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Labour phones homes to win voters |
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British Politics
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12 February 2005
BBC News
Voters have been given a direct line to Labour cabinet ministers during a pre-election cold-calling campaign.
When the telephone rang in selected homes on Saturday lunchtime, the unsuspecting recipient was told they could speak to a Cabinet minister. |
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Neville: sports companies are cashing in on anti-racism push |
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PR Industry
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The Guardian
Thursday February 10, 2005
England and Manchester United footballer Gary Neville has sparked a row with sports giant Nike after warning that companies mustn't be allowed to get free PR out of the game's anti-racism campaign. |
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McDonalds: we may not win obesity debate |
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Food Industry
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The Guardian
Stephen Brook, February 11, 2005
McDonald's may never win the debate on childhood obesity and advertising, said one of its most senior executives. Larry Light, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, said the restaurant would not hide from the debate about healthy eating and advertising to children, which he said had caused the chain marketing problems. |
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Beattie accuses rival of conflict of interest |
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Scotland
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9 February 2005
PR Week Edinburgh City Council is embroiled in a row over its decision to hire Pagoda PR to support its housing stock transfer.
Gordon Beattie, CEO of Beattie Media, which was in the running for
the account, said that because Pagoda listed housing regulator
Communities Scotland as a client, the hire raised "concerns over
conflict of interest". He has written to communities minister Malcolm
Chisholm, urging him to investigate the matter.
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Pentagon sites: Journalism or propaganda? |
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US Politics
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From Barbara Starr and Larry Shaughnessy
CNN, Saturday, February 5, 2005.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Department of Defense plans to add more sites on the Internet to provide information to a global audience -- but critics question whether the Pentagon is violating President Bush's pledge not to pay journalists to promote his policies.
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Priorities of Power: The Real Meaning of the Elections in Iraq |
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Iraq
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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
February 8, 2005
Introduction - At The 'Mainstream' Fringe
In truth it is quite wrong to describe the corporate media as 'mainstream'. We wouldn't describe Flat Earthism as mainstream geology, nor would we describe Mein Kampf as mainstream political philosophy. There isn't a cultural or philosophical tradition on the planet that takes seriously the idea that truth-telling can be reconciled with greed. The idea that it can be reconciled with the unlimited greed of corporate profit-maximising is too ridiculous even to discuss. Or should be. |
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Climate Change
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Based on Moyers? talk on receiving the Global Environmental Citizen?s Award at Harvard ?
By Bill Moyers
The Star Tribune
Sunday 30 January 2005
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. |
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Paying the Republican piper |
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US Government
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The dubious financial activities of a clutch of right-wing American journalists have further dented the credibility of the media. David Teather reports from New York
Monday February 7, 2005
The Guardian
Michael McManus awoke on January 28 to find himself on the front page of USA Today, offered up as the latest example in a steadily escalating scandal. McManus - the author of a column called Ethics & Religion, syndicated in 26 American newspapers - was accused of being anything but ethical. He had accepted money from government departments on behalf of his organisation, Marriage Savers, while at the same time praising the Bush administration's pro-marriage initiative in his columns. |
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Britains top civil servant dragged into Labour dirty tricks row |
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British Government
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By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor
Telegraph
(Filed: 06/02/2005)
Britain's most senior civil servant protested yesterday about being dragged into a "dirty tricks" confrontation between Labour and the Conservatives in the run-up to the general election.
In a highly unusual intervention, Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, insisted that his involvement in a dispute over the disclosure of documents relating to Black Wednesday in 1992 had been "entirely proper". |
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Campbell?s return sparks dirty tricks row |
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British Politics
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David Cracknell and David Leppard report
Times Online
06 February 2005
THE former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell was yesterday accused by the Tories of orchestrating Labour’s election “dirty tricks” campaign.
Campbell, who featured prominently in the Iraq dossier row and resigned from the government 17 months ago, is now back playing a leading role at Labour’s London headquarters in the run-up to the expected May 5 general election. |
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A quiet revolution in business lobbying |
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US Politics
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U.S. Chamber of Commerce helps Bush agenda
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum Washington Post
Feb. 5, 2005
After brief pleasantries on the phone the other day, Thomas J. Donohue got down to business with a top health insurance executive. "We're in a new year and a new time," Donohue said smoothly. "Can we put you on the list and get your money?" |
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McConnell faces probe over Wark villa holiday |
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Scotland
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IAN SWANSON
SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR
Edinburgh Evening News 4 February 2005
JACK McCONNELL is to face a full investigation by the Scottish Parliament?s sleaze watchdog into a family holiday in Majorca with broadcaster Kirsty Wark. |
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Guess who Jack has had round for dinner? |
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Scotland
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2 February 2005
Hamish MacDonnell, Scottish Political Editor
The Scotsman
AN INTRIGUING insight into the private social world of Jack and Bridget McConnell has been gleaned from the release of their private guest lists for dinners at Bute House.
Many of the country?s top celebrities, journalists, religious leaders and broadcasters have dined with the McConnells in the Georgian splendour of their official residence in Edinburgh?s Charlotte Square. |
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Cancer, Chemicals and History |
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Chemical Industry
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The Nation
by JON WIENER, [from the February 7, 2005 issue]
Twenty of the biggest chemical companies in the United States have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have studied the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. In an unprecedented move, attorneys for Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Union Carbide and others have subpoenaed and deposed five academics who recommended that the University of California Press publish the book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. The companies have also recruited their own historian to argue that Markowitz and Rosner have engaged in unethical conduct. Markowitz is a professor of history at the CUNY Grad Center; Rosner is a professor of history and public health at Columbia University and director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia's School of Public Health.
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In Brussels, the lobbyocracy rules |
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EU Politics
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Barbara Gunnell, Monday 7th February
2005
New Statesman
EU laws affect us all, but it's the corporate lobbyists who have the biggest influence on them. Their power should be made more transparent, argues Barbara Gunnell
A few dozen Hungarian bee-keepers with their bee-yellow baseball caps are leafleting outside the European Commission on a sub-zero Brussels Monday morning. On the small traffic island allotted to such demonstrators they are campaigning with many exclamation marks for Purer Honey! Cleaner Environment! No Foreign Imports! Ignored by most of the pedestrians crossing rue de la Loi between the Commission building and the Council of Ministers headquarters, the protesters buzz into startled action when I stop to ask about their aims. |
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House of Mirrors: Burson-Marsteller Brussels lobbying for the bromine industry |
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EU Politics
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Corporate Europe Observatory, January 2005
In this first of a series of monthly papers documenting the Brussels lobbying scene, Corporate Europe Observatory exposes how the world's four major producers of bromine flame retardants have gone to great lengths to prevent a ban on some of their products in the European Union.
The bromine producers (based in the US, Israel and Japan) didn't do this on their own but turned to public relations giant Burson-Marsteller for assistance. Well-experienced in running front groups, Burson-Marsteller helped to set up the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, and from the start BSEF's EU operations have been run from the Burson-Marsteller office on Av. de Cortenbergh 118 in Brussels.
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The Green Movement and the Corporate Mass Media |
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Climate Change
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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
MEDIA ALERT: SILENCE IS GREEN
Thursday, February 3, 2005
The Green Movement And The Corporate Mass Media
Lethal Dreams
It is one of the great ironies of our time that, as evidence of environmental catastrophe has inexorably mounted, so the visibility of radical environmental movements has collapsed. In the late 1980s, public outrage at environmental devastation propelled the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Green Party onto the media stage. With airwaves filled with endless talk of 'going green', BBC presenter John Humphrys declared he would flush his toilet less often to save water; Marks & Spencer's posted green placards in their stores that read: "Please return your trolley - protect your environment."
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The Vietnam turnout was good as well |
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Iraq
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No amount of spin can conceal Iraqis' hostility to US occupation
Sami Ramadani reports
Tuesday February 1, 2005
The Guardian
On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny. |
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Greenwash Guerrillas - Report |
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Energy Industries
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Hi-tech Greenwash Guerrillas struggle to stem tide of greenwash oozing from Shell Chairman's Greenpeace Business Lecture, London, 25.1.05
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Government attacked for hypocritical attitude to Freedom of Information Act |
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British Government
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The Independent
02 February 2005
By Robert Verkaik and Marie Woolf
Ministers' promises to usher in a new age of freedom of information have failed to materialise, with scores of requests to open the Government to public scrutiny being rejected. |
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