PR Watch, Second Quarter 2001, Volume 8, No. 2

Download PR Watch, Second Quarter 2001, Volume 8, No. 2

Flack Attack

Half a century ago George Orwell wrote 1984,
a novel that depicts a world in which everyone has a television set
in their room--a TV that watches you as you watch it, with government agents
standing by to make sure you keep watching and responding in approved ways.
According to Spy TV, Orwell's dystopic vision may not be far off.
Television sets that monitor their audience are currently in the planning
stages, and while they may offer somewhat better entertainment than Orwell
imagined, corporate marketers already have plans to use them in ways that
make Orwell's fears of mind control seem eerily on target.is a
160-page book, edited by David Burke with contributions by Deirdre Devers,
Jean Lotus, Simon Davies and Ibrahim Hasan.

Spy TV: Just Who is the Digital TV Revolution Overthrowing?

by David Burke

The chances are you spend one quarter of your
waking life in front of a TV set, perhaps saying, "it's like having someone
in the room." Meanwhile, because of television, you have fewer conversations,
and fewer people know you intimately.

align="BOTTOM">But a new type of television is being developed,
called "interactive TV." Millions of dollars are being spent to create
a device that really is someone in the room with you, someone
who will know you intimately.

A Dumbed-Down Version of the Internet

by David Burke.

Obviously, no one who criticizes television can
unreservedly embrace the internet. One cathode ray tube can be as bad
as another, and there are many users wasting their lives in chat rooms
who should be out chatting with real people in their street or local bar.
But the internet has, to some extent, managed to threaten television.
It has put a glossy new front end on the old idea of human contact, and
made people wonder why they should have to spend so much time watching
commercials. It reminds them that they can do better than TV's lifestyle
of risk-free entertainment.

Boob Tube Babies: How I-TV Reinvents "Fun" for Children

by Deirdre Devers

Interactive television has been sold as opening
up a new world to children. When people said the same of the internet,
the meaning of the phrase was simple--the bodies who own the airwaves
lost control of a medium that let everyone have their say. Large amounts
of information and communication became freely available from, and moves
between, ordinary people from all over. And the world which was opened
up was not new or virtual at all. It was our own.

align="BOTTOM">The virtual worlds came later, especially after
the creation of the world wide web.

Fired Fox-TV Journalists Win Goldman Environmental Prize

Former Fox-TV reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson
have received the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize, the world's largest award for environmental activists.

align="BOTTOM">PR Watch first reported on Akre and Wilson
in our second quarter 1998 issue ("Monsanto
and Fox: Partners in Censorship"), which details how they were fired
in December 1997 by Tampa station WTVT after the Monsanto company objected
to their investigative report on the company's controversial genetically
modified product, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH).

PR Watch Website Launches "Spin of the Day"

by Sheldon Rampton

The PR Watch website has added a new feature called "Spin of the Day," which will post brief summaries of current public relations campaigns, with links to websites and print publications that offer further details.

As traffic to our website has increased, we have begun receiving frequent news tips from activists, PR industry insiders and members of the general public. The purpose of Spin of the Day is to pass this information on to journalists and others interested in tracking the often-hidden influence that public relations exerts on the news and public opinion.

WPP: World Propaganda Power

by Sharon Beder and Richard Gosden

For the past 15 years, the disparate international
tribes of ad men and PR consultants have been quietly consolidating their
power by forging giant conglomerates. The two biggest, WPP and Omnicom,
were founded within a year of each other in the mid-1980s. Together they
now manage the hearts and minds of global populations for their transnational
corporate clients.

align="BOTTOM">The rationale behind the amalgamation of advertising
and PR companies is simple.

Craig Shirley Does the Disabled

by Marta Russell

Conservative PR man Craig Shirley recently created
a front group called Disabled
Americans for Death Tax Repeal (DADTR), which ran full-page advertisements
in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, urging
Congress to abolish the federal estate tax.

align="BOTTOM">DADTR was created to spin the public debate
over the estate tax, bringing in disabled people as a way of suggesting
that repealing the tax would actually hurt the needy.