THE WEEKLY SPIN, February 20, 2008 Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:12:43 -0600 (CST) THE WEEKLY SPIN, FEBRUARY 20, 2008 == BLOG POSTINGS == 1. Without Academic Partnerships, the Tobacco Industry Loses Power == BE A CITIZEN JOURNALIST == 1. Barn Raising Day for Superdelegate Transparency == SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS == 1. Bay Area CMD Friends: Mark Your Calendars for a Party! 2. SourceWatch Key to Inquiries Launched into Canadian Climate Skeptics' Election Activities 3. Tapping into Consumer Assumptions 4. Are Hybrids Putting the Brakes on Greener Options? 5. When "Social Values" Means Smoking 6. Will the Candidate Without Nuclear Industry Ties Please Stand Up? 7. Weekly Radio Spin: Like, Downloading Is Wrong 8. Olympics Sponsors Counseled to "Keep Quiet" on Darfur 9. Microsoft Tells Students: We Have Rights Too, You Know 10. Opaque Transparency 11. The Big Dirty Hands Behind Wal-Mart's Greenwashing 12. Green Garbage Trucks 13. Smoldering Controversy -------------------------------------------------------------------- == BLOG POSTINGS == 1. WITHOUT ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS, THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY LOSES POWER by Anne Landman A February 9 Los Angeles Times article about University of California, Los Angeles professor Edythe London taking a $6 million grant from Philip Morris to study the brains of child smokers and monkeys addicted to nicotine once again raises questions about the appropriateness of university researchers accepting tobacco industry funding. Philip Morris denied that they have a stake in this particular project, but the denial had little credibility since the company no doubt will benefit from understanding more about youth smoking and nicotine addiction. After all, the future of their business depends on these two topics. Still, we wonder why any person curious enough to be engaged in scientific research isn't also curious enough to find out what's in it for Philip Morris before they accept the funds? These days, the answer is as close as your computer. To read the rest of this item, visit: http://www.prwatch.org/node/7004 == BE A CITIZEN JOURNALIST == 1. BARN RAISING DAY FOR SUPERDELEGATE TRANSPARENCY http://www.prwatch.org/node/7012 Since the Superdelegate Transparency Project launched on Congresspedia last week, dozens of people have helped flesh out the facts about the so-called "superdelegates" whose votes may determine whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama emerges as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Thanks to the hard work of project organizers at Democratic Convention Watch, OpenLeft and LiteraryOutpost, the Superdelegate Transparency Project (STP for short) has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, National Journal, Wired magazine, and the New York Times. According to the Times, STP is "the kind of tool that the back room bosses from 1984 could never have imagined - and today's political bosses are probably horrified to see. The site includes results of the popular vote district-by-district, the allocation of pledged delegates, details about the superdelegates and how they are pledged and eventually how they will vote. It will also tell you how to contact a superdelegate if you want to become part of a lobbying effort." This information is vital because the close race between Clinton and Obama may result in a "brokered" convention where the Democratic delegates cut deals and shift sides to give one candidate the threshold needed to gain the party's nomination. The so-called "superdelegates" therefore hold enormous power to shape the outcome of this year's presidential election, and the public deserves to know who they are, how they plan to use that power, and what forces are working to influence them. Thanks to the work of many volunteers, much of this information has already been compiled, but considerable work still needs to be done. That's why this Thursday we're planning an experiment that we call a "barn raising" - a day-long effort in which we're hoping that many hands can make light work. We'd love it if you could stop by the project and help out. To add to the fun, we've set up an online chat room where you can ask questions, share ideas, and meet some of the people involved in organizing the project. CMD staff will be there, along with STP organizers including Mark Myers, Jennifer Nix and Avelino Maestas. If you'd like to join in, visit the chat room at http://governation.campfirenow.com/6f4a6 and introduce yourself, or stop by the STP project page (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Superdelegate_Transparency_Project), where you'll find a list of things to do and other resources to get you started. We'll have people there all day Thursday, beginning at 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and continuing into the evening. Join us because it will be fun, it's important, and because democracy works best as a participatory process. SOURCE: Congresspedia's Superdelegate Transparency Project == SPIN OF THE DAY POSTINGS == 1. BAY AREA CMD FRIENDS: MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR A PARTY! http://www.prwatch.org/node/7015 MARK YOUR CALENDAR AND SAVE THE DATE! The Center for Media and Democracy is marking its 15th anniversary in 2008 -- that's a decade and a half of award-winning muckraking and exposing corporate spin and government propaganda. We hope you'll join us to celebrate! We're having an after work event on FRIDAY, APRIL 11TH in San Francisco. Delicious food, fun music, a tantalizing auction, and fellow CMD friends -- the perfect way to spend an evening! More details to follow, but put it on your calendar now! Want to be SURE to have all the info? Send an email to event@PRWatch.org with your name and mailing address and we will be sure you are on the list to get updates! 2. SOURCEWATCH KEY TO INQUIRIES LAUNCHED INTO CANADIAN CLIMATE SKEPTICS' ELECTION ACTIVITIES http://www.prwatch.org/node/7013 A Canadian global warming skeptics group, Friends of Science (FoS), is facing several investigations into a radio advertising blitz it ran in the 2006 election campaign, which criticized the then-Liberal government's support for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Funding for FoS came in part from a University of Calgary trust account. Canwest reported that "facing embarrassing questions raised by the online SourceWatch.org encyclopedia, the university conducted an internal audit over the past year which concluded that its trust account had been used to 'support a partisan viewpoint on climate change.'" While the university closed the trust account, it has refused to make its full audit report public. However, further inquiries are underway. "We are contacting Elections Canada to advise it of the review and why it is under way, and we will follow up with Elections Canada once it is complete," Roman Cooney, the university's vice-president of external relations, wrote in an email to Canwest. Federal Liberal member of Parliament Mark Holland said that he wants parliamentary hearings into the FoS election campaign. SOURCE: Canwest News Service, February 17, 2008 3. TAPPING INTO CONSUMER ASSUMPTIONS http://www.prwatch.org/node/7009 Rep. Al Wynn of Maryland and Rep. Hilda Solis of California have asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the bottled water industry. One concern is that the packaging of bottled water often uses images of mountain stream and other pristine natural settings, but as much as a third of bottled water comes from municipal water sources. While there are some added filtration steps in the processing, the product is much closer to tap water than consumers are led to believe. Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council said "I think that consumers are under the misguided impression that bottled water is being carefully regulated and fully tested, and that it comes from whatever place is on the picture on the label. That's not the case." While the Environmental Protection Agency monitors tap water, it is the Food and Drug Administration that is in charge of bottled water. Unfortunately, the "FDA's standard of quality regulations for bottled water set allowable levels for more than 70 different chemical contaminants." SOURCE: MarketWatch, February 13, 2008 4. ARE HYBRIDS PUTTING THE BRAKES ON GREENER OPTIONS? http://www.prwatch.org/node/7007 French researchers are concerned that consumer demand for hybrid cars, fueled by advertising and PR, is slowing down the development of genuinely sustainable green auto technologies. Their report, Hybrid Vehicles: A Temporary Step, states that "There is a general convergence of strategies toward promoting hybrid vehicles as the mid-term solution to very low-emissions and high-mileage vehicles ... Such a convergence is based more on customer perception triggered by very clever marketing and communications campaigns than on pure rational scientific arguments and may result in the need for any manufacturer operating in the USA to have a hybrid electric vehicle in its model range in order to survive." Technologies that may be taking a back seat as a result include hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. Nearly 24,000 hybrid vehicles were sold in the U.S. in January 2008. SOURCE: Wired, February 11, 2008 5. WHEN "SOCIAL VALUES" MEANS SMOKING http://www.prwatch.org/node/7005 When the dangers of smoking first became widely known, cigarette companies secretly hired biomedical scientists to create confusion. A new study co-authored by TobaccoWiki editor Anne Landman shows that cigarette makers also used sociology to try to shift public opinion. The Social Costs/Social Values Project of the late 1970s and early 1980s paid respected philosophers, political scientists, psychologists and sociologists to develop pro-smoking arguments that avoided any mention of health or medicine. The resulting arguments included that smoking has positive social benefits, that cigarette taxes are regressive, that anti-tobacco advocates act out of self-interest, and that applying a cost-benefit analysis to smoking is inappropriate. Another project, the Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment or ARISE, recruited academics in the 1990s to counteract the information that cigarettes were addictive. ARISE "experts" were paid to attend conferences, write books and give interviews in which they said that smoking, drinking tea, shopping and eating chocolate all promoted good health by relieving stress. SOURCE: New Scientist (sub req'd), February 16, 2008 6. WILL THE CANDIDATE WITHOUT NUCLEAR INDUSTRY TIES PLEASE STAND UP? http://www.prwatch.org/node/7002 "As Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was blasting Sen. Barack Obama for his ties to the Exelon Corporation, the firm of Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the very same nuclear energy client," reports Sam Stein. Penn's PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, works for Exelon and the Exelon-funded pro-nuclear group New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition (NJ ACRE), as the Center for Media and Democracy previously reported. Recently, Exelon paid Burson-Marsteller more than $230,000, coded as "public affairs." Exelon said the work involved NJ ACRE and strengthening local support for "the renewal of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's operating license." The payment covered Burson-Marsteller's work between June and November 2007, which included carrying out a poll and setting up "speaking engagements and events for Patrick Moore," the Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant and co-chair of the nuclear industry-funded group Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. SOURCE: The Huffington Post, February 14, 2008 7. WEEKLY RADIO SPIN: LIKE, DOWNLOADING IS WRONG http://www.prwatch.org/node/7001 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 drug pushers, Microsoft in the classroom and what bottled water and hybrid cars have in common. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at Jack Abramoff, the Kevin Bacon of the lobbying world. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on 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! SOURCE: Center for Media and Democracy, February 15, 2008 8. OLYMPICS SPONSORS COUNSELED TO "KEEP QUIET" ON DARFUR http://www.prwatch.org/node/6998 Corporate sponsors of this summer's Beijing Olympics Games are increasingly nervous. Steven Spielberg recently "withdrew as an artistic adviser for the Beijing Games' opening and closing ceremonies, citing China's ties to the Sudan government." Even athletes are getting in the act, with more than 50 joining "Team Darfur, an organization of past and present Olympians who have pledged to use the Games to highlight what they see as genocide in Darfur." An unnamed "major public relations firm was busy yesterday providing advice to Olympic sponsors and advertisers," reports the Wall Street Journal. "While the firm was telling marketers to 'keep quiet' on the issue if at all possible, it was also advising them to develop a position on Darfur. One executive at the firm says he is likely to tell marketers to also pay attention to internal dynamics at their companies, including employee opinions." Major Olympics sponsors include Coca-Cola, McDonald's, General Motors and Eastman Kodak. SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), February 14, 2008 9. MICROSOFT TELLS STUDENTS: WE HAVE RIGHTS TOO, YOU KNOW http://www.prwatch.org/node/6997 "Education is the key to stemming illegal downloads of music and other content," concluded a new study. "Teenagers are less likely to illegally download digital content when they are familiar with copyright laws." The study (PDF) was funded by software giant Microsoft and is being promoted by Weber Shandwick, one of the company's three PR firms. Microsoft's Sheri Erickson said the survey means schools can "prepare students to be good online citizens." But rather than wait for schools to consider the issue, Microsoft hired a "curriculum consulting firm, Topics Education, to develop a pilot program for copyright education in middle and high schools." Microsoft also set up two websites: one that asks teachers to "participate in a Field Test of this brand-new curriculum" and one that asks students to "mix, publish and share" cell phone ring tones created using the site -- after assigning intellectual property usage rights to them. One blogger accused Microsoft of trying "to retrofit 20th century copyright laws onto 21st century realities." SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), February 13, 2008 10. OPAQUE TRANSPARENCY http://www.prwatch.org/node/6996 The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU), a coalition of over 140 groups in Europe, has taken the European Commission to task over its "European Transparency Initiative" (ETI), which is supposed to provide public information about the role of lobbyists in influencing decision-making by the European Union. The Commission has said it will begin publishing a register showing which organizations are engaged in lobbying. In an open letter, however, ALTER-EU complains that the register will not include the names of individual lobbyists or the dollar amounts spent lobbying. Without that information, the letter warns, journalists would be unable to use the register to identify and expose "Abramoff-style ... lobbying scandals. ... If the new EU lobbing transparency register does not allow the identification of individual lobbyists, it cannot serve as a tool to investigate 'conflicts of interest' and 'revolving doors.' Leaving out lobbyists' names would put the credibility of the European Transparency Initiative at stake. ... If the EU register will not answer simple questions like 'who are the lobbyists?' or 'how much money is spent on lobbying by whom?,' it would be useless." SOURCE: ALTER-EU news release, February 13, 2008 11. THE BIG DIRTY HANDS BEHIND WAL-MART'S GREENWASHING http://www.prwatch.org/node/6995 Phil Mattera, the research director of Good Jobs First, reflects on the rise and fall of greenwashing during the 1990's and asks whether we are "now seeing a green business boom that will also turn out to be nothing more than hot air?" While a marketing consultancy company, TerraChoice, last year identified what it dubbed as "six sins of greenwashing", Mattera believes that Wal-Mart's attempt at a green corporate makeover involves two other sins. The first is that of "unclean hands." It is "difficult to avoid thinking," he writes, "that the company is using its environmental initiatives to draw attention away from its widely criticized labor practices." The second sin, he suggests, is the "sin of size." "There's a growing sense that true sustainability entails a substantial degree of localism and moderate-size enterprise. That rules out Wal-Mart, no matter what its CEO professes." Mattera also notes that some environmental groups form "partnerships with companies. Such relationships serve to legitimize business initiatives while turning those groups into cheerleaders for their corporate partners. Former Sierra Club president [and Greenpeace board member] Adam Werbach took it a step further and joined the payroll of Wal-Mart." SOURCE: Alternet, February 12, 2008 12. GREEN GARBAGE TRUCKS http://www.prwatch.org/node/6993 Waste Management, the U.S. waste disposal company that Rachel's Hazardous Waste News once called "the nation's largest polluter," has been trying to clean up its reputation. "For the last three years it has been spending $25 million to $30 million a year to run print and television advertisements highlighting the amount of energy it generates from burning trash each year (enough to power one million homes), the amount of acreage it has set aside for wildlife habitats (more than 17,000 acres), the number of trees it has saved by recycling paper (41 million last year)," reports Claudia H. Deutsch. The company has also painted all of its garbage trucks green and is circulating eco-slogans such as "Waste Management, helping the world dispose of its problems." SOURCE: New York Times, February 7, 2008 13. SMOLDERING CONTROVERSY http://www.prwatch.org/node/6992 "Here's a recipe for academic controversy," observes Richard C. Paddock: "First, find dozens of hard-core teenage smokers as young as 14 and study their brains with high-tech scans. Second, feed vervet monkeys liquid nicotine and then kill at least six of them to examine their brains. Third, accept $6 million from tobacco giant Philip Morris to pay for it all. Fourth, cloak the project in unusual secrecy." At the University of California-Los Angeles, researchers have done exactly this in what they claim will be a groundbreaking study of addiction that may help people quit smoking. Anti-tobacco activists, however, wonder if Philip Morris may actually be hoping to use the research to design more addictive cigarettes. "It's stunning in this day and age that a university would do secret research for the tobacco industry on the brains of children," said Matt Meyers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "It raises fundamental questions about the integrity, honesty and openness of research anywhere at the University of California." SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2008 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. To subscribe to the Weekly Spin, visit: http://www.prwatch.org/sub CMD also sponsors SourceWatch, a collaborative research project that invites anyone (including you) to contribute and edit articles. For more information, visit: http://www.sourcewatch.org Contributions to the Center for Media and Democracy are tax-deductible. To donate now online, visit: http://www.prwatch.org/donate Don't want to receive this email? Unsubscribe at http://www.prwatch.org/unsub