Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was "pummeled by Congress for poor inspections of tainted vegetables, drugs and other products," the agency wanted public relations help. First, it hired Mildred Cooper as "a temporary FDA consultant ... on a two-year contract to advise FDA Commissioner Andrew C.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The U.S. Defense Department has awarded its up to three-year, $300 million contract for "information operations" in Iraq and possibly Afghanistan.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is poised to end "a six-year-old battle between career EPA scientists" who want to regulate a chemical linked to thyroid problems in pregnant women and children, and the White House and Pentagon, where officials oppose setting a drinking-water safety standard for the chemical, perchlorate. Guess who's likely to win?
Submitted by Anne Landman on
Over $13 billion that the U.S.
One of my favorite critiques of our ad-saturated modern world is in "Infinite Jest," the epic novel by recently-departed author and essayist David Foster Wallace. In the novel's not-too-distant future, time itself has become a corporate marketing opportunity. There's the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar and the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. That's not to mention the Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/InterLace TP Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile, which is often abbreviated.
The novel's system of Subsidized Time is hilarious ... and you can almost imagine it really happening. At least corporate-sponsored years wouldn't present the disclosure problems of today's stealth ads -- marketing messages that masquerade as entertainment or news content.
The Center for Media and Democracy believes that all advertising should be as clearly announced as the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. That's why we just filed a comment with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC is debating how its sponsorship identification rules apply to product placement, product integration and other types of "embedded advertising" relayed over television or radio stations.
In 2003, Commercial Alert urged the FCC to address product placement disclosure. "Advertisers can puff and tout, and use all the many tricks of their trade," the watchdog group wrote (pdf). "But they must not pretend that their ads are something else."
Especially, we would add, when that "something else" is news programming.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Public interest groups, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, are blasting the Food and Drug Administration for relying on industry-funded studies in evaluating the safety of bisphenol A, a chemical widely used in food packaging materials.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
In Bolivia, anti-government protests have led to dozens of deaths. President Evo Morales claimed the United States is supporting the violent groups and asked U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg to leave. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), pointing to earlier reports that the U.S.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
After taking control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the U.S.
Submitted by Judith Siers-Poisson on
A coalition of "consumer and good government groups, librarians, environmentalists, labor leaders, journalists, and others," OpenTheGovernment.org, has found that secrecy by the Bush administration continues to expand.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
The U.S. Labor Department has only "ruled in favor of [corporate] whistleblowers 17 times out of 1,273 complaints filed since 2002," and has dismissed 841 cases. Many of the dismissals were based "on the technicality that workers at corporate subsidiaries aren't covered" by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
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