PR Watch, First Quarter 2005, Volume 12, No. 1

Flack Attack

This issue of PR Watch features several articles on the reinvention of nuclear power PR. A decade ago, the building of new nuclear power plants while calling them a "clean, green energy source" seemed unimaginable. The nuclear industry, however, turned out to have quite a good imagination. Aided by global PR firms, the industry is filing permits for new plants and declaring a nuclear renaissance.

Lisa Rainwater van Suntum from the New York-based environmental group Riverkeeper examines the PR fight over energy giant Entergy's Indian Point nuclear power plant and the Nuclear Energy Institute's current marketing campaign. British-based Corporate Watch's Chris Grimshaw writes about the PR efforts to revive Britain's nuclear industry. The article "In Their Own Words" features a Virginia-based PR firm's description of their work for a nuclear power plant.

(Un)Safe, (Un)Secure, and (Not)Vital: Marketing a Nuclear Power Plant

by Lisa Rainwater van Suntum, Riverkeeper

Since al Qaeda terrorists commandeered two jumbo jets into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, New York City has been on high alert. On any given day, residents and tourists alike see armed military personnel patrolling subway stations, notable landmarks and the City's financial district. While visitors to New York City may feel as if they've entered a war zone, the solemn military personnel make many who call New York home feel at least a bit safer since the towers fell.

Spinning Nuclear Power into Green

by Lisa Rainwater van Suntum

After the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979, concerned citizens from across the United States banded together to stop nuclear power in its tracks. Perhaps the most effective anti-nuclear gathering in U.S. history was the five-day No Nukes concert series held in New York City in September 1979. On the last day, 250,000 people rallied in Lower Manhattan - just across from the World Trade Center - to protest nuclear power. This massive battle cry was heard in Washington, DC. Plans to build new U.S. nuclear power plants were put on hold. And after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine, plans for new U.S. nuclear plants were abandoned.

'No Dark Machiavellian Conspiracy' for New British Nuke Plants

by Chris Grimshaw, Corporate Watch

Regaining public acceptance of nuclear power will be one of the PR world's biggest challenges, according to PR guru Dejan Vercic. Speaking at a 2004 meeting of the UK's Institute of Public Relations, he said that within five to ten years public relations agencies would have to win back the nuclear industry's (and biotechnology's) "license to operate."

It appears, however, that the opening salvoes in the British campaign have come rather sooner. Summer 2004 saw an extraordinary wave of media interest in a possible nuclear power revival. The "debate" was opened by environmental scientist Dr. James Lovelock's article in the Independent advocating nuclear power as a solution to climate change. It was quickly followed by Tony Blair's indications in July that Britain may build new nuclear power stations.

In Their Own Words: Nuclear PR Case Study

Legislative Demographic Services, based in Fairfax, Virginia, "is a government affairs consulting and technology company that provides communications services, technology and applied data products." The company was established in 1982 and is a subsidiary of Identix, Inc., which is a biometrics company "offering finger print and facial [identification] technologies and products." Illustrating its public affairs capacity, LDS features on its website twelve "case studies" that broadly discuss work on behalf of their various clients. The case study below describes their work to counter a citizen's movement to shut down an unnamed nuclear power plant.

Tsunami Washes Away Indonesian Human Rights

by Diane Farsetta

"I hope that, as a result of our efforts, as a result of our helicopter pilots' being seen by the citizens of Indonesia helping them, that value system of ours will be reinforced," said Colin Powell, one week after the December 2004 tsunami wrought havoc across South and Southeast Asia.

Contemplating the public relations benefits of aid efforts following so many deaths may seem callous, but the United States wasn't the only country hoping to benefit from images of uniform-clad do-gooders distributing food and water to traumatized villagers.

The Indonesian province of Aceh, "Ground Zero" for the tsunami, has been under declared or de facto martial law since mid-2003 (and through most of the 1990's before that). In May 2003, the Indonesian military launched its largest offensive in nearly 30 years, in Aceh. Weeks later, Indonesian Communications and Information Minister Syamsul Muarif complained that the news from Aceh focused on "soldiers dragging corpses" instead of efforts to rehabilitate schools. "We are weak in international public relations, and because of that, reports by foreign media are often damaging," he explained.

The Fix Behind Fixing Social Security

by Laura Miller

The Bush administration ventriloquists are out in full force these days, breathlessly hyping "voluntary personal retirement accounts" as a way to save Social Security (by destroying it). For the average voter, getting a handle on what the Bush administration is proposing to do to Social Security is quite a challenge. The dozens of bobbing heads and clicking fingers, holding forth on cable news programming and the internet is enough to make anyone's head spin. Is that spokesman from the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security speaking as an independent economics expert, a civic-minded individual or as a paid shill from a corporate-funded front group?

From "Disinfopedia" to "SourceWatch"

If you're wondering what happened to "Disinfopedia," our wiki-based "encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda," it hasn't disappeared. We've just renamed it. It's now called SourceWatch, located at http://www.sourcewatch.org/.

Launched in March 2003, Disinfopedia has grown rapidly to include more than 6,600 articles about PR firms, think tanks, industry-friendly experts and many of the other individuals and institutions that play an important role in shaping public opinion and public policies. We're very happy with the way volunteer supporters of our work have stepped forward to contribute information and insights to the project. Along the way, however, we began to hear complaints about the name, which some people felt sounded too "paranoid." Others pointed out that as Disinfopedia grew, it came to include a range of people and organizations, some of which are indeed guilty of deceptive practices, but not all. We decided that these were legitimate criticisms.

Ch-ch-ch-changes: The World of PR Industry News

public relations

by Kristian Knutsen

Here at the Center for Media and Democracy, we regularly get press releases from a wide variety of public relations firms - from small groups we have never heard of before to the largest global PR firms about which we have reported extensively. These press releases come via email or fax, and there are often follow-up phone calls from the senders to verify our receipt of the releases. These press releases address a wide variety of things the firms wish to promote, but the majority deal with personnel changes (hires, transfers, etc.), and they are usually not very informative.

Center for Media and Democracy in the News

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is at the forefront of identifying manipulative and deceptive PR and propaganda. Here are a few examples of recent actions and appearances by the Center and its staff: