Sound Bites Back

Roger Ailes, the PR genius behind Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, now runs America's Talking, the all-talk cable channel which premiered July 4 in more than 10 million homes. Ailes has his own nightly talk hour on the network.

The World Bank, under increasing pressure from activists for its role in worsening third world poverty, economic exploitation and ecological devastation, has hired the PR firm of Herb Schmertz to bolster its image during its 50th anniversary events this year.

Schmertz, a former VP for PR at Mobil Oil, is reknowned for developing in-your-face 'advertorials,' paid opinion advertisements that's run on the editorial page of major papers. He recommends assertive PR attacks against activists.

Porter/Novelli has announced that more than 100 million U.S. TV viewers saw their May video news release promoting Calgene's genetically-engineered FlavrSavr tomato.

TransAfrica's Randall Robinson conducted a dangerous but successful hunger strike that changed the Clinton Administration's policy on Haiti. PR for the fasting activist was handled by the DC firm of McKinney & McDowell, whose other clients include President Aristide and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

The CIA's PR director, Kent Harrington, held what once would have been an unheard-of event, a public briefing in New York on May 10. His message was that the Agency is more needed than ever. In the day's understatement, he said "sometimes what I say and know is widely at variance."

PR heavyweights with ties to the Democratic Party -- including Kamber Group VP Lyn Cutler, Powell/Tate's Jody Powell and Edelman's Leslie Dach -- have formed the 'Back to Business Committee' to help the Clinton Administration fend off a flood of bad publicity.

Cutler, a former vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, told a May meeting of the Women's National Democratic Club that a public trial of the Paula Jones' allegations would be "very ugly and damaging." "Quite frankly, who cares," she asked, noting that "we have starving children in this country going to bed hungry every night."

Lillian Fernandez is the latest Clinton advisor to become a PR executive with Hill & Knowlton. One of her current H&K clients is Osvaldo Mercuri, President of the Buenos Aires Council of Deputies. According to O'Dwyer's Washington Report (5/9/94), H&K will receive a $2,500 bonus if Fernandez can arrange a meeting with VP Al Gore for the Argentinian official.

Lauri Fitz-Pegado was the Hill & Knowlton VP in charge of the $11 million Gulf War front group, Citizens for a Free Kuwait. She prepared the Kuwaiti Ambassador's teenage daughter for her bogus and now infamous testimony of seeing Iraqui troops tossing babies from hospital incubators.

Fitz-Pegado has at long last been confirmed by the Senate Commerce Committee to become director of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, thanks to heavy help from her guardian angel, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. During her cantankerous confirmation process, Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) accused her of perpetrating "a hoax on the Congress and the people of the U.S."

Betsey Wright served Governor Bill Clinton as Chief of Staff for twelve years in Arkansas. She moved to DC in 1992 and soon became a lobbyist and Executive VP in Hill & Knowton's Ann Wexler firm.

Wright is now personally lobbying the First Couple on behalf of the American Dietetic Association, a nutritionist organization that receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from food, agribusiness and tobacco interests. She also lobbied the Administration against Chinese trade restrictions on behalf of another client, Arco oil.

The Phoenix Group has been paid more than $12,000 to represent El Salvador's President-elect Armando Calderón, whose ARENA party has been linked to military death squads.

Sheila Raviv has been named Burson-Marsteller's new CEO in Washington, DC. Ms. Raviv's special expertise is in developing industry coalitions to defeat social change activists.

The W. Alton Jones Foundation has granted $125,000 to the Natural Resources News Service to develop green story ideas and promote them to journalists. Joseph J. Trento will run NRNS; he provided research assistance for his wife Susan's seminal book on the Hill & Knowlton PR company, The Power House.

Nations, too, can greenwash. Environmental groups charge that the Group of Seven leading industrial nations is failing to live up to commitments made at the Group's annual summits. According to Jim Barnes of Friends of the Earth, "20% or less" of the green promises are ever kept.

Propaganda Review's Spring, 1994, issue is devoted to "anti-environmental propaganda." The issue recycles some excellent articles by Mark Dowie, Bill Walker and others that examine the role of PR firms and the threat posed by the wise use movement. For a copy, call 415-441-2557.