human rights

The proposed Food and Drug Administration tobacco bill currently under consideration would ban artificial flavors like cinnamon and cherry from cigarettes, but strangely gives special protection to menthol. Public health advocates wonder why menthol has been exempted from the bill, especially when it masks the harsh taste of cigarettes for beginners. A 2006 study also showed that menthol makes it harder for addicted smokers to quit. Menthol brands are also disproportionately popular among African Americans; seventy percent of blacks smoke menthols, compared to only 30 percent of whites. While African Americans smoke less than whites overall, they suffer higher rates of cancer and other tobacco-induced diseases. Despite all this, legislators believe that menthol cannot be eliminated as a cigarette flavoring under the bill because menthol is crucial to the $70 billion cigarette market. It is of particular importance to Philip Morris, which has been planning for, and driving FDA regulation of cigarettes since 1999. The watered-down terms resulted from legislators' belief that the bill won't pass without PM's buy-in.

Doug Goodyear, the CEO of the Washington D.C. PR and lobbyshop, DCI Group, was selected to manage the forthcoming Republican National Convention (RNC), in St. Paul, Minnesota, because of his "management experience and expertise," a spokeswoman for John McCain said. Michael Isikoff reported in Newsweek that in 2002 DCI was paid $348,000 to represent Burma's military junta. "It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing 'falsehoods' by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses," Isikoff reported. Goodyear defended the company's work: "It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," he said. Shortly after the story broke, the RNC issued a media release quoting Goodyear stating he had resigned "so as not to become a distraction in this campaign." DCI's other clients have included Exxon, Google and AT&T.

The Colombian government -- which is dogged by controversy over its human rights record -- is seeking help from British PR firms to help promote a "modern" image amongst journalists and politicians. Colombia's deputy head of mission in the UK, Andelfo Garcia, told PR Week that "the stereotype of Colombia is not right. We are a growing country with a good story to tell. We need someone to help us reach out to the UK media, its politicians and its businesses." The UK-based Colombia Solidarity Campaign and other groups have shone the spotlight on Colombia's poor human rights record. In the U.S., Colombia has hired Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart and Andrew Samet from Sorini, Samet & Associates to help lobby the U.S. Congress to pass the U.S. - Colombia Free Trade Agreement. In early April, Colombia terminated its contract with the PR firm Burson-Marsteller, after taking exception to comments by its CEO, senior Hillary Clinton campaign adviser Mark Penn.

Author Eric Schlosser editorializes about "the growing threat to civil liberties posed by corporate spying," citing Burger King Corporation's spying on the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers through Cara Schaffer and her private security firm, Diplomatic Tactical Services. "The Bill of Rights was adopted to protect Americans from the abusive power of their government. I've come to believe that we now need a similar set of restrictions to defend against irresponsible corporate power. Today companies like Wal-Mart and ExxonMobil have annual revenues larger than the entire budgets of some states, and they employ former agents from the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Secret Service to do security work," Schlosser writes. "John Chidsey, the chief executive of Burger King, knew about the use of Diplomatic Tactical Services. Mr. Chidsey should get a chance to raise his right hand and tell members of Congress why he thinks this sort of behavior is acceptable." Meanwhile, Burger King says it is "investigating online postings made by one of its vice presidents vilifying the Coalition of Immokalee Workers," reports the Fort Myers News-Press.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that a landmark environmental liability case against Chevron was being judged by "Ecuador's kangaroo courts." Ecuador's Ambassador to the U.S., Luis Gallegos, responded that Chevron had filed 10 affidavits before U.S. federal judges "praising the fairness of Ecuador's court system," in order to get the case out of U.S. courts. "Happily, its PR efforts have been frustrated by the fact that Ecuador no longer has 'banana republic' institutions that can be controlled through extrajudicial pressure," he wrote. When the two Ecuadorians leading the legal case against Chevron were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, the company turned to crisis management adviser Sam Singer for advice. Chevron's counter-attack included a San Francisco Chronicle opinion column. Chevron's ham-handed PR inspired cartoonist Mark Fiore to satirize the company's "Human Energy" campaign.

Amy Bennett Williams, following up on her previous article reports, "As the Coalition of Immokalee Workers prepares to deliver more than 60,000 petitions to Burger King headquarters in Miami today, the daughter of Burger King's vice-president Stephen Grover confirmed her father is responsible for online postings vilifying the coalition. The Immokalee-based group is asking Burger King to improve tomato harvesters' working conditions and pay a penny more a pound for tomatoes, which could add about $20 to a daily wage of $50, workers say. ... [O]ften during the past year, when articles or videos about the coalition were posted on YouTube and various Internet news sites, someone using the online names activist2008 or surfxaholic36 would attach comments coalition member Greg Asbed has called 'libelous.' ... [E]arlier this year the alliance had been infiltrated by Cara Schaffer, who said she was a student at Broward Community College interested in organizing campus events in support of farmworkers. In reality, Schaffer owns Diplomatic Tactical Services, a Hollywood, Fla.-based security and investigative firm that advertises its ability to place operatives in the ranks of target groups."

A British county has been using an anti-terrorism law enacted in 2000 to spy on minors for petty crimes like using cigarettes and alcohol. The Staffordshire County Council in Britain's Midlands region has been using Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) for a host of non-terrorism-related applications, like monitoring underage liquor and tobacco sales, recording the movements of farm animals and tracking counterfeit DVD sales. Brandon Cooke, Staffordshire County Council's Fraud and Community Safety Manager, defended the Council's use of surveillance under RIPA by saying the operations were crucial for "combatting antisocial behavior."

Pro-Tibet groups plan protests when the Olympic Torch procession gets to Canberra, the Australian capital, but the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) has taken pre-emptive steps to minimize unfavourable media coverage. Paul Maley reports that "only a small clutch of media would be allowed to travel with the torch inside the security corridor." The Australian Capital Territory government's director of communications, Jeremy Lasek, said BOCOG "stipulated" that "the host broadcaster for the TV and radio rights gets a slot" in the media vehicle accompanying the torch. The national president of the Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, countered that there's a "clear conflict of interest" in giving preference to media companies with broadcast rights to the Games. "They've got an interest in promoting the Games and minimising any negative impact that the protests would have on the Games coverage," he said. Hill & Knowlton has the PR contract with BOCOG.

Free Tibet Protest in LondonThe Free Tibet Campaign in the UK has warned that "any PR agency that is trying to assist China in its twisted distortion of the truth would be potentially exposing itself to protests outside its offices." Despite this, PR Week reports that Ogilvy, Burson-Marsteller and Ketchum have "all refused to rule out working for the under-fire regime." Ketchum deputy CEO, Avril Lee stated that "we'd need to consider the brief carefully and speak to our team before making a decision." Last week, the Financial Times reported that the Chinese government was seeking to recruit a public relations firm to advise the government "on strategies to repair its image before the Beijing Olympics."

In an open letter to British public relations executive Lord Timothy Bell, two directors of the Belarus Free Theatre accuse Bell of "making money on somebody's misfortune." Bell traveled to Belarus in March and met with President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been called "Europe's last dictator." Bell told Reuters, "I have been asked to make a proposal to improve the external reputation of Belarus." His firm, Bell Pottinger, received a contract worth "millions of dollars" over several years, to boost "the image of Belarus among western countries and encourage foreign investment," reported O'Dwyer's. In their letter, the theater directors write "we did not quite understand" Bell's promise to "fix Belarus' image." Others who might not understand include "former Candidate for the President and now a political prisoner Alexander Kozulin, who serves now a five-year term sentence in prison and has outlasted the death of his wife there," they add. Instead of focusing on Belarus' image, why not explain the "virtues of the democratic choice," the theater directors ask Bell. Maybe because "nobody pays for that."