Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Industry officials are expressing grave concern that a growing alliance between environmentalists and patient advocacy groups to link exposure to harmful pollution with chronic diseases and life-long disabilities could add credibility to activists' calls for stricter environmental requirements," Inside EPA reports.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Web journalist and novelist Daniel Price points out that here at the Center for Media & Democracy we have been sounding the alarm on Video News Releases for over a decade. Price writes that "thanks to the Medicare fake news flap (see 3/22 'spin of the day' below) America has been formally introduced to the Video News Release. Except they've been around for twenty years and we've already seen thousands of them. You know life is getting strange when even Jon Stewart can't handle the irony.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The General Accounting Office is investigating whether the Department of Health and Human Services' video news releases touting the new Medicare law constitute illegal "covert propaganda." Some PR pros think it's much ado about nothing: "VNRs have been around since the dawn of TV," said the
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"It allows people to exercise a kind of hour of hate, or whatever George Orwell called it," said the drama critic for Egypt's largest newspaper, explaining the popularity of "a harshly anti-American show" called "Messing with the Mind." The writer, director and star, Khaled al-Sawy, said: "Most plays just weep about our general situation... I felt people wanted a play that talks about resisting." The U.S.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished," concludes a new international survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "Opinion of the United States in France and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war's conclusion, and British views are decidedly more critical. Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America's credibility abroad.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia," Knight Ridder reports.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
Since the December passage of the Medicare bill, "there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." This is the suggested lead in for local stations running new video news releases prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has selected British PR firm Bell Pottinger Communications to promote the establishment of democracy, according to PR trade publication the Holmes Report.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Witeck-Combs Communications is helping the Log Cabin Republicans, a band of GOP members who support gay rights, with a wide-reaching PR and ad campaign to fight their own party on a constitutional amendment which would ban gay marriage," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
In an "unusual, if not unprecedented" move, the U.S. Forest Service paid the San Francisco-based PR firm OneWorld Communications $90,000 to promote its controversial Sierra Nevada forest management plan. In a leaked memo, OneWorld suggested the slogan "Forests With A Future" to promote the plan, which will triple commercial logging and allow larger trees to be cut.
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