== SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS ==
\n1. The Formula for Deceiving Mothers Online
\n2. Washington, Will You Be Mine?
\n3. Lobbyists Do the Darndest Things
\n4. Indonesia, Will You Be Mine?
\n5. The ExxonMobil Protection Agency
\n6. Indigenous Matters
\n7. Ecomagine That: GE Campaign Not So Green
\n8. More Nuclear Spin, in the U.S. and UK
\n9. Busting an Energy Lobby Front Group
\n10. Conservative Media Bias
\n11. Democracy Now! Looks at Pro-War PR, From Freedom’s Watch to Petraeus
\n12. Perk Poppers<\/p>\n
——————————————————————–<\/p>\n
== SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS == 2. WASHINGTON, WILL YOU BE MINE? 3. LOBBYISTS DO THE DARNDEST THINGS 4. INDONESIA, WILL YOU BE MINE? 5. THE EXXONMOBIL PROTECTION AGENCY 6. INDIGENOUS MATTERS 7. ECOMAGINE THAT: GE CAMPAIGN NOT SO GREEN 8. MORE NUCLEAR SPIN, IN THE U.S. AND UK 9. BUSTING AN ENERGY LOBBY FRONT GROUP 10. CONSERVATIVE MEDIA BIAS 11. DEMOCRACY NOW! LOOKS AT PRO-WAR PR, FROM FREEDOM’S WATCH TO PETRAEUS 12. PERK POPPERS ——————————————————————–<\/p>\n The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to PR Watch, Spin of the Day, the Weekly Spin and SourceWatch are To subscribe to the Weekly Spin, visit: http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/sub<\/a> <\/p>\n CMD also sponsors SourceWatch, a collaborative research project
\n1. THE FORMULA FOR DECEIVING MOTHERS ONLINE
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6466<\/a>
\n\u00a0 Peggy O’Mara, the editor of Mothering Magazine, reports that “in
\n\u00a0 addition to the inaccurate information on breastfeeding” by the
\n\u00a0 media, the “marketing practices of the formula companies continue to
\n\u00a0 undermine breastfeeding.” She notes the existence of several
\n\u00a0 “stealth” websites “that appear to be grassroots advocacy sites, but
\n\u00a0 are actually mouthpieces for the formula industry.” One of the
\n\u00a0 websites, MomsFeedingFreedom.com, is campaigning against proposed
\n\u00a0 restrictions on the free bags of infant formula being given to new
\n\u00a0 parents by hospitals. The website, which was registered by the
\n\u00a0 web-based marketing company ENilsson LLC, is funded by the
\n\u00a0 International Formula Council and run by Kate Kahn. “A sister site,
\n\u00a0 Babyfeedingchoice.org, is licensed to Kellen Communications, a
\n\u00a0 public relations firm whose clients include the International
\n\u00a0 Formula Council,” O’Mara writes. BantheBags, which supports a ban on
\n\u00a0 free samples, argues that the “sites use classic formula company
\n\u00a0 strategies, paying lip service to benefits of breastfeeding even as
\n\u00a0 they promote formula.”
\nSOURCE: Mothering Magazine, September\/October 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6464<\/a>
\n\u00a0 “The mining industry is confronted with a very challenging
\n\u00a0 environment,” said Kraig Naasz, the new head of the U.S. industry
\n\u00a0 lobby group National Mining Association (NMA). In response to
\n\u00a0 high-profile mining disasters, increased rates of black lung
\n\u00a0 disease, and concerns about climate change, among other issues, the
\n\u00a0 NMA will likely “dramatically increase its lobbying and advertising
\n\u00a0 budget.” Its overall budget will increase from $15.6 million for
\n\u00a0 2007 to $19.7 million for 2008. NMA’s two political action
\n\u00a0 committees, CoalPAC and MinePAC, “are moving towards a more even
\n\u00a0 split” between the two major parties, after years of giving nearly
\n\u00a0 90 percent of its PAC money to Republicans. NAM is also “looking to
\n\u00a0 add a Democratic consultant to its list of outside lobbyists,” which
\n\u00a0 includes the Alpine Group and the Nickles Group. NAM is also hiring
\n\u00a0 four more in-house lobbyists and “two additional regulatory
\n\u00a0 experts.” Among other bills, NAM opposes the Miller-Rahall bill,
\n\u00a0 which would strengthen safety regulations and “apply royalty fees to
\n\u00a0 hard rock-mining operations” on federal lands.
\nSOURCE: The Hill (Washington DC), September 18, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6462<\/a>
\n\u00a0 “Lobbyists for a business group close to the crooked government of
\n\u00a0 Azerbaijan have scheduled what looks to be” a National Press Club
\n\u00a0 event for a front group, according to Harper’s Ken Silverstein. The
\n\u00a0 event features members of the “Association for Civil Society
\n\u00a0 Development in Azerbaijan” (ACSDA), and was organized by the
\n\u00a0 lobbying firm Bob Lawrence & Associates. The firm, according to
\n\u00a0 Silverstein, “promotes the interests of President Ilham Aliyev but
\n\u00a0 is paid by a cut-out: Renaissance Associates, a pro-government
\n\u00a0 business group based in Baku, the Azeri capital.” ACSDA has
\n\u00a0 conducted polls purporting to show more support for President
\n\u00a0 Aliyev, more political freedom, and less concern with corruption
\n\u00a0 than independent polls have found. ACSDA vice-president Vali
\n\u00a0 Alibayov, who’s heading the delegation to the U.S., is also a member
\n\u00a0 of the International Association for Public Relations. A 2006
\n\u00a0 lobbying report lists defense, foreign relations, oil & gas
\n\u00a0 pipelines, tourism and trade as the issues that Bob Lawrence &
\n\u00a0 Associates lobbied on for Azerbaijan, on behalf of Renaissance
\n\u00a0 Associates.
\nSOURCE: Harper’s magazine, September 17, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6461<\/a>
\n\u00a0 David Case reports on Rick Ness, an employee of the Colorado-based
\n\u00a0 Newmont Mining Corporation who the Indonesian government has accused
\n\u00a0 of dumping dangerous waste into a shallow bay in Sulawesi. “Since
\n\u00a0 2004,” Case writes, Ness “has waged a full-time PR and legal
\n\u00a0 campaign to clear his name, with Newmont backing him up at a burn
\n\u00a0 rate of up to $1 million a month.” When an infant’s death was blamed
\n\u00a0 on the pollution, Ness and Newmont employed “textbook crisis
\n\u00a0 communication. Ness did media interviews and spoke before
\n\u00a0 sympathetic audiences such as the American Chamber of Commerce. He
\n\u00a0 mocked the [Indonesian] government’s evidence as ‘junk science.’ He
\n\u00a0 extolled studies that he said supported the company’s argument —
\n\u00a0 one conducted by the Australian lab CSIRO (and funded by Newmont).
\n\u00a0 … Meanwhile, Newmont threw its full legal weight at the critics,”
\n\u00a0 including independent and government scientists. Ness was acquitted
\n\u00a0 by a provincial court, but the case is now before Indonesia’s
\n\u00a0 Supreme Court.
\nSOURCE: Mother Jones, September 10, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6459<\/a>
\n\u00a0 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowed an ExxonMobil
\n\u00a0 employee “to peer review the science behind the agency’s proposal to
\n\u00a0 deregulate incineration of some industrial by-products,” reports
\n\u00a0 Integrity in Science, a project of the Center for Science in the
\n\u00a0 Public Interest. The peer review was overseen by an EPA contractor,
\n\u00a0 Syracuse Research Corporation (SRC). The ExxonMobil employee, Thomas
\n\u00a0 Parkerton, told SRC that his “current employer (and the chemical
\n\u00a0 industry in general) would benefit from” the proposed rule, yet he
\n\u00a0 was allowed to review it, in an apparent breach of EPA guidelines.
\n\u00a0 The rule would allow more than 107,000 tons of hazardous waste
\n\u00a0 burned annually in specially-designed incinerators to instead be
\n\u00a0 disposed of in industrial boilers or municipal incinerators.
\n\u00a0 Consumer and environmental groups decried the “undue agency
\n\u00a0 tolerance of conflicts of interest in its rulemaking process,” and
\n\u00a0 urged the EPA to “re-review the science and, if necessary, rewrite
\n\u00a0 the proposed rule.”
\nSOURCE: Integrity in Science, September 10, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6457<\/a>
\n\u00a0 Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, a Republican law firm with close
\n\u00a0 ties to the White House, has registered as a lobbyist on the issue
\n\u00a0 of registering the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians in California as
\n\u00a0 a federally recognized tribe, but Jerry Reynolds writes in Indian
\n\u00a0 Country Today that it’s not clear “whether BGR is lobbying for or
\n\u00a0 against Juaneno recognition,” and it’s also not clear who is paying
\n\u00a0 them. “A third question is the extent to which prospective gaming
\n\u00a0 revenues drive BGR’s commitment,” Reynolds writes, “because
\n\u00a0 ancestral Juaneno territory in current Orange County, Calif.,
\n\u00a0 extends ‘a little into Los Angeles County,’ in the words of vice
\n\u00a0 chairman Fran Yorba. The Juaneno, if federally recognized as a
\n\u00a0 tax-exempt tribal government, are widely held to have potential for
\n\u00a0 drawing from the nation’s most populous untapped gaming market.”
\nSOURCE: Indian Country Today, August 24, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6456<\/a>
\n\u00a0 Two years into its “Ecomagination” environmental campaign, General
\n\u00a0 Electric “continues to sell coal-fired steam turbines and is delving
\n\u00a0 deeper into oil-and-gas production. Meanwhile, its finance unit
\n\u00a0 seeks out coal-related investments including power plants. … Yet
\n\u00a0 these limitations haven’t stopped GE from making a big marketing
\n\u00a0 to-do of its commitment to the environment,” notes Kathryn Kranhold.
\n\u00a0 “The primary focus of the conglomerate’s marketing efforts these
\n\u00a0 days is a $1 million-a-year campaign to publicize its search for
\n\u00a0 ‘innovative solutions to environmental challenges.'” As part of
\n\u00a0 Ecomagination, GE says it will sell $14 billion of “self-described
\n\u00a0 environmentally friendly products” in 2007. It also claims to have
\n\u00a0 reduced “its own greenhouse-gas emission by 4% between 2004 and
\n\u00a0 2006,” though GE does not count emissions from many power plants
\n\u00a0 part-owned by the company. Kranhold describes the discounted
\n\u00a0 emissions as “an unknown but unquestionably significant amount.”
\nSOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req’d), September 14, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6455<\/a>
\n\u00a0 “If we are going to seriously address our energy needs as well as
\n\u00a0 our concerns about global climate change, one source stands out —
\n\u00a0 nuclear,” writes Christine Todd Whitman in the San Francisco
\n\u00a0 Chronicle. It’s one of two recent op\/eds by the former EPA
\n\u00a0 administrator (the other was in BusinessWeek) that fail to disclose
\n\u00a0 that Whitman is a paid consultant for the Nuclear Energy Institute
\n\u00a0 (NEI). Patrick Moore, Whitman’s co-chair of the NEI-funded “Clean
\n\u00a0 and Safe Energy Coalition,” has also been busy, promoting nuclear
\n\u00a0 power in Michigan. “Nuclear energy is the key,” Moore told a Grand
\n\u00a0 Rapids audience. Meanwhile, in Britain, environmental groups have
\n\u00a0 dismissed a public consultation on nuclear power as a “public
\n\u00a0 relations stitch-up” by the pro-nuclear government. This is the
\n\u00a0 second consultation on the issue; Greenpeace won a legal challenge
\n\u00a0 against the first. Liberal Democrat Sir Menzies Campbell accused the
\n\u00a0 UK government of “making up its mind on nuclear power long before
\n\u00a0 this latest consultation had even begun,” reports the BBC.
\nSOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6454<\/a>
\n\u00a0 “Americans for American Energy,” a front group for oil and gas
\n\u00a0 companies, sent around an email incorrectly claiming that Wyoming
\n\u00a0 Governor Dave Freudenthal supports its agenda. Freudenthal, who
\n\u00a0 previously supported some “public education efforts” of AAE, told
\n\u00a0 the Casper Star-Tribune that the group’s recent email was “highly
\n\u00a0 inappropriate” and “contains a description of initiatives which I
\n\u00a0 wholeheartedly disagree with on a number of levels.” AAE opposes
\n\u00a0 environmental regulation of extractive industries, and the AAE
\n\u00a0 website attempts to link environmental concerns to terrorism. A
\n\u00a0 petition on its website states, “America is at War! And The U.S.
\n\u00a0 Naval Oil Shale Reserve is Under Attack! While Americans fight
\n\u00a0 overseas defending America’s access to vital energy supplies, we are
\n\u00a0 under attack here at home. Liberal lawyers and environmental
\n\u00a0 extremists are attacking the U.S. Naval Oil Shale Reserve, trying to
\n\u00a0 prevent America from producing American energy there.”
\nSOURCE: Casper Star-Tribune (Wyoming), September 13, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6453<\/a>
\n\u00a0 Media Matters for America, the liberal media watchdog
\n\u00a0 organization, has conducted a systematic study of the commentary
\n\u00a0 sections in U.S. newspapers. “The results show that in paper after
\n\u00a0 paper, state after state, and region after region, conservative
\n\u00a0 syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive
\n\u00a0 counterparts,” they conclude. “Sixty percent of the nation’s daily
\n\u00a0 newspapers print more conservative syndicated columnists every week
\n\u00a0 than progressive syndicated columnists.”
\nSOURCE: Media Matters for America, September 12, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6451<\/a>
\n\u00a0 Democracy Now! reports: “President Bush’s prime time address
\n\u00a0 before the nation tonight culminates a carefully orchestrated public
\n\u00a0 relations campaign to win support for the continuation of the war in
\n\u00a0 Iraq. The campaign began in August when a group called Freedom’s
\n\u00a0 Watch headed by President Bush’s former spokesperson Ari Fleischer
\n\u00a0 began airing pro-war television commercials. Then, President Bush
\n\u00a0 flew to Iraq for an unannounced visit where he met with Iraqi
\n\u00a0 leaders at a U.S. military base in Anbar province. On the eve of
\n\u00a0 Sept. 11th, General David Petraeus and Ambassador David Crocker
\n\u00a0 testified before Congress. Then they appeared exclusively on Fox
\n\u00a0 News in what the network described as a ‘briefing for America.’ To
\n\u00a0 talk more about the Bush administration’s public relations campaign,
\n\u00a0 John Stauber, founder of the Center for Media and Democracy and PR
\n\u00a0 Watch, joins us in Madison, Wisconsin.”\u00a0 To listen, click here.\u00a0 To
\n\u00a0 view the inteview on YouTube, click here.
\nSOURCE: Democracy Now, September 13, 2007<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/node\/6450<\/a>
\n\u00a0 Ben Goldacre, a London-based doctor and writer, was a little
\n\u00a0 “surprised” by a recent offer posted in an email on a science
\n\u00a0 writers’ mailing list. “It was from the Aspirin Foundation, a group
\n\u00a0 funded by the drug industry, and it was offering — on behalf of
\n\u00a0 Bayer HealthCare — to pay expenses for journalists to attend the
\n\u00a0 European Society of Cardiology’s conference in Vienna.”\u00a0 Goldacre
\n\u00a0 contacted some of his peers and discovered that it is “extremely
\n\u00a0 common for journalists to take money from drug companies.” Some
\n\u00a0 reporters dismissed the suggestion that such perks could affect how
\n\u00a0 they reported an event. Drug companies, Goldacre noted, “wouldn’t
\n\u00a0 pay for journalists to attend their events if they didn’t think it
\n\u00a0 would affect media coverage of their product. After all, a
\n\u00a0 journalist’s article is far more credible than a paid advertisement,
\n\u00a0 for anybody’s money, and more likely to be read by potential
\n\u00a0 consumers.”
\nSOURCE: British Medical Journal (sub req’d), September 8, 2007<\/p>\n
\nfurther information about media, political spin and propaganda. It
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\nprojects of the Center for Media & Democracy, a nonprofit
\norganization that offers investigative reporting on the public
\nrelations industry. We help the public recognize manipulative and
\nmisleading PR practices by exposing the activities of secretive,
\nlittle-known propaganda-for-hire firms that work to control
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