media

"Two cups of McDonald's iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk" during Las Vegas station KVVU's morning news show, writes Abigail Goldman. It's a "punch-you-in-the-face product placement" that will last six months. KVVU's news director says the "nontraditional revenue source" won't impact his station's reporting. But an executive with the marketing firm that negotiated the deal, Omnicom's Karsh/Hagan, said "the coffee cups would most likely be whisked away if KVVU chooses to report a negative story about McDonald's," reports the New York Times. McDonald's has similar product placement arrangements with "WFLD in Chicago, which is owned and operated by Fox; on KCPQ in Seattle, a Fox affiliate owned by the Tribune Company; and on Univision 41 in New York City." Other stations owned by KVVU parent Meredith Corporation, "including WFSB, the CBS affiliate in Hartford, Conn., and WGCL, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta -- are also accepting product placements on their morning shows." The Writers Guild of America West recently urged the Federal Communications Commission to require "real-time disclosure" of product placements and to ban video news releases, calling VNRs "an attempt to trick the viewer to think that a paid advertisement is actually news."

Ads from groups weighing in on the U.S. presidential campaign "have begun getting sharper and more numerous," reports NPR's "All Things Considered." The conservative pro-war group Vets for Freedom has already spent $1.5 million on ads in such "key presidential states" as Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with plans to "spend exponentially more." Their ads show military veterans supporting Senator John McCain's stance on Iraq, claiming, "The surge worked." Ads from the AFL-CIO labor union also feature veterans, who express respect for McCain's war record while questioning his plan "to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq." Religious groups are also getting into the act. The Chicago-based political action committee Matthew 25 Network is supporting Senator Barack Obama with ads on Christian radio stations, which tend to draw conservative listeners. On the other side, the Christian Defense Council is distributing a poster that calls Obama the "abortion president."

The New York Times editorial board supports a proposed federal shield law for journalists that is currently in the Senate. The bill, which would provide journalists with protections against having to reveal sources in federal court, also makes allowances for genuine needs on the part of law enforcement and security concerns. Despite those exceptions, the bill faces "near hysterical opposition from the Bush administration. ... The White House, as ever, is playing the fear card, orchestrating a barrage of warnings that the law would 'wreak havoc' on national security and 'completely eviscerate' the ability to investigate terrorism." But not all Republicans agree with the President. Indiana Representative Mike Pence countered, "The only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press." Nearly all of the States' Attorneys General have endorsed the bill, as have both John McCain and Barack Obama. A similar bill passed the House last autumn.

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has released a report investigating the White House's media management efforts over the death from friendly fire of Army Ranger Pat Tillman and the rescue from an Iraqi hospital of Private Jessica Lynch. The report noted that Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan had e-mailed the White House’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Peter Wehner, recommending that he "find out what faith Tillman practiced and have the president go by that church and light a candle or say a prayer." In response to an email from Associated Press (AP) reporter Ron Fournier, Karl Rove asked "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this". Fournier replied "the Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.'" Fournier told AP that he regretted the "breezy nature of the correspondence." Former White House spokesman Taylor Gross delivered the first official White House comment on Tillman's death on April 26, 2004. Gross went on to do PR for the pro-war lobby group Vets for Freedom.

Two years ago, an editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) referred to the dream run that Patrick Moore and Christine Todd Whitman were getting in the media representing the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. CJR noted that few journalists were disclosing that the group was created by the Nuclear Energy Institute with assistance from Hill & Knowlton. "Part of the thinking, surely, was that the press would peg them as dedicated environmentalists who have turned into pro-nuke cheerleaders, rather than as paid spokespeople. And the press came through." They still do. Jay Hancock, a business columnist for the Baltimore Sun, wrote in his blog that "Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore has decided that the risks of nuclear energy are lower than the risks of continuing to use carbon energy." Hancock is not the only journalist not to disclose Moore's nuclear industry ties to his readers. The week before his post, a CanWest News Service story simply described Moore as an "avid proponent of nuclear" power.

Advertisers are increasingly writing swear words into television commercial scripts just so they can bleep them out. The practice, which has been especially noticeable on YouTube, gives viewers a strong illusion of authenticity by creating scenes that appear to be "real life moments." Writing bleeped swear words into a script grabs viewers' attention, and the millions of people who have been downloading YouTube advertisements that contain bleeped swear words proves the effectiveness of the strategy. This is an example of advertisers using prohibition as a "persuasive branding technique." In other words, they know that making something seem forbidden increases its appeal. Movie makers apply the same strategy when they include an extra track of out-takes, bloopers and mistakes on movie DVDs. This makes the movie seem more "real" to people, and draws more viewers to it. Manufacturing fake reality can have drawbacks, though. When discovered, it can backfire and people will rebel against it. Authentic authenticity is still the best.

"As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971. As an author, Mr. Bugliosi has written three No. 1 best sellers and won three Edgar Allan Poe awards, the top honor for crime writers. More than 30 years ago he co-wrote the best seller Helter Skelter, about the Manson case. ... [H]is latest, a polemic with the provocative title The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, has risen to best-seller status with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers. ... Mr. Bugliosi said he had expected some resistance from the mainstream media because of the subject matter - the book lays a legal case for holding President Bush 'criminally responsible' for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq - but not a virtual blackout. ... Mr. Bugliosi said bookers for cable television, where he has made regular appearances to promote books, have ignored his latest offering. MSNBC and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show were two outlets Mr. Bugliosi had thought would show interest, but neither did."

Daniel Libit of The Politico reports that "among the things that the proliferation of TV cable news has wrought is slackened standards for what constitutes a political strategist," a term which has lost its meaning now that it is "used as a catchall tag for a whole host of people with varied -- and often peripheral -- backgrounds in electoral politics." Jane Fleming Kleeb, a so-called "Democratic strategist" -- a label which she openly admits is misleading -- says "this group of make-believe strategists has become something of a pundits club, with participants working together to compensate for each other's experiential or informational deficiencies." Bona fide strategist Ed Rollins "blames the cable news networks for 'dumbing down' good analysis in the name of multitudinous voices." Independent TV analyst Andrew Tyndall "thinks the 'mislabeling' is also the product of the media's unyielding 'bid to seem as though they are inside the horse race.'" Fleming Keeb says, "If you had a bunch of us in a room and asked if we are political strategists, I think you would get a lot of laughter."

Alhurra's "Inside Washington" showThe U.S. government-funded Arabic news channel Alhurra "paid former Bush and Clinton administration officials, lobbyists and high-profile Washington journalists tens of thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to appear on the network as commentators," report Dafna Linzer and Paul Kiel. "While it is common for television networks to pay journalists who appear on their programs, many reporters decline to accept money from government-funded organizations." Media ethics specialist Kelly McBride commented, "You wouldn't let a reporter take money from a clearly partisan group. The same standard should apply to taking money from an operation set up by the government to influence opinion." The highest-paid Alhurra commentator was Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute, who received $10,300. Donnelly said his discussions of the U.S. presidential primaries on Alhurra were "useful" in highlighting "the competitive and participatory nature of an American democracy." Other paid guests include Republican official turned lobbyist Chad Kolton and Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen recently called for an investigation of Alhurra, following reports on station practices and broadcasts of "anti-American and anti-Israeli viewpoints," along with "pro-Iranian policies."

Saying "we believe the media whitewashed the candidate," the president of Regnery Publishing announced an August release for a book titled "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate." The PR firm Creative Response Concepts (CRC) is promoting the book. In August 2004, CRC publicized "Unfit for Command," an attack on then Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record. CRC also worked for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; other clients include federal Republican Party committees, Concerned Women for America and the National Abstinence Education Association. David Freddoso, who authored the Obama book, is a former Ron Paul supporter who works at National Review Online. Regnery's president said the book will "look closely at Obama's relationships with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and onetime radical William Ayers, among other things."