"Reality-based product placement" is here. The car maker Jaguar's new marketing strategy is to give "its high-end cars to jet-setters" in major cities, for free. In Manhattan, Nico Bossi and his Jaguar XK "show up at all the right places, such as ... hangouts in New York's trendy meatpacking district." According to the Wall Street Journal, "Many people ask about the car, but Mr. Bossi doesn't reveal his Jaguar deal. ... Sometimes, he takes people who are really interested for a spin." The deal was brokered by the PR firm Brandman Agency. Firm owner Melanie Brandman said the arrangement "makes the advertisements come to life." Bossi gives the firm "updates on where he goes each week." In similar but smaller programs, General Motors "chauffeured VIPs around the Super Bowl in Detroit earlier this year" and DaimlerChrysler "lent out the new Mercedes-Benz R Class SUVs to selected consumers for a week."

Hughes greets Indonesian students (State Dept. photo)

With the help of U.S. Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, "the Bush administration has drawn up a classified list of about a dozen high-priority countries on which to focus public diplomacy." Hughes "said strategic plans were being developed for those 'pilot' countries," which include Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Egypt. Hughes "said her department would seek out clerics from Muslim nations where some Friday prayers encouraged hatred and bring those clerics to America on exchange programs." "People who have been to America or know someone who has been to America are far more likely to have a positive view of our country," she explained. Another goal is to identify "strategic influencers." Hughes gave the example of a dinner she attended at the U.S. ambassador's home in Morocco, "where the person on her right was a famous cooking show host, while on her left was a track star."

The first spots produced by the U.S. Army's new ad agency, McCann Erickson, aim "to recruit Arabic-speaking translators," reports Advertising Age. The Arabic-language spots are running in heavy rotation during World Cup coverage on the Arab Radio & Television Network in Canada and the United States. In one ad, a soldier says, "I am a bridge between two cultures. ... I make the children smile because I can speak with them," followed by "a mention of a $10,000 reward for joining the Army and the possibility of expedited U.S. citizenship." In related news, a public service ad being filmed in Los Angeles for airing in Iraq will discourage suicide bombing. The "high-tech PSA will cost over $1 million" and may "air in other Middle Eastern countries," reports Newsweek. Critics point out that "the cost of owning a TV is often prohibitive for the average Iraqi." Another question is whether "the type of young man drawn to extremist groups" is "likely to sit around watching TV." The PSA is being financed by an anonymous "non-governmental group of scholars, non political people," explained producer Drew Plotkin.

Kate Corcoran, an account executive at the New York-based PR firm Articulate Communications, told PR Week that one of the benefits of audio news releases that run to a 60-second script is control. "This allows the message to be delivered in the exact way the company chooses," she said. The alternative is a radio media tour (RMT), where a corporate spokesperson does a series of back-to-back interviews. "With RMTs, you take a bit more of a gamble. Naturally, some interviews will go very well, and the client's message will be loud and clear, but with other interviews, the message may be a bit more muffled," Corcoran said. (ANRs are the radio equivalent of video news releases.) In a box summarising the benefits of ANRs, PR Week noted that one of the downsides of radio media tours is that "reporters can get off track or guide the interview in other directions."

An investigation by the U.K. government's Office and Fair Trading and the U.S. Department of Justice into allegations of price-fixing in the airline industry has resulted in British Airways (BA) suspending its head of communications, Iain Burns. BA has also suspended commercial director, Martin George, who Burns reported to, after the government agencies were alerted by Virgin Atlantic of approaches to agree on fuel surcharges with other trans-Atlantic airlines. The Independent reports that BA is "seeking to distance its top management from the price-fixing investigation the airline is facing by pinning the blame on the unauthorised actions of individual executives." A number of lawsuits against BA have already been filed.

The CEO of Pfizer, Hank McKinnell, says that a priority for the drug industry is regaining public trust. "We’ve done considerable research on this. We’re starting to use what little legislative muscle we have to improve the situation by working on the Medicare prescription benefit package," he said. McKinnell attributes part of the industry's unpopularity to "our direct-to consumer advertising" of prescription drugs. "We didn’t do enough to strengthen and reinforce the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. It was a consequence of our success that we created visibility for products and many people in the public said, 'That would be nice, but we can’t afford it.'" McKinnell didn't mention recent scandals that have rocked the industry, such as the recall of Merck's Vioxx in 2004, industry secrecy over its marketing practices, controversy over the funding of patient groups or its disease mongering. According to O'Dwyer's, McKinnell identified corporate social responsibility as a way for pharmaceutical companies "to be seen as part of the solution."

"Around the country, doctors in private practice have set up tax-exempt charities into which drug companies and medical device makers are, with little fanfare, pouring donations — money that adds up to millions of dollars a year," Reed Abelson reports in the New York Times. Concern has been raised that the funding can bias medical decisions, create conflicts of interest which aren't disclosed to patients and potentially skew research results in favour of the funder. "There's undoubtedly corruption in the system," Dr. Cherf said. "We need healthy relationships between physicians and industry. Both parties have been too aggressive."

from www.TobaccoFree.org

On June 27, 2006, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona M.D. released a definitive report on second-hand – or “involuntary” – smoking. “The scientific evidence is now indisputable: secondhand smoke . . . a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults.” said Carmona. The reports goes on to say that “Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and increases risk for heart disease and lung cancer.” R.J. Reynolds’ website is in need of an update, and some serious spin. On the page dealing with second-hand smoke or ETS (“environmental tobacco smoke”), they assert that “It seems unlikely that secondhand smoke presents any significant harm to otherwise healthy nonsmoking adults.” Meanwhile, on the Summary of Opinions page, they profess that “R.J. Reynolds believes that individuals should refer to the conclusions of public-health authorities concerning health risks associated with ETS. However, R.J. Reynolds also believes that there are still legitimate scientific questions concerning the reported risks of secondhand smoke.”

In contrast to the more than $15 billion in direct marketing spent in the U.S. to exhort children to buy food and non-food products, children often don’t get very far with the companies when they start asking questions. Olympia, Washington teacher Michi Thacker assigned her elementary students to write food manufacturers to raise questions, such as where the macaroni comes from. Most larger companies like Kraft suddenly had little to say. Kraft told one student via email that “the information you are seeking is considered confidential.” Gatorade, Frito Lay, Campbell’s and Post had similar nonanswers. Nancy from Nancy’s Yogurt of Eugene, Oregon, on the other hand, responded personally to students with the names of the producing farms and the origins of ingredients. Rethinking Schools contains 13 articles about how children learn about food, including the costs of local and imported food, corporate food distribution networks, connecting food and heritage, and what an earthworm (in contrast to a PR firm) can teach you about eating right.

By year's end, the European Union is expected to adopt REACH, a proposal that would "require manufacturers to test industrial chemicals used in the manufacturing process to gather health and safety data." REACH stands for "Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals." The bill "has prompted a U.S.-led coalition of 13 countries to step up lobbying efforts to make the final measure more amenable to industry," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The diplomatic missions of the U.S., Japan, Australia, India and other countries issues a length joint critique of the proposed law this month, saying certain provisions would disrupt international trade without offering clear environmental benefits." C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. ambassador to the EU and former chair of FreedomWorks and Citizens for a Sound Economy, said European policymakers "never did a proper impact assessment to evaluate the risk-versus-benefit status of this legislation."

A report by Consumers International, a global federation of consumer organisations, examined the corporate social responsibility policies of 20 major drug companies to test what information they disclose about sponsoring patient groups, funding disease awareness campaigns and offering hospitality to medical experts. The report, Branding the Cure: A consumer perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility, Drug Promotion and the Pharmaceutical Industry, "found only one company, (Eli Lilly), provided information on policies towards patient organisations; Less than half provided information about codes of conduct for gifts and hospitality to health care professionals; Pfizer, that worlds biggest pharmaceutical company, provides no specific public information about its marketing code of conduct." The report concludes that self-regulatory codes of conduct are inadequate and that there is a need to "dissolve [the] veiled relationships between pharmaceutical companies and health researchers."

The European Centre for Public Affairs (ECPA), a non-profit PR training and research group, is calling on PR consultancies to outline how they would improve the image of the PR industry. ECPA deputy chairman Michael Burrell told PR Week that it was "important that the industry promotes and defends itself." However, Burrell recognises the that improving the image of the industry won't be easy. "It is a close to insuperable challenge to actually promote positive news stories about what [the public affairs industry] does," he said. Burrell is European Chairman of Public Affairs for the privately-owned PR firm Edelman.

A new study on corporate social responsibility (CSR) from Scotland's St. Andrews University concludes that corporate CSR programs "are so threadbare and misleading that they are preventing progress towards a sustainable future," reports the Sunday Herald. The study adds that CSR reports, which are produced by less than four percent of major companies, are "at best useless and at worst highly misleading." Study co-author Jan Bebbington, an environmental adviser to the Scottish Executive, warned, "Driven by globalisation, problems of pollution, waste and global warming are all threatening to disrupt humanity in unprecedented ways." She criticized UK Chancellor Gordon Brown for promoting "a light-touch regulatory environment" and abandoning "plans to make companies report their social and environmental impacts." The Confederation of British Industry welcomed Brown's move, calling the proposed reporting "overly legalistic."

The Canadian government has until the end of June to respond to a legal action by CanWest MediaWorks, which wants to overturn the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. CanWest MediaWorks, which owns a national television network in Canada, lodged the claim in December 2005. In a statement at the time, CanWest MediaWorks claimed that "Canadians are already inundated by American advertisements, making the issue one of 'basic business fairness' between the two markets." Barbara Mintzes, from the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia, argues that there is a need for better enforcement of existing legislation. "CanWest's solution is to get rid of the law. This is like saying that if corner stores are getting away with selling cigarettes to 13 year olds, we might as well get rid of the age restrictions," she told the British Medical Journal.

Jack Abramoff; graphic from the Village Voice

Lobbyists from the defunct firm Alexander Strategy Group, which closed after being tied to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and disgraced House majority leader Tom DeLay, are finding new K Street homes, reports Judy Sarasohn. Daniel Gans and Amelia Blackwood have started their own shop, Polaris Government Relations. Polaris has several former ASG clients, including BellSouth, U.S. Telecom Association, Xcel Energy and the Association of Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchisees, which retained Polaris to lobby on "estate taxes, 'frivolous obesity suits,' the minimum wage and avian flu." Former ASG lobbyist Paul Behrends is now at C&M Capitolink and Terry Haines is at Buchanan Ingersoll. In related news, the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee released a report detailing how Abramoff used nonprofit groups "as extensions of for-profit lobbying operations." One group, conservative activist Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, funneled more than $1 million from the Choctaw tribe to Ralph Reed, reports Associated Press.

In Afghanistan, "the Taliban now have three different press spokesmen covering three separate regions of the country. In Kandahar this summer, Taliban cassettes, DVDs and magazines are available in numbers never previously seen. ... The Taliban have also begun broadcasting a pirate station called the 'Voice of Sharia' from mobile transmitters in at least two southern provinces," reports The Independent. "In response, Western forces in the country are extending a fledgling military funded radio channel called Radio Peace," which aims to counter Taliban propaganda portraying President Hamid Karzai as a "puppet" of the United States. The Washington Post reports on "an unsigned but official-looking document" recently delivered to Afghan media outlets, which directed them to avoid any material that "weakens public morale or damages the national interest," among other instructions. Karzai disavowed the document, which the national journalists' association called "illegal." The document is believed to have come from the Afghan intelligence service or government officials "seeking to indirectly intimidate the press."

"We need to win hearts and minds in local communities and reassure people about safety," said Philip Dewhurst. He's not a military commander in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the chair of the British Nuclear Industry Association (NIA). NIA, which represents 120 "nuclear power station operators, equipment suppliers and waste management firms," is readying for the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair "to give the go-ahead for the building of new [nuclear] stations when it publishes the findings of the Energy Review next month." NIA created a new staff position, public relations head, "to champion the industry," reports PR Week. NIA's chief executive has said "he believes the public would support new plants built next to existing power stations, where residents are already assured of safety and where thousands of jobs are supported."

The New York Times reports that Republicans are strongly embracing the Bush Administration's war in Iraq in "an effort to turn what some party leaders had feared could become the party's greatest liability into an advantage in the midterm elections." In a strategy meeting "White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war. Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett." The NY Times article makes no mention of the new group Vets for Freedom, an apparent client of the Republican consultanting firm Donatelli Group. It has been attacking John Murtha and other Iraq war critics while heavlily promoting Bush's pro-war position. Vets for Freedom could be very helpful in the Republican pro-war PR strategy to keep control of Congress and the Senate.

"Who needs Hill & Knowlton when you've got Benador Associates?" asks Larry Cohler-Esses in The Nation. Cohler-Esses examines a rapidly-debunked May 2006 story in Canada's National Post, which claimed that Iran's government was requiring Jewish residents to wear a yellow insignia. That story was planted by the PR firm Benador Associates, according to its president, Eleana Benador. The firm's "stable of writers and activists" reads like "a Who's Who of the neocon movement," including Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and Amir Taheri, an Iranian exile who wrote the false story. Cohler-Esses notes that Taheri's 1989 book, Nest of Spies, was also debunked for citing "nonexistent sources," fabricating "nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed," and distorting the facts "beyond recognition." Last year, Taheri falsely claimed that Iran's current ambassador to the United Nations took part in the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Yet, Taheri was part of an "Iraq experts" briefing of President Bush last month. "My major concern is the large picture," Benador told Cohler-Esses. "As much as being accurate is important, in the end it's important to side with what's right. What's wrong is siding with the terrorists."

"As an industry, we have not done a good job about educating people and talking about how gas prices are set," explained Shell Oil's senior media relations specialist, Darci Sinclair. So, over the next two years, Shell "will send its senior leaders on a 50-city 'tour'," reports PR Week. Shell president John Hofmeister and other executives will hold "one-on-one and group meetings, receptions, speeches, and other events with local chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, educational institutions, media members, environmental groups, government officials, Shell employees themselves, and others." The goal is to reach 10,000 people in total, in cities including Dallas, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Seattle, Charlotte and Honolulu. Like other oil companies and the industry group American Petroleum Institute, Shell is trying to counter public anger at high oil prices and "windfall profit" tax proposals.

STRATCOM, the U.S. military's Strategic Operations Command, has awarded its new contract for foreign media monitoring to SOS International. Perennial Pentagon favorite the Rendon Group formerly held the contract. SOS will track "foreign press in several languages across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Mexico with a focus on the so-called Global War on Terrorism," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. The contract is worth up to $67 million through 2010. SOS "was one of four companies awarded a multi-million contract with the FBI last year to train and provide role players to support the Bureau's nationwide counterintelligence training program." It's also worked for the United Nations, providing "anti-money laundering training" in Nigeria; for Kellogg Brown and Root, providing linguists; and for the National Security Agency.

The Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) has dismissed an ethics complaint that a front group authorized by the Chief Executive of Corporate Communications Tasmania, Tony Harrison, breached the PR industry's self-regulatory code of ethics. In the March 2006 Tasmanian state election, Harrison authorised a major advertising campaign for Tasmanians for a Better Future but refused to disclose who was funding it. Australian Greens Senator, Christine Milne, argued that in her opinion Harrison breached the code of ethics provision which states that "members shall be prepared to identify the source of funding of any public communication they initiate or for which they act as a conduit". In a speech to the Australian Senate late last week Milne said that all she got from the PRIA "was a two-line reply" dismissing her complaint. Corporate Communications Tasmania is the largest PR company in Tasmania and an affiliate of Porter Novelli.

The U.S. India Business Counci (UIBC) has hired the lobbying company Patton Boggs to build Congressional support for President George W. Bush's plan to allow nuclear technology sales to India. In a July 2005 agreement with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Bush pledged to "adjust U.S. laws and policies" to allow nuclear sales to proceed, even though India is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. India proposes that only 14 of its 22 nuclear power reactors would be open to international inspectors. Potential beneficiaries of the deal include Westinghouse and General Electric, both of which are UIBC members. The plan faces strong opposition from Democratic and Republican members of Congress. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports that one member of the Patton Boggs team will be "Benjamin Ginsberg, who was national counsel for the Bush-Cheney '04 presidential campaign, and a key player in the 2000 Florida recount."

"The tentacles of the transnational mediopolies reach deeper into racial and ethnic communities than ever before," warns media analyst and activist Makani Themba-Nixon. "For some, this is a triumph in diversity. Big corporations reaching consumers of color is something they say we should celebrate. However, this market penetration has gone hand in hand with decreasing media ownership by people of color. ... Diversity in staffing (especially at the top) is closely tied to diversity in ownership. According to a 2002 study by the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, only 4.2 percent of radio outlets are minority-owned, yet these outlets employ more than half of all the people of color in radio." Themba-Nixon points to television trends as particularly troubling. "According to a forthcoming study commissioned by the Writers Guild of America west, before the merger UPN had the single highest concentration of writers of color. ... But UPN is merging with WB to create a new network called CW. CW's fall scheduling plans show ... deep cuts in UPN's black programming."

The Washington Post's Al Kamen reported on a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, written just "hours before President Bush left" for his "surprise trip ... to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there." The cable, titled, "Snapshots from the Office: Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord," opens, "Beginning in March, and picking up in mid-May, Iraqi staff in the Public Affairs section have complained that Islamist and/or militia groups have been negatively affecting their daily routine." The term "public affairs" describes government PR staff. The cable details increasing dress restrictions on Iraqi women and men, often imposed by people "whose affiliations are vague"; limited and unreliable electricity; and housing evictions that may be retaliatory actions "by new Shiite government authorities." The cable explains that many Iraqi employees must hide their affiliation with the U.S. Embassy. "We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their 'cover'. ... For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members for translation at on-camera press events," states the cable.

Eric Lipton reports in a two part series, reinforced by an editorial titled “The Golden Revolving Door,” that the government-industry revolving door is turning faster and faster. According to Lipton’s count, more than 90 former Department of Homeland Security and domestic security officials have entered the lucrative private market by fully capitalizing on their government influence. These include former Secretary Tom Ridge, former Under Secretary Asa Hutchinson, and former Deputy Secretary Admiral James M. Loy. “People have a right to make a living,” said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the department, who now works at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research center. “But working virtually immediately for a company that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting the policy — that is too close. It is almost incestuous.” While Congress passed a law in 1962 that required former officials to wait a year before lobbying former colleagues, the ingenious officials in Homeland Security managed to get a loophole the size of a humvee through the Office of Government Ethics in 2004. It divided the department into seven distinct areas, and allowed former employees to lobby all but the one where they worked.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Maldives, Ahmed Shaheed, has confirmed that Hill & Knowlton is still helping the government polish its image. "They are observing political advancements and other changes. They occasionally check these things," said Shaheed. "They are doing several reviews for the government. ... Very recently two members of its staff were in Maldives," said Shaheed. The government of the Maldives is facing increasing criticism following the arrest of over 200 pro-democracy demonstrators in May and the trial of the chairperson of the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) Chairperson Mohamed Nasheed on charges of "sedition" and "terrorism." The Deputy Chairman of the British Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission, Ben Rogers, said that "it seems rather questionable to me that the Hill and Knowlton people should be acting for such a government." The company is reportedly on a retainer of $20,000 per month.

Ray Moynihan reports in the British Medical Journal that the drug companies Roche and Abbott Laboratories provide approximately two-thirds of the funding of the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), which has over £1m in cash reserves. Roche makes the anti-obesity drug Xenical while Abbott Laboratories makes Reductil. Dr. William Dietz, a senior member of IOTF and "well respected authority on obesity" from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is also a member of a U.S.-based committee reviewing definitions of childhood overweight and obesity. Dietz, Moynihan writes, is "one of the driving forces" behind the redefinition of obesity "which some researchers believe may exaggerate the problem and unnecessarily label children as diseased." Dietz declined to comment to the journal.

"A rule designed by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep groundwater clean near oil drilling sites and other construction zones was loosened ... after years of intense industry pressure, including court battles and behind-the-scenes agency lobbying," in addition to a letter from "a well-connected Texas oil executive" to White House advisor Karl Rove, reports the Los Angeles Times. The letter, from Republican activist and Rove hunting partner Ernest Angelo, complained that the stricter, EPA version of the rule was causing oil executives to "openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity." Rove forwarded the letter to White House environmental advisors, calling for "a response ASAP." The rule was then rewritten by the Office of Management and Budget. "A top EPA official" wrote Angelo about the changes, copying Rove, then-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman and White House environmental advisor James L. Connaughton.

Expanding on earlier reports of growing product placement deals with TV news programs, Joan Stewart writes in Tactics, the monthly magazine from the Public Relations Society of America, that "in many cases, viewers don't know until the end of a five- or 10-minute spot that the segment is, in fact, advertising." For example, "in Minnesota, KARE-TV has turned its morning news show into a giant infomercial called 'Showcase Minnesota.'" Segments cost $2000 each -- a bargain compared to Phoenix, Arizona's Channel 13 show "Mind, Body and Spirit," where a six-minute interview costs $5000. Poynter Institute professor Jill Geisler points out, "In a news program, the person asking the questions is the advocate for the viewer. In pay for play, the person asking the question is the paid advocate of the interviewee." Former entertainment publicist Raleigh Pinskey counters that such arrangements are "legal and ... good business."

According to its website, the PR firm Edelman has expanded and renamed its division aimed at marketing to ethnically diverse audiences. Rosa Alonso is joining Edelman as Senior Vice President to oversee Edelman Multicultural, which focuses primarily on Hispanic and African-American marketing. She previously worked at Time Warner, AT&T Wireless, and Univision. Assisting in these efforts, from their new DC office, will be Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, who previously served as Director of Hispanic Media for the Senate Democratic Communications Center under Minority Leader Harry Reid and as the National Director of Hispanic Media for the Kerry-Edwards Campaign. This coincides with work for new clients including several AstraZeneca pharmaceutical brands, Burger King, and Unilever. In addition, the division recently launched a blog on the Edelman website “to provide insights into the latest developments in the fast-changing multicultural landscape.”

The private security contracting company, ArmorGroup International, has hired former Citigate Dewe Rogerson spinner Patrick Toyne-Sewell as its new communications director. Toyne-Sewell, who was a military man before spending over a decade in the PR world, sees the growing conflicts over oil and gas as being good for the private security industry. "Security is a rapidly growing industry and will expand further as oil and gas reserves require further protection," he told PR Week. "ArmorGroup is moving into wider business areas and doesn’t want people to be misled as to the nature of the industry."

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's lobbying firm, the Ashcroft Group, has been hired by General Dynamics to represent it on "trade and defense issues," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Working on the account are Juleanna Glover Weiss, Vice-President Dick Cheney's former press secretary; Lori Day Sharp, who worked under Ashcroft at the Justice Department; and Willie Gaynor, a former Commerce Department official who was western finance director for the 2004 Bush campaign. The Washington Times reports that General Dynamics "received a $30.7 million U.S. Navy contract last week and was selected -- along with Lockheed Martin in Bethesda -- to submit a bid to design and implement part of the government's Integrated Wireless Network. ... The steady stream of orders from the U.S. Army -- which now total about 25 percent of the company's sales -- provides a solid base that will continue for years. ... The defense contractor's net sales have more than doubled since 2000 to $21.24 billion last year."

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Pfizer has hired Clark & Weinstock, a New York and Washington D.C. based "management consulting firm" that "specializes in reputation and crisis management" and "the development of business ethics and corporate responsibility programs." O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports that the company has been hired as a lobbyist "for general representation and issues concerning Medicare/Medicaid and pharmaceutical research & development." The 11-person team assigned to the account includes former Minnesota Republican Congressman, Vin Weber. Weber is also Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy and a board member of both the Aspen Institute and Citizens Against Government Waste. He was also involved with the neo-conservative network, the Project for a New American Century. In mid-June two men announced they were suing Pfizer, alleging serious side effects from the anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor.

"As the war in Iraq continues for a fourth year, the global image of America has slipped further, even among people in some countries closely allied with the United States," reports Brian Knowlton, citing a new opinion poll by the Pew Research Center. The poll found significant declines in esteem for the United States in countries including Spain, India, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey, and smaller declines in France, Germany and Jordan. "Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it's a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States," said Pew president Andrew Kohut.

In a February 1989 speech to the Executive Committee of the now-defunct Tobacco Institute, the group's Senior Vice President, Charles Powers, sought to save the industry's covert "Scientific Witness" program from impending budget cuts. The program, he said, featured experts "who are our front line of defense in tax, public smoking and advertising hearings every day." Powers complained that "scientists will not buck for love" the scientific consensus on the link between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and health impacts. "It takes money," he said. "The Institute can't do it and be taken seriously. We need people who have earned reputations as serious researchers...who can review and critique articles, publish and act as peer reviewers," he said. Powers estimated that it cost an average of $40,000 and took six weeks to identify and train a single expert.

The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company has contributed $10,000 to an Arizona group, the Non-Smoker Protection Committee. The group is proposing a ballot initiative in favour of The Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act which it claims would create "a balanced, reasonable, consistent, statewide non-smoking law, protecting minors and preserving private property rights." In fact, the initiative would overturn existing smoking bans in cities such as Tempe and would prevent other cities from instituting them. Dr. Leland Fairbanks, a retired doctor, told Associated Press that the name of the tobacco-friendly proposal has fooled some people into signing the petition supporting the initiative being placed on the ballot."There's a lot of deception going on," Fairbanks said. "Many people think they're signing the health one, but they're signing the R.J. Reynolds one. They're mad, and they should be." Tobacco control groups are proposing an alternative initiative, the Smoke-Free Arizona Act.

 

The three recent suicides by detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, referred to as “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, are apparently not what they would seem. Administration officials rejected suggestions the three had killed themselves out of despair at their indefinite confinement. “It does sound like this is part of a strategy in that they don’t value their own lives … they certainly don't value ours and they use suicide bombings as a tactic,” Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC on Sunday. “Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move to draw attention.” The camp's commander, Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., said the suicides were an al-Qaeda tactic. “They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own,” he said. “I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

David Carr examines Ann Coulter's simple PR formula for marketing her best-selling books: vile hate speech echoed in the mainstream media. In her five books Ann Coulter has "suggested wistfully that Timothy McVeigh should have parked his truck in front of the New York Times, joked that a Supreme Court justice should be poisoned, and said that America should invade Muslim countries and kill their leaders." Bob Wietrak of Barnes & Noble observes Ann Coulter's "fan base is phenomenal and she is in the media constantly. When she is in the media, it creates more media coverage. And every single day, the book sells more." TV loves Ann Coulter Carr concludes because "seeing hate-speech pop out of a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail dress makes for compelling viewing. ... You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us."

A new antibiotic that has been found to cause four times the average rate of acute liver failure in adults continues in a trial for more than 900 children worldwide, despite criticism from a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official and a study consultant. The drug, Ketek (internationally known as Telithromycin) is manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis, a French pharmaceutical firm with U.S. headquarters in New Jersey. The company has defended the antibiotic as safe when used as directed. "How does one justify balancing the risk of fatal liver failure against one day less of ear pain?" asks Dr. Rosemary Johann-Liang, of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, in a memo uncovered by the Times. Duke University infectious disease specialist Dr. Danny Benjamin echoes the concern, calling the pediatric trial "hard to support." Benjamin is especially critical of testing the antibiotic for routine ear infections at a time when antibiotics are less frequently recommended for pediatric treatment. Yet, the FDA's own website continues to promote the pediatric trial.

The PR firm Ruder Finn has lost the account working for the U.S. Tuna Foundation to defend human consumption of canned tuna containing high levels of mercury. Burson-Marsteller has landed the account. "Amid the transition, Burson is working to challenge a widely cited Consumer Reports study published this month which found canned light tuna can contain higher levels of mercury than other tuna and could pose serious problems to an unborn child," O'Dwyer's reports. The foundation has also appointed Anne Forristall Luke, a former "principal at Washington, D.C. firm MGN and former public affairs practice head for Ketchum," to head the organization.

The President of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), Barbara Cochran, has conceded the accuracy of the recent Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) report, Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed. "We had good reason to think that many of the video examples posted on the CMD website were simple errors, not deliberate attempts to fool the public, but the similarities between newscast stories and video news releases (VNRs) were embarrassing," Cochran said in a statement. While RTNDA may be red-faced, they are still resisting reforms that would mandate disclosure of VNRs to viewers. Meanwhile, the owner of KEF Media Associates, Kevin E. Foley, has abandoned even referring to VNRs, preferring to call them "TV press releases" instead. The Federal Communications Commission investigation into undisclosed use of VNRs, he complains, represents a threat to "the free speech rights of my corporate clients."

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have finished writing The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq. It is their sixth book together for the Center and a sequel to their 2003 bestseller Weapons of Mass Deception. If you review books or interview authors, please contact us to request a free advance review copy. Our new book won't be in stores until September, but you can place an advance order here. You can also view the book's provocative cover by cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, and read the chapter titles and the back-cover description which begins, "They told us so. The first authors to expose the blatant deceptions that got us into the Iraq War now reveal how the same lies have led us toward defeat. ... Now that even US generals agree that war critics were right in the first place, Rampton and Stauber show us how to wake up and not be misled again."

From the website of "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price"

The radio segment begins, "As summer vacation season gets underway, high fuel prices and high air fares are limiting the ability of vacationers to travel far. And close to home, new legislation may force costs to soar even higher." The segment -- an audio news release (ANR) from Wal-Mart -- warns of proposed legislation in New York that would require large employers to put a minimum percentage of their payroll towards employee healthcare. The bill is one of dozens introduced in response to Wal-Mart employees' reliance on publicly-funded health programs. The ANR features Mark Alesse of New York's National Federation of Independent Business, who says that while "health insurance is vitally important," better coverage won't be accomplished by "adding an eight and a half billion dollar job-killing tax to the economy. If we do that, we'll not only have more uninsured, we'll have more unemployed" people. If you hear this ANR, please contact the Center for Media and Democracy!

It's not surprising that