Public Relations

EPA Seeks to Protect Its Own Image

"The Office of Research and Development at the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking outside public relations consultants, to be paid up to $5 million over five years, to polish its Web site, organize focus groups on how to buff the office's image and ghostwrite articles 'for publication in scholarly journals and magazines,'" the New York Times reports.

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Coke's Sweet Intentions

"Coca-Cola will work with Weber Shandwick this fall to promote its new, seemingly selfless, Live It children's fitness campaign in schools across the country." The PR firm will "focus on generating local publicity for schools that participate in the week-long program." Kirsten Witt, Coke's "nutrition communication manager," said the $4 million Live It campaign would not address childhood obesity or encourage students to dri

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Doctored Health News

"Health reporters should not rely on prepackaged stories," writes Maria Dorfner, whose company NewsMD Communications produces health-related videos. "Physicians who migrate to television news may lack actual reporting or producing skills." According to Dorfner, this results in their "relying heavily on prepackaged content.

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Surveying the Fake News Scene

Graphic from Associated Press Television News' website, advertising their VNR services.What do you think about fake news? That's what the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has been asking our readers for the past two weeks.

We surveyed people about what the disclosure guidelines should be for video news releases (VNRs) and audio news releases (ANRs). (We do define "fake news" more broadly, as not just TV and radio segments provided by outside parties, but also pundit payola and any other media manipulation falsely presented as independent journalism. However, brevity is the soul of good survey response rates!)

...Then the Lobbying Group Will Go to the Mountain

The Yucca Mountain Task Force, "a national lobbying group that formed this spring" to advocate for long-term nuclear waste storage at the Nevada site, is traveling to the Yucca Mountain region, "to begin building ties" there.

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Move Kurdistan Forward

"The Kurdistan Regional Government has hired Republican lobby firm Russo Marsh & Rogers to get 'free media' to promote the interests of the Kurds in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq," reports O'Dwyer's. One goal of the Kurdish leaders is "the return of Kirkuk," an oil-rich northern Iraqi city populated by Kurdish and Turkmen people.

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