In the news
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- War and Deceptive Spinning Are Over... Not: "Public relations firms across the country predict massive layoffs in the coming months due to recent legislation outlawing the firms' most lucrative practices," according to an article in a spoof edition of the New York Times, dated July 4, 2009. The real Times reports, "In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of copies ... Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city." The lead story of the spoof paper is "Iraq War Ends." Other stories detailed similar wonders, including "national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, [and] a national oil fund to study climate change." The spoof paper has been linked to the Yes Men, a political satire group that's previously targeted the World Trade Organization and Dow Chemical Company.
- Does the "O" Logo Mean Openness?: A coalition of open records, good government and research groups submitted "a lengthy to-do list for President-elect Barack Obama and Congress." Their recommendations include overturning the "Ashcroft memo," which made it easier for federal agencies to refuse requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); rescinding Executive Order #13233, which limits access to historical presidential records; directing the new Attorney General "to advise agencies how to increase the presumption of openness" under FOIA; encouraging Congress "to establish a criminal penalty for willful concealment or destruction of non-exempt agency records requested under FOIA."
- U.S. Army Recruiting Gets Younger and Less Violent: For years, military recruiters have focused on adult "influencers" -- parents, teachers and coaches who could encourage or discourage a young person from joining the military. Now, the U.S. Army is seeking to make its recruiting "campaign more relevant to the desired audience of Americans ages 17 to 24." The new phase of the "Army strong" campaign puts "more emphasis on the Internet, event marketing and other methods that connect with young Americans on a closer, more personal level." It includes a revamped Army website, with "Straight from Iraq," a webcast series where visitors can "find out what it's really like to be deployed in the Middle East from the men and women stationed there."
- Lobbyists, Register with the President: "President-elect Obama is already backing off his pledge not to hire any lobbyists to serve in his administration," reports Shawn Zeller. "But one prominent hired gun -- Stuart Pape, managing partner at the biggest lobbying firm in Washington -- expects that Obama will soon after taking office set new disclosure requirements for lobbyists trying to influence executive branch officials." Pape spoke at a briefing sponsored by his firm, Patton Boggs, and Qorvis Communications. Pape also pointed out that the Obama campaign's "brilliant plan" was so "well executed" that it has raised expectations for real change. "You saw the enthusiasm of people, not just in the United States but all over the world last night," he said.
- [Advertisers Elect Obama "Marketer of the Year" for 2008]: Barack Obama has been named Advertising Age's 2008 Marketer of the Year for the simplicity, consistency and relevance of his campaign. Hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors attending the 2008 annual Association of National Advertisers conference voted for Obama's campaign over ad campaigns by major companies like Apple, Zappos, Nike and Coors. AdAge called Obama's historic November 4 win the "biggest day in the history of marketing," saying marketers have a lot to learn from his campaign. At a time when 70% of the population thought the country was headed in the wrong direction, Obama adopted a simple slogan of "Change" that never varied throughout his campaign, while his competitors tried for months to find similarly simple yet powerful messages.
- FCC Votes to Open Up White Spaces: On Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to open up the "white spaces" on the television spectrum that will be available when the U.S. switches from analog to all-digital in February 2009. Sascha Meinrath, research director of the wireless future program at the New America Foundation, said that "All the PR spin and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) failed in the face of physics and the ground reality of engineering."
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The Weekly Radio Spin
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- Weekly Radio Spin: Guarding the Vote: Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at opening white spaces, Bush's last-minute scramble and feminist cigarettes. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," the history of one airline company behind the CIA's unfriendly skies. Podcasters can subscribe to XML feed on http://www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!
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Recent blogs on PR Watch
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- Sheldon Rampton reviews the media coverage of "Joe the Plumber". See [Spin, Hype, and a Hoax Involving "Joe the Plumber"] (October 16);
- Sheldon Rampton reflects on the the use of malicious emails spread as part of propaganda campaigns. See "Hollywood Goes to War" (November 13);
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Editor's pick of the week
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In June 2008 blogger William K. Wolfrum concluded that M. Thomas Eisenstadt was a hoax. 'Eisenstadt' claimed that he was a Senior Fellow at a think tank called the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. After days of the Eisenstadt hoax being written about on the Internet, the New York Times has reported that "a pair of obscure filmmakers" have admitted they created "Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character."
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Projects for citizen editors
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- The Election Protection Wiki is a non-partisan, non-profit collaboration of citizens, activists and researchers to build a one-stop-shop for reports of voter suppression and the systemic threats to election integrity. We collect just the straight facts that are fully referenced to external, verifiable sources, and we need your help.
- If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here and here. Hold onto your hat, have fun, and thanks for your help!
- And if you would like to work on something else, take a look at some of our earlier citizen journalism projects here. Have fun, and thanks for your help!
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Forums for communication
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- Join the Discussion: Forums for Communication on SourceWatch: The SourceWatch staff has created two forums for citizen journalists on SourceWatch to communicate with each other about what's going on in the site: a Yahoo group and a Community Portal. The Community Portal is a place where you can find announcements by staff and citizen editors, links to important policies and help pages and categories of outstanding tasks and projects identified by readers and editors, such as articles that need updating, expanding or fixing. The Yahoo group is meant primarily for sysops and other editors who are most concerned with the administration of the site and facilitating the contributions of the users, but both the group and the community portal are open to everyone to view and post. SourceWatch is only as strong as its community of editors, so please dive in and let us know what you think.
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Popular articles over the last week
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With the U.S. election primary season dominating news headlines, it is no surprise that pages on the 2008 Presidential election campaign are amongst the most popular pages over the last week. Heading the list are those on Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, the main campaign issues, Congresspedia's Superdelegate Transparency Project and the Economic Stimulus Bill of 2008.
Other popular pages include those on the Heartland Institute, a corporate-funded think tank which this week convened a meeting of global warming skeptics in New York; the article on Corporate Social Responsibility and the profile on the military contractor, Blackwater USA.
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What they're saying about SourceWatch
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"The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy have done incredible work documenting fake grassroots ("astroturf") groups. Here, they're helping protects the rights of all Americans to exercise their right to vote. They are completely non-partisan. These guys are the real deal." Craig Newmark, Craig's List
"A truly impressive project based on cutting edge web technology." David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.
"The troublemakers at the Center for Media and Democracy, for example, point to dozens of examples of "greenwashing," which they defined as the "unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government or even a non-government organization to sell a product, a policy" or rehabilitate an image. In the center's view, many enterprises labeled green don't deserve the name.—Jack Shafer, "Green Is the New Yellow: On the excesses of 'green' journalism", Slate, July 6, 2007.
"As a journalist frequently on the receiving end of various PR campaigns, some of them based on disinformation, others front groups for undisclosed interests, [CMD's SourceWatch] is an invaluable resource."—Michael Pollan author of The Botany of Desire
"Thanks for all your help. There's no way I could have done my piece on big PR and global warming without the CMD [Center for Media and Democracy] and your fabulous websites."—Zoe Cormier, journalist, Canada
"The dearth of information on the [U.S.] government [lobbying] disclosure forms about the other business-backed coalitions comes in stark contrast to the data about them culled from media reports, websites, press releases and Internal Revenue Service documents and posted by SourceWatch, a website that tracks advocacy groups." Jeanne Cummings, 'New disclosure reports lack clarity", Politico, April 29, 2008.
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