Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
Do you like being propagandized? If not, join the fight to stop fake news! As the Center for Media and Democracy reported last week, TV stations' use of corporate-funded video news releases is widespread and undisclosed. Our colleagues at Free Press have made it easy for you to contact the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on this important issue.
Submitted by Jonathan Rosenblum on
Greenpeace got IRS’s green light for continued nonprofit tax status last month after an audit, but the whodunit continues, especially in the business press. Did the Exxon Mobil-funded Public Interest Watch (PIW) draw in IRS?
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless," reports Nicholas Riccardi. According to environmental activist Kirsten Atkins, who wound up in an FBI terrorism file after she attended a protest against the lumber industry, "They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me."
Submitted by Bob Burton on
The Wall Street Journal reports that Public Interest Watch (PIW), a non-profit 'watchdog' group which sucessfully lobbied for an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax audit of Greenpeace, has been heavily funded by ExxonMobil. Two years after PIW urged an IRS investigation, Greenpeace was subjected to a three-month long audit.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"Lobbyists from the fledgling commercial space industry are besieging Capitol Hill, hoping to persuade the government to hand out contracts to help put the U.S. military into orbit," reports John Lasker. The main "talking point" for the 50 to 75 lobbyists is "how the private sector can help the U.S.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"Nearly a fifth of the UK's top public companies are still failing to deliver comprehensive reports detailing the economic, environmental and social impact of their business," reports Andy Favell for The Independent. Analyses have found corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from 18 of the British companies on the FTSE 100 Index to be inadequate.
"Officials from giant corporations meet all the time to share their latest and greatest PR strategies," read the conference website. "Now it's our turn."
On February 2 and 3, some 180 people attended the True Spin Conference in Denver, Colorado, which was billed as "a PR conference for progressives." The event was organized by CauseCommunications, a small Denver PR firm whose clients have included Ben Cohen's Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, Winona LaDuke's Honor the Earth, and The Progressive magazine.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
In May 2003, then-deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gave the go-ahead for a domestic intelligence gathering operation by the Defense Department, code-named TALON, under which "raw information" on "suspicious incidents" was given to U.S.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
From 1990 to 2005, General Electric spent more than $122 million on public relations, lobbying and legal efforts, "to fight demands that it clean up three contaminated polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) sites," reports O'Dwyer's.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"After the White House's aggressive response to [Iraq] war critics led to higher poll numbers for the president, congressional Republicans ... are looking to fight their own aggressive campaign," reports The Hill.
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