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THE WEEKLY SPIN, January 24, 2007

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Jan 24, 2007, 11:38:40 AM1/24/07
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THE WEEKLY SPIN, JANUARY 24, 2007

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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. NEWS RELEASE -- 'DEFEND THE PRESS' ORGANIZES TO SUPPORT REPORTER SARAH OLSON, SUBPOENAED IN COURT MARTIAL OF EHREN WATADA
2. As Nicotine Dose Increases, So Must Awareness of the Pitfalls of FDA Regulation
3. Attacking the Messenger: PR Executive Reveals "Radical" CMD Agenda

== SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS ==
1. Moore Delivers For Nuclear Waste Client
2. U.K. Food Labeling Scuffle Hits Screen
3. Political Mood Swings on Drug Industry Direct-to-Consumer Ads
4. Spin Doctor Outed As 'Health' Adviser on Guantanamo Prisoner
5. Leaked Documents Spur Investigation into Lilly Drug Marketing
6. Role Reversal
7. Venezuela and RCTV: Censorship or Broadcaster Responsibility?
8. Scientists Say UK Nuclear Waste Committee Was Rubbish
9. Hypocritical Talk
10. Staying on Message, Whatever the Question
11. Gazprom Plans PR Blitz
12. Want Your Own Educational Radio Station? Here's Your Chance
13. Hearings Planned on U.S. Propaganda Broadcasts

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== BLOG POSTINGS ==

1. NEWS RELEASE -- 'DEFEND THE PRESS' ORGANIZES TO SUPPORT REPORTER SARAH OLSON, SUBPOENAED IN COURT MARTIAL OF EHREN WATADA
by John Stauber
Contact: www.DefendThePress.org
Scott Goodstein, Defend The Press, (202) 256-8320
Sarah Olson, Free Press Working Group, (415) 298-5573
John Stauber, Center for Media and Democracy, (608) 260-9713
Email: Editor AT PRWatch.org
(Madison, WI) The Center for Media and Democracy announces
the launch of Defend The Press, a new coalition of journalists,
public interest groups, academics and citizen activists. Defend The
Press is asking the US Army to drop its subpoena of Sarah Olson, an
independent print and radio journalist based in Oakland, California,
in the court martial of Iraq war resister Lieutenant Ehren Watada.
Olson interviewed Watada in May 2006, and in June he announced he
would not go to war in Iraq, challenging its legality. Watada's
Army court martial begins February 5, 2007, at Fort Lewis,
Washington.
To read the rest of this item, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5668

2. AS NICOTINE DOSE INCREASES, SO MUST AWARENESS OF THE PITFALLS OF FDA REGULATION
by Anne Landman
The Harvard School of Public Health released a study Thursday
revealing that the amount of nicotine in cigarettes has increased
significantly since the major American tobacco companies signed the
Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in 1998. Predictably, Philip
Morris (PM), in a media release available at their web site, denies
the study results. The U.S. Surgeon General in 1988 warned that
nicotine is as addictive as heroin and cocaine, but these drugs
don't have decades of sophisticated R&D behind them aimed at
heightening their addictiveness. Cigarettes, among the most highly
engineered consumer products in the world, deliver nicotine into
more people's bodies more times every day than aspirin. Still, they
remain unregulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
To read the rest of this item, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5649

3. ATTACKING THE MESSENGER: PR EXECUTIVE REVEALS "RADICAL" CMD AGENDA
by Diane Farsetta
As reported yesterday on the website "Lasar's Letter on the
FCC," the president of the public relations firm KEF Media
Associates took rather strong exception to the Center for Media and
Democracy's 2006 Falsies Awards.
In an email to the Republican members of the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission, Kevin Foley alleged that CMD is a
"radically left wing anti-corporate group," and that we are,
shockingly, "enjoying [our]selves." Instead of providing
information or engaging in a rational debate, the email is quite
literally a warning to "consider the source of the complaints" filed
by CMD and Free Press with regard to video news releases, or VNRs.
To read the rest of this item, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5665

== SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS ==

1. MOORE DELIVERS FOR NUCLEAR WASTE CLIENT
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5667
The most recent pro-nuclear presentation by Patrick Moore, a
former Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant, was at the annual
conference of EnergySolutions. EnergySolutions is described by Salt
Lake Tribune journalist Judy Fahys as a "Salt Lake City-based
company trying to become the nation's - and perhaps the world's -
largest nuclear waste company." In his presentation, Moore argued
that there should be a massive expansion of the number of nuclear
power stations beyond the current 103 nuclear power stations in
operation. "We have to talk about 100 or 200 new plants in the
U.S.," he said. Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy
Environment Alliance of Utah is unpersuaded. "Patrick Moore is to
nuclear power what the Tobacco Institute was to Big Tobacco," she
said. "Nuclear power and reprocessing are no more promising
solutions for global warming than smoking is for leading a healthy
lifestyle."
SOURCE: Salt Lake Tribune, January 20, 2007

2. U.K. FOOD LABELING SCUFFLE HITS SCREEN
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5664
Multinational food marketing giants, including Unilever,
Coca-Cola, Kellogg and Danone have helped fund an $8 million
industry ad campaign to sway consumers to "know what's going inside
you"--but not necessarily to do anything about it. The United
Kingdom's Food Standards Agency, for its part, has begun promoting
its more activist "traffic light" approach to healthy and unhealthy
food with short TV spots. Omnicom Group has made the 30-second
industry ad, while WPP Group's United agency has created the
government's 10-second animated ad. Some food retailers are
supporting the government's approach, even though both labels are
voluntary given the European Union's control (and inaction) over
food labeling regulations. "If you put traffic lights on, even
low-fat cereals have a red light," complains a Kellogg spokesman.
The Children's Food Campaign has shown that about half the U.K.
population lacks sufficient math skills to understand the
industry-preferred "Guideline Daily Amount" system for nutrition,
which is much like the percentage daily requirements system mandated
in the United States.
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2007

3. POLITICAL MOOD SWINGS ON DRUG INDUSTRY DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER ADS
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5663
The $4 billion a year spent by the drug industry on
direct-to-consumer advertising promoting drugs is generating a
political backlash. "There's a lot of support for a ban on
direct-to-consumer advertising, and the Democrats know it," said
Gary Ruskin, Commercial Alert's executive director. Both
Representative John Dingell, the new chairman of the House Energy
and Commerce Committee, and Senator Edward Kennedy, the new chairman
of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,
have previously expressed concerns about drug industry advertising.
One proposal - opposed by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers
of America, the industry peak body - is that there be a two-year
moratorium on ads after a drug is approved. Reflecting the new
political mood, a forthcoming drug industry conference is
advertising a session: "How likely is a DTC advertising moratorium?
How can I build a product launch plan that will prepare for such
action?"
SOURCE: Indianapolis Star, January 21, 2007

4. SPIN DOCTOR OUTED AS 'HEALTH' ADVISER ON GUANTANAMO PRISONER
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5662
The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer,
recently sought to downplay concerns about the mental health of an
Australian citizen, David Hicks, who has been imprisoned in
Guantanamo Bay since January 2002. "A visit took place just a few
days ago ... and the report of that meeting was that he was healthy.
There was no suggestion that he was suffering from mental illness,"
Downer said in a radio interview. Downer refused to disclose who it
was that had met Hicks. The Australian reports that "the assessment
of Hicks's health was made by the public affairs officer at the US
embassy during a three-minute meeting on January 12 where Hicks
refused to speak." The official was Scott Weinhold. Downer claimed
that criticism of him for implying that Weinhold was "a psychologist
or some doctor with special qualifications" was unjustified.
SOURCE: The Australian, January 20, 2007

5. LEAKED DOCUMENTS SPUR INVESTIGATION INTO LILLY DRUG MARKETING
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5660
A U.S. federal court judge has extended an injunction banning
groups in the U.S. from adding a weblink to leaked internal
documents on Eli Lilly's schizophrenia and bipolar disorder drug,
Zyprexa. Despite the injunction, the documents have been distributed
around the world from websites outside the U.S. Lilly also has
problems on another front. The New York Times reports that "lawyers
from the consumer protection division of the Illinois attorney
general's office demanded that Lilly hand over marketing materials,
e-mail messages, and other documents with information about
promotion" of the drug. Vermont government investigators have made a
similar order. At issue is whether Lilly hid information on weight
gain and the associated risk of diabetes and also promoted the use
of the drug for patients who didn't have schizophrenia or bipolar
disorder.
SOURCE: New York Times, January 20, 2007

6. ROLE REVERSAL
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5659
During the struggle against South African apartheid, journalist
Alistair Sparks used to visit the United States to "have my
batteries recharged," inspired by "the idealism of the Kennedy
years, the civil rights campaign and all that followed." Now, he
writes, the roles have reversed: "My own country has emerged, albeit
still with many faults, as a beacon of racial reconciliation and
co-existence that gives me at least some sense of personal
fulfillment in my evening years, while my old moral lodestar, the
U.S., has slipped into an abyss of moral degeneracy, of political
lies and casuistry, of torture and cruelty and of a contempt for
human rights and human decency that violates your own supposedly
sacred Constitution. For me emotionally, it is as though the United
States has become the old South Africa." Sparks is particularly
dismayed by "the craven obsequiousness of the U.S. media" with
regard to the war in Iraq. "On my several visits to the U.S. in the
course of this war I have been disgusted by all the cheerleading for
your 'brave boys in Iraq,' the flagwaving and the craven desire to
be seen as patriotic that wiped out the journalistic duty to ask the
tough questions about why the war was being fought, who told the
lies, or even to portray the carnage that was taking place inside
Iraq."
SOURCE: Nieman Watchdog, January 16, 2007

7. VENEZUELA AND RCTV: CENSORSHIP OR BROADCASTER RESPONSIBILITY?
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5655
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez will not renew the broadcast
concession of Radio Caracas Television's (RCTV's) current owners.
Josi Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch called the decision
"clearly a case of censorship" meant "to punish a medium for its
opposition to the government." The Venezuelan government has faulted
RCTV's racy telenovelas as indecent daytime programming and says the
TV station actively supported the 2002 coup, which resulted in
several deaths. RCTV "encouraged the [2002] protests and, once
Chavez was ousted, celebrated his removal," reports the Washington
Post. "But when the interim government that replaced him began to
collapse, RCTV and other stations blacked out the news -- which the
government says was done to keep Venezuelans from rising up against
the coup organizers." Writing from Caracas for CounterPunch, George
Ciccariello-Maher says the non-renewal "is simply not about free
speech." Venezuela's "media responsibility law" is in line with
broadcaster responsibilities in other countries, he says.
Ciccariello-Maher also points out that RCTV "broadcasts will
continue," but its concession "will instead be granted to either
another private corporation, a mixed public-private corporation, a
collective of workers, or some other combination."
SOURCE: Washington Post, January 18, 2007

8. SCIENTISTS SAY UK NUCLEAR WASTE COMMITTEE WAS RUBBISH
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5654
Two scientists who served on the British government's Committee on
Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) but later resigned from it have
gone public with harsh criticisms. Professor David Ball and Dr.
Keith Baverstock accuse Prime Minister Tony Blair of "manipulating"
the CoRWM for "political ends." The CoRWM approved of underground
storage for high-level nuclear waste; the scientists say this
conclusion "was used to push through the Cabinet the decision to go
ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations." They also
expressed concern that four of the 12 CoRWM members had financial
ties to consultancies working for the committee. Baverstock warned
that CoRWM's compromised process "has resulted in continued and
unnecessary exposure of the public to the ongoing risk of
temporarily stored nuclear waste, surely a legitimate public concern
in this age of terrorism." Parliamentarian Alan Simpson said,
referring to how to handle waste from nuclear power plants, "No one
has a clue how to do this safely."
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), January 19, 2007

9. HYPOCRITICAL TALK
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5653
"Spocko," an obscure blogger living in San Francisco, has shaken
up some of the merchants of hate on right-wing KSFO-AM radio. For
the past year, he has been e-mailing the station's advertisers with
audio clips from its shows and asking sponsors to consider what
they're supporting. Some sponsors have pulled their ads, after
hearing clips like one of KSFO's Lee Rodgers suggesting that a
protester be "stomped to death right there. Just stomp their
bleeping guts out." Other controversial clips were from Melanie
Morgan, the chair of the pro-war group Move America Forward. In
retaliation, the station's corporate owner, ABC/Disney, threatened
legal action that forced Spocko to shut down his site (it's now back
up), while simultaneously accusing him of attempting to censor their
speech.
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 2007

10. STAYING ON MESSAGE, WHATEVER THE QUESTION
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5652
Elias Buchwald, a founder of Burson Marsteller, recently ran a
four-day training session for 17 high-level Israeli spokespersons
from government agencies. The session was organized by 5W Public
Relations, the American Jewish Congress and the Israeli Foreign
Ministry. "We want Americans to relate to Israel emotionally, not
just impersonally," Buchwald said. "The point should be 'Israel has
what you like' by using warm, evocative and colorful language."
Reporter Gary Rosenblatt summarized Buchwald's advice as "keep it
short, make it direct, and no matter what the question, know
beforehand what message you want to get across and stick with it."
The media consul at the Israeli consulate in New York, David
Saranga, described Israel's PR problem as being that "Americans miss
the human face of Israel, they perceive of us as militaristic and
very religious but they miss the lens of culture [and] education".
SOURCE: The Jewish Week, January 19, 2007

11. GAZPROM PLANS PR BLITZ
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5651
Gazprom, the Russian gas company that supplies approximately one
quarter of Europe's gas needs, is planning a PR and lobbying
campaign in Europe and the U.S. to improve its image, after it cut
off gas supplies to the Ukraine in 2006 and Belarus in 2007.
Kommersant reports that Gazprom Export, a subsidiary of Gazprom, is
negotiating with a consortium comprising the PBN Company, Hill &
Knowlton and the polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates
for a three-year contract worth $11 million. "In the West, Gazprom
is closely associated with the name of Russian President Vladimir
Putin and his political circle. The company wants to position itself
differently," an anonymous source said. The Kremlin is also
considering another PR and lobbying campaign to boost its
credibility in the West. Short-listed firms include Patton Boggs,
Hogan & Hartson, Weber Shandwick, Burson Marsteller, Barbour
Griffith & Rogers, Ruder Finn and Hill & Knowlton.
SOURCE: Kommersant (Moscow), January 16, 2007

12. WANT YOUR OWN EDUCATIONAL RADIO STATION? HERE'S YOUR CHANCE
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5647
"The Federal Communications Commission will accept applications
for new full power non-commercial educational (NCE) FM radio station
licenses sometime this year, perhaps in late spring," writes Carmen
Ausserer. "Typically, the FCC gives between one and three months
notice before opening the filing window, which will likely last only
five days." The process will end a six-year FCC freeze on new
full-power licenses. "The window is a rare opportunity for
non-profits and educational institutions," notes Ausserer.
Organizations including Prometheus Radio Project, Native Public
Media, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and Radio
for People Coalition are raising awareness about the opportunity and
providing information to interested groups. But "the FCC can only
accept applications for frequencies that do not conflict with
existing stations, which, for the most part, no longer exist within
30 miles of the largest 100 cities in the U.S."
SOURCE: Lasar's Letter, January 17, 2007

13. HEARINGS PLANNED ON U.S. PROPAGANDA BROADCASTS
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5646
As noted in a previous Spin, the U.S. government-funded stations
Radio and TV Marti will be broadcast in South Florida, in an attempt
to reach Cuban audiences. Since domestic broadcasts of U.S.
government-funded propaganda are illegal, Congressman Bill Delahunt
is planning hearings on the matter. Delahunt "is the ranking
Democratic member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' new
Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee," reports PR Week. "While
no definitive date has been set for the hearings, the nonpartisan
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics ... has called for the
Government Accountability Office to investigate" the broadcasts on
the Florida commercial stations Radio Mambi 710 AM and WPMF-38. A
spokesperson for the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, which
oversees the Martis and other government-funded media, stressed that
the Florida broadcasts are necessary to overcome "the jamming of
Radio and TV Marti" in Cuba.
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req'd), January 17, 2007

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