Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The Independent profiles secretive PR executive John Rendon, whose firm often works for the U.S. government and military. "In 2001 he won a contract to handle the PR aspects of U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. ...
Thanks to PR Watch forums contributor "El Gringo" for calling our attention to a really atrocious example of dishonest propaganda. The graphic at right is by Linda Eddy, an artist for the website, IowaPresidentialWatch.com. Owned by Roger Hughes, chairman of the Republican Party in Hamilton County, Iowa, the website spent the recent U.S. presidential election calling Democratic candidate John Kerry a habitual liar and comparing him to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels -- which is awfully ironic in light of its own promotion of a big lie.
The image you see here might lead you to believe that the child in the picture has been made "glad" and secure thanks to the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. As "El Gringo" discovered, however, Lindy Eddy doctored the photograph. The original photo, taken by a journalist, depicted a young girl who had just received bullet wounds during a firefight in which her mother was killed and her father was wounded. Eddy doctored the photo by erasing the little girl's own face (which carries the listless expression you would expect from an injured child) and replacing it with someone else's face to make her look positively radiant and adoring.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"There is near universal agreement that public diplomacy is broken and something must be done and done quickly to fix it," states a new report from the Public Diplomacy Council. The Council suggests establishing a U.S.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
In October 2004, "a study was published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded" in March 2003.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"Most Western reporters have determined that their only option is to turn to the U.S. and British embassies for transportation help," writes the Los Angeles Times' Alissa Rubin from Iraq. "The embassies, with the power to commandeer military helicopters, armed with gunners and personal security details, allow journalists to leapfrog the ring of danger around Baghdad and visit the rest of the country. ... But with the mobility come some hindrances.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"In all of Iraq, Jumana Hanna was the bravest witness to the horror of Saddam's regime, telling the Americans of torture, rape, and mass murder," writes Sara Solovitch. Paul Wolfowitz recounted her story to the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee. Her suffering was described in agonizing detail in a Washington Post story by Peter Finn.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
Media training has increased for U.S. forces going to Iraq, reports Editor & Publisher, "becoming mandatory for Army troops since October" and taking "higher priority" for Marines.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
With "regime change" in Iran receiving renewed attention in Congress, "new exiled Iranian opposition groups backed by some of Washington's neoconservatives are springing up in the hope of seeing large doses of U.S. funding," reports the Financial Times.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"Our military commanders and political leaders must be careful that in using language to deceive the enemy, to propagandize or to persuade, they do not obscure their own thinking," warns Michael Keane. "Before the coalition's recent attack on enemy forces in Fallouja, the American commander there changed the rules of engagement from 'capture or kill' to 'kill or capture.' ... And there are the changing names for the enemy in Iraq. U.S.
John Rendon is CEO of the Rendon Group, a secretive public relations firm that often provides behind-the-scenes advice to the U.S. military. Over the years, we've received dozens of phone calls from journalists who have sought interviews with Rendon about his work on behalf of the Iraqi National Congress, but no one has been able to get him to say more than "no comment."
We were a little surprised, therefore, when a telephone message was left for Rendon in our office by someone identifying himself as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. A transcript of that message is as follows:
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