Sheldon Rampton's blog

"Beyond the Phony 'Debate': Government Science and the Climate Crisis" will be one of the topics discussed at "Rejuvenating Public Sector Science," a day-long conference sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. It will be held July 11 at the Ronald Reagan International Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20004.Next week, I will moderate a panel titled "Beyond the Phony 'Debate': Government Science and the Climate Crisis" in Washington, DC. In case I needed any proof that the climate is important, last month's flooding in the Midwest gave me a personal look at what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was talking about last year when it warned of "an increased chance of intense precipitation and flooding due to the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere."

The photograph at right shows a road not far from my home in Portage, Wisconsin that was damaged during the floods. In Sauk County, just a few miles from where I live, officials estimated that 95 percent of the roads were damaged. The seven states where the flooding occurred are still trying to assess the cost of the disaster, but it is already clear that the damages will run into billions of dollars.

In Lake Delton, about 20 miles from Portage, the water broke through a dam, causing the entire lake (600 million gallons of water) to drain into the Wisconsin River, washing away several homes in its path. The Wisconsin River passes through Portage. Like other local residents, I spent some time at the levee, gawking at the rising waters and watching for bits of other people's homes as they floated downstream.

John Stodder has written the most interesting commentary I've seen from within the public relations industry about former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan's new book. It's interesting in part because Stodder is an interesting figure. For those who remember this sort of thing, he was one of two executives at the Fleishman-Hillard PR firm (the other was Douglas Dowie) who were convicted in May 2006 of multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud in a scheme to overbill the city of Los Angeles for public relations consulting services.

Notwithstanding the verdict, Stodder continues to maintain his innocence and remains free while he appeals the conviction. Apparently this has left him with some time to contemplate ethical matters, and he disapproves of what he sees in McClellan, whose "disloyalty strikes me as most amoral." Moreover, Stodder worries that McClellan's criticism of his former boss "is undermining whatever remaining credibility the PR industry can claim for itself."

By a voice vote, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment last week to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2009, forbidding the U.S. Department of Defense to engage in "propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law."

Probably more important is that the amendment requires an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study and report back to Congress on "the extent to which the Department of Defense has violated the prohibition on propaganda" already established in previous laws passed by Congress.

The amendment was prompted by an April 20 report in the New York Times exposing the Pentagon military analyst program through which the Pentagon lobbied for war by cultivating former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN and the broadcast networks. As Diane Farsetta and Sheldon Rampton have argued previously, the Pentagon pundit program broke existing laws which forbid government officials from engaging in "publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

We recently received an email from someone who asked, "What is the difference between a 'product placement' and a 'video news release' (VNR)? Is a VNR a type of product placement?" Since other people might have the same question, I thought I'd post my answer here.

On SourceWatch, we have articles about both topics. As our article about video news releases explains, a VNR is a piece of video that is created (typically by a public relations firm on behalf of a paying client) and designed to look like a news segment for broadcast by TV news programs. It deceives audiences by creating the impression that the "news" they see on TV was produced by independent reporters, when in fact VNRs are promotional pieces designed to sell something for a client whose identity is not always disclosed. TV news shows often deny that they use VNRs, but Diane Farsetta, our senior researcher, has done extensive research in which she found numerous examples of the practice.

"Product placement" is a separate but similarly sneaky practice of getting television programs and movies to display a company's product within their program.

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.

Today marks the 38th annual celebration of Earth Day, and once again the event comes with its fair share of PR hype and misleading marketing campaigns. In the spirit of dedicating ourselves to genuine concern for the planet, today is therefore a good time to look carefully at corporate environmental claims, some of which consist more of empty rhetoric than real substance.

Companies like Wal-Mart are announcing environmental initiatives. General Electric has its "Ecomagnation" advertising campaign. In Singapore, a shopping center is advertising that customers can "shop to save planet earth" -- and if they buy enough, they might win a new car!

The ritual of green hypocrisy frequently requires that companies and politicians redefine environmental progress in increasingly creative ways. Last week, for example, George W. Bush announced a plan to address the problem of global warming by "halting the growth" of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2025. Beyond the fact that this target date is 17 years in the future, what really means is that during those 17 years not only will greenhouse gas emissions continue, the amount of those emissions will continue to grow. As columnist Gail Collins observed in the New York Times, this would be akin to having an overweight person announce a plan to achieve "an 18 percent reduction in the rate at which he was gaining weight, to be reached within the next decade."

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, coverage of war in Iraq filled a fourth of the news hole in January 2007 but now only fills 4 percent. "Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet," observes New York Times reporter Richard Pérez-Peña. "Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism."

The past week saw a dramatic escalation in violence in Iraq and rising civilian deaths, prompting analysts to warn that "Iraqis may be about to witness a new phase in the cycle of violence ... intra-Shi'ite bloodletting that could tear Iraq apart and more deeply embroil U.S. forces." But even these developments have barely cast a media ripple.

The Iraq war has also been losing ground for attention on the internet, according to a recent report which shows that "the war in Iraq continues to decline in search interest, down 120 percent over the past three and a half years," while interest turns to topics such as Paris Hilton, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, Heath Ledger and the latest YouTube video.

Free Speech TV has launched the "It's Our Web" campaign, featuring a a short, entertaining animation explaining the dangers of media centralization and suggesting positive alternatives.

"This is a truly pivotal time for the Internet, the most powerful and interactive medium humans have ever seen," says Steve Anderson, who produced the video. "New commercial incursions by big online media enterprises, including the widely disdained "Facebook Beacon," make explicit what new media giants have been doing quietly for some time; searching for new and evermore effective ways to sell our attention, our clicks and our private information to advertisers and marketers."

I received a request recently from a university professor who teaches a course about media literacy. She was wondering if I could help her find videos of the "Shared Values" television ads that the U.S. Department of State produced to improve the image of the United States in Muslim countries shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, so she could show them to her students.

I was a bit surprised to realize that the ads are fairly hard to locate online, but after some searching, we were able to find copies. To ensure that they will remain available, I uploaded the videos to two popular internet repositories: YouTube, where people can easily find them and drop them into their own web pages; and the Internet Archive, which should ensure that they survive for posterity.

Twenty or fifty years from now, scholars wishing to understanding the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world will certainly be interested in studying the "Shared Values" campaign. As my professor friend wrote back after finding the videos, "The ads are a great teaching tool about propaganda." Like most propaganda, they tell us a great deal about how the propagandists see themselves as well as how they want to be perceived by others.

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.