Public Relations

British Airways Grounds PR Manager

An investigation by the U.K. government's Office and Fair Trading and the U.S. Department of Justice into allegations of price-fixing in the airline industry has resulted in British Airways (BA) suspending its head of communications, Iain Burns.

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Kids to Kraft: Where's the Wheat?

In contrast to the more than $15 billion in direct marketing spent in the U.S. to exhort children to buy food and non-food products, children often don’t get very far with the companies when they start asking questions. Olympia, Washington teacher Michi Thacker assigned her elementary students to write food manufacturers to raise questions, such as where the macaroni comes from.

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Call Goes Out For PR Industry Makeover Proposals

The European Centre for Public Affairs (ECPA), a non-profit PR training and research group, is calling on PR consultancies to outline how they would improve the image of the PR industry. ECPA deputy chairman Michael Burrell told PR Week that it was "important that the industry promotes and defends itself." However, Burrell recognises the that improving the image of the industry won't be easy.

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Benador Asks: Are You With the Fabricators or the Terrorists?

"Who needs Hill & Knowlton when you've got Benador Associates?" asks Larry Cohler-Esses in The Nation. Cohler-Esses examines a rapidly-debunked May 2006 story in Canada's National Post, which claimed that Iran's government was requiring Jewish residents to wear a yellow insignia.

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Pentagon Calls SOS for Foreign Media Work

STRATCOM, the U.S. military's Strategic Operations Command, has awarded its new contract for foreign media monitoring to SOS International. Perennial Pentagon favorite the Rendon Group formerly held the contract. SOS will track "foreign press in several languages across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Mexico with a focus on the so-called Global War on Terrorism," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

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Video News Releases: The Fantasy vs. Reality

To get an idea of just how low news standards can fall, take a look at <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/vnr29" target="_blank">one of the VNRs we caught</a>, which promoted Victoria's Secret's new Beauty Rush line of candy-flavored lip glosses. The VNR, which was used as news by the <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Daily_Buzz_(TV_Station)" target="_blank">Daily Buzz</a> morning news show, featured glamour shots of Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who sucked on a lollipop and declared that if you use Beauty Rush products, "I think you're cool.Television stations have maintained a studied silence about our report on the use of video news releases, but the print media has fewer qualms about discussing it. Saturday's Indianapolis Star carried an op-ed piece by Jeffrey McCall, a professor of communication at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. McCall described the use of VNRs as a "sneaky strategy" by "some wayward television news operations" that blurs the line "between reality and fantasy."

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