PR Watch, Second Quarter 2004, Volume 11, No. 2

Download PR Watch, Second Quarter 2004, Volume 11, No. 2

Flack Attack

Good communication skills are essential for a functional civilization. We need to be able to warn each other of danger, share ideas on how to improve our lives, teach each other how to use new technologies. Being able to clearly and effectively communicate a message is a noble aspiration. Yet, we see time and time again how PR firms, marketers, and propagandists, cloaking themselves in rightous ambitions, are using their communications skills to manipulate and deceive target audiences for their own gains or those of their patrons or clients.

In March, the Health and Human Services video news release that praised the Bush administration's controversial new Medicare bill garnered New York Times attention. Many Americans were upset to learn that their tax dollars were being spent on a PR campaign to sell them on the Medicare bill. Chances are, they'd also be upset to learn that they have been paying to be convinced that electronic voting is safe, reliable, and the wave of the future and that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to US security, hording weapons of mass destruction, and colluding with terrorists.

A Short but Tragic History of E-voting Public Relations

by Diane Farsetta

When the president of one of the country's largest electronic voting machine manufacturers, Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems' Bob Urosevich, went before California's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel in late April, two people accompanied him: a defense lawyer and "a public relations consultant hired specifically to see the company through its California crisis," according to Wired reporter Kim Zetter.

The PR consultant, Marvin Singleton, was described during the hearing by a Diebold representative as someone who "works 100 hours a week on doing nothing more than trying to be a clear line of communication between our company" and the state. Apparently that wasn't enough.

Spinning the "Wheels of Democracy"

by Diane Farsetta

Is it voter outreach and education or slick public relations?

"I can understand there being a desire to get voters familiar with it - but taxpayers are now subsidizing a campaign to increase their comfort level with a boondoggle . . . . Taxpayers are funding a corporate advertising campaign and that's an outrage," Linda Schade, a critic of electronic voting, told the Baltimore Sun.

Schade was commenting on Maryland Votes, a five-year, $1 million voter outreach and education campaign to "familiarize Maryland voters with the electronic voting machines many will use for the first time" in 2004. The effort includes television, billboard, radio, bus, and other advertising; a website; 1.5 million pamphlets and brochures; and hundreds of e-voting machine demonstrations at grocery stores, senior centers, centers of worship and other public places around the state.

E-Voting: Digital Democracy or a Cash Cow for Consultants?

by Diane Farsetta

Imagine that you have billions of dollars and less than three years to spend it all. If electronic voting machine companies saw the 2000 election debacle as a "tremendous market opportunity," the Help America Vote Act must seem like the Promised Land. Of course, salvation - or a lucrative government contract - doesn't just come to those who wait. Enter the local political figures turned lobbyists.

At $3.7 billion, New York's state contract may be the Holy Grail. Late last year, "though neither a mechanism for awarding a contract nor specification for an acceptable voting terminal have been agreed to yet, lobbyists for [e-voting] manufacturers have been gearing up," reported the New York Times. To boost its chances, Sequoia Voting Systems hired two in-state lobbying firms - a Republican firm with ties to Governor George Pataki and an influential Democratic firm steeped in local politics. Diebold Election Systems hired lobbyists with connections to former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Election Systems & Software (ES&S) hired a firm with ties to another former NYC mayor, John Lindsay.

Our Man in Iraq: The Rise and Fall of Ahmed Chalabi

by Laura Miller

The political fortune of Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and the most prominent exiled Iraqi to return home in 2003, appear to have gone up in smoke. After the White House-approved raid on his Baghdad home in May and charges that he gave U.S. intelligence to the Iran, and after all but the staunchest of his neoconservative backers had distanced themselves from him, Chalabi and the INC were beginning to finally receive the public scrutiny that they deserved.

Chalabi and the INC's major contribution over the past dozen years is a vast ouvre of camera-ready "intelligence" concerning Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses, his connections with al-Qaeda terrorists, his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the ease of transition to a US-friendly government in Iraq. But what's disturbing - and what calls US democracy into question - is that a good deal of the INC's "product" was financed with US taxpayers money. Former CIA counter-terrorism specialist Vincent Cannistraro told the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, "With Chalabi, we paid to fool ourselves. It's horrible. In other times, it might be funny. But a lot of people are dead as a result of this. It's reprehensible."