THE WEEKLY SPIN, August 1, 2007 Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 10:03:20 -0500 (CDT) THE WEEKLY SPIN, August 1, 2007 == BLOG POSTINGS == 1. News Release: Patti Smith's August 5th Gig will Benefit the Center for Media and Democracy 2. Yearly Kos Events with the Center for Media and Democracy 3. An Open Knowledge Base for the National Broadband Project == BE A CITIZEN JOURNALIST == 1. New Participatory Project: Help Sen. Durbin Write a New Internet Bill == SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS == 1. WGA Report Supports CMD's 'Stop Fake News' Campaign 2. Military Takes Aim at U.S. Propaganda Ban 3. UK Committee to Research U.S. Lobbying Rules 4. Trust Us, We're NewsTrust 5. PR Firms Booming 6. Solid Spoof 7. Rapper Mocks Direct-to-Consumer Drug Ads 8. Newspaper Industry Death Watch 9. Prisoner 345 10. Melanie Morgan Still Wants to Kill -------------------------------------------------------------------- == BLOG POSTINGS == 1. NEWS RELEASE: PATTI SMITH'S AUGUST 5TH GIG WILL BENEFIT THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY Contact: John Stauber, Executive Director, Center for Media and Democracy Phone: 608-260-9713 Beat poet, writer, punk rock legend and Rock And Roll Hall of Fame member Patti Smith and her band will crank it up this Sunday, August 5, 7:30pm, in Madison, at the Barrymore Theater. Their appearance will benefit the work of the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) . Hundreds of Smith fans packing the theater will have an opportunity to bid on items in a silent auction, with auction proceeds fully supporting the work of CMD. To read the rest of this item, visit: http://www.prwatch.org/node/6302 2. YEARLY KOS EVENTS WITH THE CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY by John Stauber The Center for Media and Democracy is hosting a "Coffee with the Troops" at Yearly Kos this Sunday in Chicago, August 5, 9:30 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. This is one of four Yearly Kos events with CMD staff. It features national leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War and examines where online activists now stand on Iraq as the war drags on and campaigning for 2008 intensifies. Will the Netroots follow the lead of Democratic Party officials, candidates and strategists? Or, will online activists and bloggers help unite and mobilize a stronger, independent movement against the war? To read the rest of this item, visit: http://www.prwatch.org/node/6307 3. AN OPEN KNOWLEDGE BASE FOR THE NATIONAL BROADBAND PROJECT by Conor Kenny NOTE: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has opened up the legislative process to direct suggestions and feedback from citizens over at the new OpenLeft.com site, where he has been live-blogging about a new, comprehensive Internet bill he is writing. This post is about a parallel project we've started on Congresspedia. Cross-posted at OpenLeft. Any good piece of legislation is built on a solid understanding of the available research and data. Sen. Durbin has enlisted several knowledgeable experts to help him in this project and there's been some great discussion in the comments on OpenLeft. But comment threads can only go so long before, well, the threads get tangled. So, to fully enable collaboration between all the Internet wonks, policy geeks and regular Joes and Janes out there who have some relevant information (or can find some), we've created an open knowledge base on the Congresspedia wiki for Sen. Durbin's project. To read the rest of this item, visit: http://www.prwatch.org/node/6293 == BE A CITIZEN JOURNALIST == 1. NEW PARTICIPATORY PROJECT: HELP SEN. DURBIN WRITE A NEW INTERNET BILL http://www.prwatch.org/node/6309 Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has opened up the legislative process to citizen participation for a new "national broadband strategy" bill that would cover network neutrality policy, broadband Internet availability and spectrum policy. He has been blogging and asking for suggestions at the new OpenLeft.com site and his office has encouraged CMD to setup a parallel project on Congresspedia where we are collecting all the arguments, data and research needed to draft and evaluate the legislation when Sen. Durbin posts it online. YOU DON'T NEED TO BE AN EXPERT TO JOIN THIS EFFORT - Simply go to the project homepage and check it out. If you'd like to pitch in, leave a note on the project's discussion page or email the Congresspedia managing editor at CKenny [at] Congresspedia.org. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can go to www.sourcewatch.org for more information. SOURCE: Congresspedia's Nation Broadband Project == SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS == 1. WGA REPORT SUPPORTS CMD'S 'STOP FAKE NEWS' CAMPAIGN http://www.prwatch.org/node/6311 More bad and disturbing news about the decline and corruption of TV journalism, a term that seems almost an oxymoron. "Broadcast Newswriters Speak About News Quality," an in-depth investigation from the AFL-CIO Writers Guild of America East, buoys the findings of CMD's 2006 investigations of the widespread and undisclosed airing of fake TV news. "WGA members cited 'daily' and 'chronic' use of VNRs in some of their newsrooms." Among the report's recommendation are "support for the Center For Media and Democracy's proposals for video news releases" and "make infractions to these public interest requirements punishable by fine and require adherence to these standards for license renewal." SOURCE: Writers Guild of America East, July 25, 2007 2. MILITARY TAKES AIM AT U.S. PROPAGANDA BAN http://www.prwatch.org/node/6306 In preparing its marketing study commissioned by the U.S. military, the RAND Corporation sought the advice of PR advisers including Burson-Marsteller, Weber Shandwick, J.D. Power, the Rendon Group, and the Lincoln Group. The report called for a review of the Smith-Mundt Act, which bans government propaganda aimed at U.S. audiences, claiming that it put the military at a "competitive disadvantage". Paige Craig, from the Lincoln Group, complained to PR Week that "it's almost embarrassing to sit here and realize we've got the talent and ability to counter what the adversary makes; it's simply a matter of policy." SOURCE: PR Week, July 30, 2007 3. UK COMMITTEE TO RESEARCH U.S. LOBBYING RULES http://www.prwatch.org/node/6303 The U.K Public Administration Committee, which has launched an investigation into the lobbying industry, will visit Washington D.C. in October to research the U.S. system for regulating lobbying. The vice-chairman of the PR company Edelman Europe, Michael Burrell, is wary of the U.K. government emulating the U.S. regulatory standards. "I think that our self-regulatory system works remarkably well," he told PR Week. The U.K. inquiry is seeking to investigate "the transparency of the lobbying industry, the effectiveness of recent attempts at self-regulation, and whether the rules for those in Parliament and government should be changed." SOURCE: PR Week, July 25 2007 4. TRUST US, WE'RE NEWSTRUST http://www.prwatch.org/node/6301 "For consumers of news and searchers of information, these are heady times," writes Steve Outing. "Most of us are adding new news sources to our information diet all the time." However, "there's a huge downside to this abundance: How as consumers do we know if we can trust what we read? How do we know if it's balanced, or serving someone's narrow agenda?" One new option is NewsTrust, "a social network model which uses the intellect of the masses to rate all manner of news content and news sources. ... In beta now and due out in early 2008, Newstrust will not only be a stand-alone site where consumers can come to find the best journalism as ranked by an army of volunteer media reviewers, but more importantly it will (we can hope) be deployed over all manner of online news sources so that readers will on any news-related website see an objective rating of that site's quality and of specific news content." SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, July 30, 2007 5. PR FIRMS BOOMING http://www.prwatch.org/node/6299 Based on the survey results of 300 public relations firms around the world, The Holmes Report estimates that the industry is "generating at least $7 billion in fee income annually, employing in excess of 50,000 people, and growing by at least 8.5 percent a year." The newsletter notes that 1,500 firms did not respond to the survey, which makes their estimate a "best guess." "The way in which most large communications holding companies have chosen to interpret Sarbanes-Oxley regulations makes it almost impossible to secure accurate and verifiable information about the size and performance of their individual operating units," the newsletter states. The survey did not include PR professionals employed by government agencies, trade associations, non-profit groups or corporations. SOURCE: The Holmes Report (not online), July 23, 2007 6. SOLID SPOOF http://www.prwatch.org/node/6298 The New Zealand Government-owned coal mining company, Solid Energy, has had only a limited win with the legal action it launched over a spoof corporate social responsibility report. Initially, the company aimed to suppress the entire report, produced by the Save Happy Valley Coalition, and sought damages for defamation and injurious falsehood. It later changed tack and simply sought the removal of its trademarked logo from the report. Last week, High Court Justice Lester Chisholm ordered that the company logo and name be removed from the report cover. The coalition has subsequently re-issued the report. Solid Energy has become renowned for its hardball tactics. In 2005 the company unsuccessfully sought $NZ379,342 against two environmental groups who challenged the approval of a new mine in a planning tribunal. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Solid Energy had hired a private investigation company to infiltrate the Save Happy Valley Coalition. SOURCE: New Zealand Press Association, July 25, 2007 7. RAPPER MOCKS DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER DRUG ADS http://www.prwatch.org/node/6297 The New Jersey rapper, Sudden Death, has launched a free-to-play track which mocks the drug industry's direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). The song, titled Pillagers, describes the experience of a man taking two dozen pills for various conditions being prescribed the notional drug Liquiplox that "relaxes the lining of your throat making it easier to take pills". "Liquiplox isn't for everyone. People without health insurance or who otherwise may be unable to pay should not take Liquiplox. Do not stop taking any of your other medications without consulting your doctor as this may cause an unsafe drop in our profit margins," a fictional drug company rep states in the song. A November 2006 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office report stated that drug companies spent $4.2 billion in 2005 on DTCA in the U.S. SOURCE: Pharmaceutical Marketing, July 23, 2007 8. NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY DEATH WATCH http://www.prwatch.org/node/6296 As leading newspapers continue to face falling revenues and profits, Merrill Goozner laments the loss of paying journalism jobs. "Advertising dollars are migrating away from print to the internet, broadcasting and other sources like direct mail," he writes. "Companies like Google and Yahoo are rolling in cash. But they hire very few journalists (if any). And those they do hire have very few standards. ... It is often said that our democracy cannot survive without a free press. But when the only information the new economy's free press provides is ill- or uninformed opinion, what kind of democracy will we have?" SOURCE: GoozNews, July 26, 2007 9. PRISONER 345 http://www.prwatch.org/node/6292 "For the past five years," Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, "has been the only journalist known to be held in Guantanamo Bay," reports Rachel Morris. Al-Haj was originally detained in December 2001 while trying to cross the border into Afghanistan with a team of other journalists. After examining his case, Morris can find little evidence to justify his detention. His wife and journalists who worked with al-Haj describe him as "a very kind-hearted person" who "was very particular about his work" and "just seemed like a young kid trying to get his big break" but "was detained at a moment when distrust of Al Jazeera was accumulating rapidly at the highest levels of the American government." The specific charges against him have changed over time. At one point military officials said he "had gone to Afghanistan to buy Stinger missiles to fight in Chechnya, a charge that has since been dropped." Other charges are impossible to assess because the government says its information against him is classified and cannot be reviewed even by al-Haj or his attorney, Stafford Smith. According to Smith, al-Haj "has been interrogated approximately 130 times. Roughly 125 of those sessions, he said, dealt not with the allegations but with Al Jazeera's operations." SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2007 10. MELANIE MORGAN STILL WANTS TO KILL http://www.prwatch.org/node/6286 A year ago, Melanie Morgan of the Move America Forward front group publicly fantasized about having New York Times editor Bill Keller sent to the gas chamber or the electric chair (she couldn't decide which). In a recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Morgan repeated her claim that Keller and other journalists who reported on the government's SWIFT program for tracking terrorist bank transactions "should be tried for treason. If they were found guilty of treason, I would have no problem with them being executed." SOURCE: Media Matters for America, July 20, 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Weekly Spin features selected news summaries with links to further information about media, political spin and propaganda. It is emailed free each Wednesday to subscribers. PR Watch, Spin of the Day, the Weekly Spin and SourceWatch are projects of the Center for Media & Democracy, a nonprofit organization that offers investigative reporting on the public relations industry. We help the public recognize manipulative and misleading PR practices by exposing the activities of secretive, little-known propaganda-for-hire firms that work to control political debates and public opinion. Please send any questions or suggestions about our publications to editor@prwatch.org. 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