== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. Profit Knows No Borders, Selling Gardasil to the Rest of the World: Part Four of the Politics and PR of Cervical Cancer
2. Bush’s Pro-War Front Group, ‘Vets for Freedom’, Rallies with Republican Senators
3. A Black Day for Yellow Journalism

== BE A CITIZEN JOURNALIST ==
1. New Participatory Project: Republican Senators on Iraq

== SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS ==
1. The State of Citizen Journalism
2. Pulling the Charity Lever
3. The Great Global Sceptic Swindle
4. When Publicists Attack
5. Dealing With Rupert Murdoch
6. Surgeon General Gets Specific
7. IraqSlogger Watches the Media

——————————————————————–

== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. PROFIT KNOWS NO BORDERS, SELLING GARDASIL TO THE REST OF THE WORLD: PART FOUR OF THE POLITICS AND PR OF CERVICAL CANCER
by Judith Siers-Poisson
       The three previous articles in this series have examined the
  Politics and PR of Cervical Cancer in the United States. This fourth
  and final installment will look at how Merck’s so-called “cervical
  cancer vaccine,” Gardasil, is being marketed in Canada, Australia,
  and New Zealand.
       CANADA
       As in the United States, Merck’s local subsidiary, Merck
  Frosst Canada, has lobbied aggressively for a government policy
  mandating blanket vaccination of young girls. Gardasil was approved
  in Canada in July 2006, and the first doses were given the following
  month. More recently, its National Advisory Committee on
  Immunization has recommended blanket vaccination for girls between
  the ages of nine and thirteen, with older girls and women also
  receiving “catch up” shots.
To read the rest of this item, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6263

2. BUSH’S PRO-WAR FRONT GROUP, ‘VETS FOR FREEDOM’, RALLIES WITH REPUBLICAN SENATORS
by John Stauber
       Vets for Freedom (VFF), the well-funded pro-war lobby group,
  is cranking-up its PR campaign on behalf of President Bush’s war in
  Iraq with a news conference held July 17th in the US Capitol.  A
  slate of pro-war Republican Senators including Mitch McConnell, Jon
  Kyl, Lindsey Graham,  along with former Democratic (now independent)
  Senator Joe Lieberman, all participated with Pete Hegseth and other
  VFF lobbyists.
       In June 2006, I reported that:
       Citizen journalists on SourceWatch have been investigating
  and exposing the many Republican connections and the partisan
  pro-war political agenda behind Vets for Freedom,
To read the rest of this item, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6262

3. A BLACK DAY FOR YELLOW JOURNALISM
by Sheldon Rampton
       Former media mogul Conrad Black has been convicted by a
  Chicago jury of three counts of mail fraud and one count of
  obstruction of justice and could face up to 35 years in prison for
  looting his former company, Hollinger International, of tens of
  millions of dollars.
       Before his downfall, Black was a smaller-scale version of
  Fox-TV owner Rupert Murdoch, building a media empire that he used to
  inject his right-wing views into U.S., Canadian, British and
  Australian politics. He pumped money into the pockets of the
  neoconservative pundits who helped sell the war in Iraq and gave
  them prominent voice in his own newspapers.
To read the rest of this item, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6256

== BE A CITIZEN JOURNALIST ==
1. NEW PARTICIPATORY PROJECT: REPUBLICAN SENATORS ON IRAQ
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6265
  As this item is posted the Senate is in an all-night debate (watch
  it here) over the Levin-Reed amendment to the 2008 defense
  appropriations bill, which would require President Bush to begin
  withdrawing troops from Iraq within four months and complete the
  transition to a much more limited mission by April 30, 2008. The
  vote at hand on Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning is to break a
  filibuster Senate Republicans are mounting to stop an up-or-down,
  majority-rules vote on the amendment. Democrats need 60 votes and
  that depends on the number of defections they get from within the
  ranks of the Senate Republicans. While several have made recent
  statements of support for a withdrawal timeline, pressure is intense
  on each Republican to stay within the fold and it is unclear how
  those statements will ultimately line up with their votes. Which
  Republicans have indicated they might flip? Once the filibuster is over,
  how many actually voted to end the debate and to pass the amendment?
  Have you seen a news story or heard about your own senators’ positions?
  Help us keep track on Congresspedia’s article on Congressional actions
  to end the Iraq War in a special section on Republican defections.
 
 If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can
  go to www.SourceWatch.org for more information.
SOURCE: Congresspedia’s article on Congressional actions to end the Iraq War

== SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS ==
1. THE STATE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6261
  Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media has written a
  thoughtful assessment of the current state of citizen journalism.
  “We’ve come a long way,” he says. “But we have a long, long way to
  go. We need much more experimentation in journalism and community
  information projects. The business models are, at best, uncertain —
  and some notable failures are discouraging.” He points to examples
  of citizen journalism in action such as the following:
  *the infamous “Macaca” video that helped lose last year’s election
  for Virginia Senator George Allen     *Placeblogger, which lists
  thousands of community-focused weblogs.     *Pambazuka News, an African
  podcasting service that calls itself a “weekly forum for social
  justice in Africa.”
  Gillmor also notes that some heavily-hyped efforts at commercial
  citizen journalism have failed, such as Backfence.com and Gillmor’s
  own Bayosphere.com. However, he adds, “The cost of trying new ideas
  is heading toward zero. That means lots and lots of people will —
  already are — testing the possibilities of new media. … So the
  R&D that the news industry should have done years ago is now being
  done in a highly distributed way. Yes, some is being done by people
  inside media companies, but most is not — and increasingly it won’t
  be. It’ll take place in universities, in corporate labs, in garages
  and at kitchen tables.”
SOURCE: Center for Citizen Media, July 15, 2007

2. PULLING THE CHARITY LEVER
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6259
  Tasmanian logging: Source: The Wilderness Society   A six-all vote by
  Launceston City Council on a motion expressing opposition to a
  proposed pulp mill has irked Gunns, the Tasmanian logging company
  pushing the project. Even though the tied vote meant the motion
  lost, Gunns director and former Tasmanian Premier, Robin Gray,
  phoned all six who voted against the mill. One of the six was Albert
  Van Zetten, who is also the chief executive of Launceston City
  Mission, which provides support to the homeless. Two years ago Gunns
  provided the charity with six months rent-free use of an empty
  warehouse and has also provided other support for the group. Sue
  Neales reports that Gray “threatened to axe or cut back Gunns’
  support” for the charity after Van Zetten’s vote. Gray did not
  respond to requests for comment but his wife told Neales that “we
  thought it was rather disloyal of him to come out now and criticise
  the pulp mill.”
SOURCE: The Mercury (Australia), July 14, 2007

3. THE GREAT GLOBAL SCEPTIC SWINDLE
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6258
  Martin Durkin, the director of the global warming skeptic film,
  The Great Global Warming Swindle, concedes that a graph he used of
  temperatures over the last thousand years ignores data from the last
  twenty years. In Durkin’s film the endpoint of the graph, produced
  by a British academic back in the 1980’s, is labeled “now”. Despite
  being condemned by scientists when it first screened in the UK, the
  Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast an edited down version
  and convened a post-screening discussion panel. In an interview
  ahead of the panel discussion, Durkin said that it was “absolutely
  absurd to quibble on when it finishes”. However, the
  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals a dramatic rise in
  temperatures in the last two decades. The rights to the film have
  also been bought by distributors in Germany, Canada, Spain and the
  United States.
SOURCE: Reuters,  July 13, 2007

4. WHEN PUBLICISTS ATTACK
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6257
  Gawker.com, a New York-based website that focuses on media news
  and gossip, has posted the contents of an email exchange between
  Ronn Torossian of 5W Public Relations and Richard Rubenstein, the
  son of PR crisis management guru Howard J. Rubenstein. The email
  exchange includes some general name-calling, with Torossian
  threatening to go to “war” over his complaint that Rubenstein is
  trying to recruit from his employees. Rubenstein responds by
  threatening to sue, adding, “I hope you have a qualified attorney
  and it will be expensive.” Torossian counters by promising to hire
  Rubenstein and his brother after he destroys their company. The
  exchange prompted scorn from gossip columnist Ian Spiegelman:
  “Lawsuit? Bosh! There isn’t one among the three of those Special
  Olympians who could withstand even twenty minutes of discovery.”
SOURCE: Gawker.com, July 6, 2007

5. DEALING WITH RUPERT MURDOCH
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6253
  Alastair Campbell, who was the chief media adviser for British
  Prime Tony Blair between 1997 and 2003, recently released a book on
  his reign as a spin doctor. In The Blair Years, Campbell notes that
  in 1995 former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating offered Blair
  some advice on how to deal with Rupert Murdoch. “He’s a big bad
  bastard, and the only way you can deal with him is to make sure he
  thinks you can be a big bad bastard too. You can do deals with him,
  without ever saying a deal is done. But the only thing he cares
  about is his business and the only language he respects is
  strength,” Keating reportedly stated. “They overestimate the
  importance of their support for you, but if you can get it, have it.
  If you are Labour, you need all the help you can get to win
  elections”.
SOURCE: Sydney Morning Herald, July 10, 2007

6. SURGEON GENERAL GETS SPECIFIC
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6251
  In testimony before Congress, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard
  H. Carmona accused the Bush administration on Tuesday of muzzling
  him on sensitive public health issues. According to the Washington
  Post this makes him “the most prominent voice among several current
  and former federal science officials who have complained of
  political interference. Carmona, a Bush nominee who served from 2002
  to 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
  that political appointees in the administration routinely scrubbed
  his speeches for politically sensitive content and blocked him from
  speaking out on public health matters such as stem cell research,
  abstinence-only sex education and the emergency contraceptive Plan
  B. ‘Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’
  ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored,
  marginalized or simply buried,’ he said. ‘The problem with this
  approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is
  nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of
  science for reasons driven by changing political winds.'”
SOURCE: Washington Post, July 11, 2007

7. IRAQSLOGGER WATCHES THE MEDIA
http://www.prwatch.org/node/6250
  Veteran Iraq war correspondent Chris Albritton has begun writing a
  regular MediaWatch column for the recently-launched news website,
  IraqSlogger.com. Recent columns have examined the amount of U.S.
  reporting on Iraq compared to other topics, highlighted the work of
  an Iraqi editorial cartoonist, and discussed a recently-uncovered
  memorandum by U.S. Marines discussing how to spin the killing of
  civilians in Haditha.
SOURCE:

——————————————————————–

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