truth --
it really is all about oil profits. In the New
York Times , a BP adman
admits that even he was suckered. John
Kenney writes, "Six years ago I
helped create BP¹s current
advertising campaign, the man-in-the-street
television commercials.
I can¹t take credit for changing the company¹s name
from
'British Petroleum' to 'beyond petroleum' (lower case is cooler);
my
boss at the time came up with it. ... I believed wholeheartedly in
BP¹s message, that we could go -- or at least work toward going --
beyond
petroleum." Now Kenney sees it differently: "They didn¹t go
beyond
petroleum. They are petroleum."
SOURCE: New York Times, August 14,
2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5082
5.
THE BLOGS OF WAR
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/08/10/Blogging/
Amid the growing media attention surrounding the
Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah
conflict in the Middle East, dozens of
independent blogs are providing
eyewitness accounts and describing
what life is like in the middle of a
war. Crawford Kilian offers a
rundown of a number of blogs whose views
range from pro-Hezbollah to
pro-Israel. According to Lisa Goldman, the war
in Lebanon may be
"the first conflict to be blogged from day one" and "the
first time
that residents of 'enemy' countries engaged in an ongoing
conversation while missiles were falling."
SOURCE: The Tyee (Canada), August
14, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5081
6.
MORE NET NEUTRALITY FRONT GROUPS
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=2007877&auid=1871905
Back in March, Common Cause released "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing,"
which
detailed the activities of nine groups masquerading as think
tanks and
public interest organizations when in fact they were front
groups for
telephone and cable companies in the net neutrality
debate. Now they've
added another five groups to the list: "For
example, Hands off the Internet
sounds like activists wanting to
protect the Internet. Actually, it's a
telecommunications
industry-backed organization that was spending $20,000 a
day on
television commercials aimed at eliminating long-standing net
neutrality protections so that telephone and cable companies can
maximize
profit and minimize competition on the Internet."
SOURCE: Common Cause,
August 10, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story,
visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5079
7.
VFF LOVES GI JOE
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB115517527587831779.htm
Vets for Freedom is a 527 committee managed by Republican public
relations
and political consultants, including Taylor Gross,
attempting to defeat
candidates who advocate an end to the U.S.
occupation of Iraq. The Wall
Street Journal reports that in
Connecticut, "An organization of mainly
Republican veterans of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is working with
Republican strategist
Dan Senor to boost Joe Lieberman's efforts to win
re-election as an
independent. Mr. Senor is working in an unpaid capacity
for Vets for
Freedom, which plans to kick off its pro-Lieberman push with
a
full-page ad in Monday's Hartford Courant that praises Mr. Lieberman
for 'integrity, leadership, and unwavering commitment to America's
troops.'
The organization hopes to run other print and radio ads in
the fall, and is
also planning on campaigning door-to-door for Mr.
Lieberman and holding a
public rally on his behalf. 'These vets are
grateful to Sen. Lieberman for
not letting politics compromise his
positions, and they wanted to express
that,' Mr. Senor says." Senor
previously did media work for the Coalition
Provisional Authority in
Iraq.
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd),
August 10, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story,
visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5076
8.
SPINNING AN IRAQ OIL KICKBACKS CONFESSION
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20084091-1702,00.html
Faced with a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the payment of
approximately
$A300 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's
government, in breach of the
United Nations' Iraq Oil-for-Food
Program, the Australian wheat trader AWB
Limited hired crisis
management guru Peter Sandman to help it draft an
apology. The
Australian inquiry released e-mails between Sandman and AWB,
which
reveal that Sandman's proposed confessional statement was
watered
down by ABW's other PR adviser, Ian Smith from Gavin Anderson
&
Company. "The less you blame yourself, the more the public will
blame you. You aren't blaming yourself nearly enough in this draft,"
Sandman wrote in one e-mail. Sandman's original three-page statement
was
eventually pared back to only one page. However, AWB executives
decided not
to make a public apology at all. The inquiry resumes
public hearings in two
weeks.
SOURCE: News.com.au (Australia), August 10, 2006
For more
information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5075
9.
RESTLESS DRUG PROMOTION
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2300695,00.html
GlaxoSmithKline breached the British drug industry's own
self-regulatory
code of conduct by promoting ropinirole to treat
restless legs syndrome
before the drug had been approved for that
use. The Sunday Times reports
that GSK ran ads between September
2004 and November 2005 directing
sufferers to the website of the
Ekbom Support Group. The Association of the
British Pharmaceutical
Industry's complaints panel, the Prescription
Medicines Code of
Practice Authority, ruled that "GSK was, in effect,
directing
patients to a website that contained misleading messages about
the
safety of ropinirole, which might indirectly encourage patients to
ask their doctors to prescribe it." Some doctors have cited
"restless legs
syndrome" as an example of disease mongering, where
the prevalence of a
condition is exaggerated as a way of increasing
the potential market for
related drugs.
SOURCE: The Sunday Times (UK), August 6, 2006
For more
information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5074
10.
MCHUMMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/business/media/10adco.html?
During August, U.S. McDonald's is teaming up with GM to include a
model of
the gas-guzzling Hummer in its "Happy Meals." The New York
Times notes that
McDonald's "appears not to have gotten the message"
about rising petrol
prices. In an attempt to gain mainstream media
coverage for its "Hummer of
a Summer" marketing campaign, McDonald's
organised a lunch-hour parade down
Chicago's Michigan Avenue
featuring Ronald McDonald on the hood of a
Hummer. In support of its
promotion, McDonald's released an electronic
press kit, including
B-roll video footage for use by television stations or
websites.
Shannelle Armstrong, McDonald's U.S. communications manager, told
PR
Week that the company evaluates how "overall store sales are
affected when we do a push, and not just for Happy Meals."
SOURCE: New York
Times, August 10, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story,
visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5073
11.
U.S. SPREADS ITS DIPLOMACY AROUND
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115515302287431295.html?mod=hpp_us_pageone
"To make up for the diplomatic damage done by the Iraq war and to
try and
leave the U.S. better positioned to respond to -- and
possibly even
pre-empt -- conflagrations of the future," the Bush
administration is
trying to make foreign-service officers "more
agile and less hemmed in by
the high walls and bureaucracies of the
traditional embassy." Currently, "a
fifth of all U.S. diplomats are
in Europe, which contains about a tenth of
the world's population."
As part of the new push, "100 or so positions
[are] being moved from
European capitals to China, India and a few other
developing
countries." In Afghanistan, "senior-ranking diplomats ... work
on
democracy projects among U.S. military forces." In Indonesia, Egypt
and southern Sudan, the U.S. has "low-infrastructure, one-man
'presence
posts'"; similar posts are planned in Venezuela, India and
China.
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), August 10, 2006
For more
information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5071
12.
MAKING CUBA LIBRE, FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/miami/sfl-0807radiomarti,0,4268182.story?coll=sfla-news-miami
Following news of Cuban President Fidel Castro's illness, "the
United
States beefed up its television transmissions to Cuba ...
through its
Miami-based TV Marti station," reports Associated Press.
"The Office of
Cuba Broadcasting unveiled a new G-1 twin turbo
propeller plane, which will
increase the transmissions from one
afternoon a week to six." The 2006 U.S.
budget includes $10 million,
"to develop airborne TV broadcasting and
counter the Cuban
government's mostly successful efforts to jam the
transmission."
Cuban officials may crack down on satellite dishes, which
are
illegal, saying that "a good part of the programming ... is
destabilizing, interventionist, subversive." Castro's death "could
be the
first step toward ending the decades-long U.S. embargo and
opening the
country to U.S. corporate interests," writes PR Week.
"Most PR firms
interested in the Cuban market already have an idea
of what they will do
when Castro is out of the picture."
Burson-Marsteller's Latin America
president called setting up Cuba
operations "one of the biggest challenges
... but the opportunity is
there."
SOURCE: Associated Press, August 7,
2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5069
13.
PSYOPS: THE OTHER MIDDLE EAST AIR WAR
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800603_pf.html
"Cell phones and land lines across Lebanon have been ringing with
automated, recorded messages -- part of a propaganda war being waged
along
with Israel's assault on Lebanon," reports Associated Press.
"The Israeli
army has refused to confirm that is is behind the phone
calls. But few
Lebanese have any doubts." One call asks, "Who is
using you as human
shields?" Similar messages appear on leaflets
dropped by Israeli planes and
in Israeli radio broadcasts into south
Lebanon. The Los Angeles Times
reports that "during three recent TV
broadcasts, Israel has hacked into
Hezbollah's Al Manar channel. ...
The Israel Defense Forces had confirmed
that the hacking was the
work of the army's intelligence corps." Professor
Charles Harb at
the American University of Beirut called the approaches "a
classic
psychological ploy" meant to make Lebanese civilians feel closer
to
their government and more distant from Hezbollah.
SOURCE: Associated
Press, August 8, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story,
visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5068
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