PR Watch, Fourth Quarter 2005, Volume 12, No. 4

World perceptions of the United States are at an all time low. For the past four years, the Center for Media and Democracy has been tracking Bush administration efforts to address poor international opinion.

There has been a disturbing trend, however, for U.S. "hearts and minds" campaigns to do more harm than good. Part of the reason is U.S. officials have little credibility in the eyes of the world. No stockpiled weapons of mass destruction have been found. Iraq is more dangerous than ever. The possiblity for a stable, democratic Iraqi government appears to be years down the road.

While evidence piles up that the Bush White House waged a deceptive campaign to sell the invasion of Iraq to the U.S. public, administration globetrotters act as if the international community is unaware of the dubious nature of White House claims.

by Diane Farsetta

In September 2005, long-time Bush confidante Karen Hughes started her new job as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Her first official week of work was admittedly ambitious - a "listening tour" of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

At each stop, carefully selected audiences comprised of students on U.S.-funded scholarships, women professionals, and others deemed "safe" nonetheless deviated from the intended script, asking Hughes challenging questions and openly criticizing her answers. Commentators panned Hughes’ performance as "blundering," and a "preachy and culturally insensitive . . . superficial PR blitz." The exception was one high-profile opinion piece praising Hughes, published by USA Today, which was written "at the State Department’s invitation" and followed Hughes' special briefing of the author, Geoffrey Cowan, the dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

by Laura Miller

More examples of the Bush administration's manipulation of news are spilling out into U.S. newspapers, raising further questions about how the White House continues to spin its "War on Terror." The Los Angeles Times reported on November 30 the U.S. military "is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military 'information operations' troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers." The stories promoted the efforts of U.S. and Iraqi troops and denounced terrorists.

by Bob Burton

If you were the least bit nervous about all the worrying reports - from leading scientists, insurance companies and even the Pentagon - about human-induced climate change, don't worry: the Frontiers of Freedom (FF), a right-leaning think tank, is here to reassure you.

FF has established the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) to alert "policy makers, the media, and the public to unreliable scientific claims and unjustified alarmism which often lead to public harm." If you are so inclined, you can subscribe to the "non-profit, non-partisan" Climate & Environment Weekly, CSPP's email bulletin that keeps track of why climate change is not the problem many make it out to be.

The Center for Media and Democracy is at the forefront of identifying manipulative PR and propaganda. Here are just a few examples of recent media appearances of the Center and its staff:

• Benjamin Duncan talked to the Center's Laura Miller for his September 23 article "Marketing America, take two," for Aljazeera.Net. "[Under Secretary Karen Hughes] has no credibility in the eyes of the world because she was so key to selling the war in Iraq," Miller said. "It signals that they're seeing [the war on terrorism] not just as a military conflict. . . . At this point everyone seems to agree that anti-American sentiment is something we need to address."