PR Watch, First Quarter 2001, Volume 8, No. 1

Public relations people who are offended by the exposés that appear in PR Watch sometimes complain that we offer a one-sided view of the industry, and they're right. We cover the dark side of PR--the coverups and outright lies used by powerful groups to influence public opinion and public policy.

Not all PR is this sinister, of course. Some public relations consists of relatively innocuous marketing efforts, and PR is even used to promote worthy causes, such as fundraising drives for charities.

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Restaurant-industry lobbyist Rick Berman says there are two things that set his firm, Berman & Co., apart from others in the trade. The first is that "we always have a knife in our teeth." The other is that "we don't chase the smaller issues. . . . Our work is restricted to and focused on issues that affect shareholder value. These big issues include labor costs as they relate to health insurance and the minimum wage, achieving operator sales increases, and tax rates as they are affected in particular by payroll and excise taxes."

Notwithstanding the obvious contradictions and transparently self-serving nature of the arguments that Berman serves up, he has been successful in influencing Congress thanks largely to the ties he has built up with conservative politicians such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In 1995, those ties prompted a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that Gingrich allowed Berman inside access in exchange for money.

In 1993, Berman's Employment Policies Institute Foundation gave a tax-deductible gift of $25,000 to support a college course titled "Renewing Civilization" taught by Gingrich.

By Bob Burton

When the International Whaling Commission (IWC) came together for its annual meeting in July 2000, Alan Macnow swung into action.

Macnow's New York-based PR firm, Tele-Press Associates (TPA), has defended the Japanese whaling and fishing industry for more than two decades, but his vigorous campaign against an initiative to create a whale sanctuary in the South Pacific may have reached new lows of unethical behavior.

Alan Macnow, president of the New York-based Tele-Press Associates (TPA), has been defending the Japanese whaling and fishing industry for 21 years. A former stringer for Time-Life in Korea, Macnow founded TPA in 1959. The current O'Dwyer's Directory of Public Relations Executives says Macnow was a PR writer for the American Heritage Foundation prior to starting his own public relations company.

Reports filed by TPA with the U.S. Department of Justice, as required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, reveal that in the 18 months prior to mid-June 1999, TPA earned more than $180,000 for advising and representing the Japanese Whaling Association (JWA) in the United States.

by Bob Burton

In 1986, the International Whaling Commission declared a moratorium on commercial whaling. By that time, large-scale hunting had driven many whale species to near extinction. The moratorium, and the creation of sanctuaries in the Southern and Indian Oceans, have helped some whale numbers to rebound, but this progress is threatened by the refusal of Japan and Norway to honor the moratorium.

Japan's response to the 1986 moratorium was

by Bob Burton

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is one of the leading critics worldwide of Japan's whaling activities. It also works on behalf of other animal welfare issues, such as a campaign to ban fox hunting in England, for which purpose it retained one of the world's fourth PR firms, Shandwick International. During the July 2000 meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Australia, however, IFAW representatives were dismayed to discover that Shandwick was also working for the Japanese Whaling Association.

To the Editor, PR Watch:

I am amused to see that I have been included as the "media contact person" for APCO/TASSC during the early 1990s, according to "How Big Tobacco Helped Create the Junkman" (PR Watch, vol. 7, no. 3).

While it is true that I served this role for all of two months, I did so for one reason only: to attempt to prove to other APCO employees that company management gives larger bonuses to employees who work on tobacco issues -- not exactly the employee incentive program that business schools write about.

by Laura Miller

The PR World Congress 2000 drew more than 3,500 public relations professionals, students, vendors, and trade journalists to the Chicago Hyatt Regency Hotel in late October. The Public Relations Society of America and the International Public Relations Association sponsored the PR conference. This year's theme was "Building Our Talent in a World of Tough Issues." Keynote speakers, panelists, and PR dignitaries attempted to instruct and inspire those in attendance to think about how, as communications professionals, they will be resolving the global issues that "we care about."

Corporate philanthropy has regained legitimacy as a way of demonstrating "caring." Reynold Levy delivered a keynote talk titled, "This Business of Giving--and Taking." Levy, who wears multiple hats--president and CEO of International Rescue Committee, professor of at Harvard Business School and Columbia School of Business, trustee of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and author of Give and Take: A Candid Account of Corporate Philanthropy--spoke to an audience of well over a thousand on the virtues of corporate giving.