== 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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