Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"Saying their livelihoods are threatened, powerful forces that drive California's $27 billion agricultural economy are mobilizing to defeat a November ballot initiative to ban biotech crops in Sonoma County, and possibly even prohibit such county bans with new legislation in coming days," reports the Sacramento Bee.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"There are many reasons why nuclear power is back on the agenda," reports Liz Minchin. There's global warming, and there's a "well funded and carefully planned international public relations strategy selling nuclear power as a 'clean, green and safe' solution to global warming." International conferences have been key to the effort, writes Minchin.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
In March 2002, Andy Gallagher, then the spokesperson for West Virginia's Department of Environmental Protection, drafted a media release to inform residents in Wood County that the toxic chemical C8 was being emitted from DuPont's local plant. But the statement was never released.
A popular Texas bumper sticker reads: "The only mad cow in America is Oprah." Not anymore, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that the first confirmed home-grown case of mad cow is a Texas beef cow.
As Sheldon Rampton and I report in Mad Cow USA, the United States failed to take the measures necessary to stop the spread of the fatal dementia dubbed mad cow disease. However, a successful PR campaign by industry and government has, to this day, fooled most of the press and the public into believing that all necessary steps were taken long ago. A major part of the effort to spin and intimidate media coverage involved suing Oprah Winfrey under the Texas Food Disparagement Act, after her 1996 program examining mad cow risks in America.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"President Bush has nominated as chief of enforcement for the Environmental Protection Agency a partner in a law firm defending W.R. Grace & Co. against criminal charges in a major environmental case," reports Andrew Schneider. "EPA employees were told late Thursday that Bush had nominated Granta Nakayama to lead the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. ... Nakayama, 46, a specialist in environmental law, is a full partner in Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Late Friday, June 24, is a perfect time to bury bad news in Washington, DC. That's when Mike Johanns, the United States Secretary of Agriculture held a news conference. He announced that a beef cow suspected last November to be positive with mad cow disease, and finally properly tested, was indeed positive. Even now the USDA is keeping secret which state the cow was from, but Texas has long been mentioned in media articles.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
In "the first time a president has stepped inside a nuclear plant since Jimmy Carter rushed to Three Mile Island in 1979 to calm public fears," George Bush visited Maryland's Calvert Cliffs plant to promote "a new era of nuclear power." Part of the president's plan is to subsidize new plants.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
" The PR exploitation of drought and hunger in Zambia shows that for the [genetically modified (GM) food] lobby there are no limits, even when it involves rewriting history and manufacturing crimes against humanity," GM Watch's Jonathan Matthews writes. In 2002, Zambia sparked a firestorm when it refused to accept U.S. donations of GM corn to offset a looming famine. The Zambia government had concerns about the safety of GM foods.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"A new draft communique on climate change for next month's Group of Eight summit has removed plans to fund research" on clean energy technologies. Other edits "put into question top scientists' warnings that global warming is already under way," by removing references to current weather changes and marking such phrases as "our world is warming" for possible deletion.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
As PR Watch previously reported, the U.S.
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