VNRs Down Under
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Companies, government bodies and not-for-profit organizations have been using video news releases (VNRs) in Australia since 1995, reports Sally Jackson.
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Journalism
McClellan and the Ethics of Spin
John Stodder has written the most interesting commentary I've seen from within the public relations industry about former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan's new book. It's interesting in part because Stodder is an interesting figure. For those who remember this sort of thing, he was one of two executives at the Fleishman-Hillard PR firm (the other was Douglas Dowie) who were convicted in May 2006 of multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud in a scheme to overbill the city of Los Angeles for public relations consulting services.
Iran Claims Fly While Media Bombs
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"As they duel over how best to deal with Tehran," Senators John McCain and Barack Obama "are exaggerating what's known about Iran's nuclear program," reports Jonathan Landay. "The U.S. intelligence community ... thinks that Iran halted an effort to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the U.N.
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The Fever Breaks at MSNBC
Submitted by Daniel Haack on
Former MSNBC correspondent Jessica Yellin admitted on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 last night that during the run-up to the war, "the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings." Appearing as part of a panel discussing Scott McClellan’s book, What Happen
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Media Hits by the Pentagon Pundits
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
On the heels of last month's New York Times investigative report exposing the hidden relationship between media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries,
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Drug Companies: Marketing Machines Gone Awry
Submitted by Anne Landman on
New York Times reporter Melody Petersen, who covered the pharmaceutical industry for four years, has now published a book titled Our Daily Meds: How the pharmaceutical companies transformed themselves into slick marketing machines and hooked the nation on prescription drugs.
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Contractors Gone Wild, Media Gone Missing
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Bruce Falconer is calling out the mainstream media for ignoring the disturbing testimony that dominated recent U.S. Senate hearings into corruption by private contractors in Iraq.
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Pentagon's Propaganda Documents Go Online, but Will the TV Networks Ever Report this Scandal?
Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.
More Pentagon Propaganda, Online
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
As part of its plan to expand online "information operations," the Pentagon is launching "a global network of foreign-language news websites ... and hiring local journalists to write current events stories and other content that promote U.S. interests," reports Peter Eisler. The Pentagon launched Matawani.com last year, an Arabic-language site with Iraq news; other sites are being developed for Asian and Latin American audiences.
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The Great Stonewall of China
Submitted by Bob Burton on
The Chinese government has unveiled a new regulation that China View, an English language website of the government-owned Xinhua News Agency, reports "includes a 'freedom of information' provision that gives the public, whether individuals or organizations, the right to request governm
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