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Is it Art, or Is It Philip Morris?Cigarette-maker Philip Morris (PM) recently announced that it is moving its New York headquarters to Richmond, Virginia, and that it will end its corporate sponsorship of the arts in New York. Predictably, New York arts organizations are crying over the loss of cigarette dollars. These organizations sadly believe that their acceptance of PM dollars has been benign. In truth, these organizations have helped PM advance its credibility and legitimacy with policymakers, and have done tremendous harm to the country.

An extract from Bob Burton's Inside Spin: The dark underbelly of the PR industry.

Brian Page, a 42-year-old railway worker, had been busy before Easter 1992 buying furniture for a house he had just moved into at Mt Pritchard, a south-western Sydney suburb. On their way home, his daughter Melissa wanted to stop at McDonald's in Fairfield for lunch. Shortly after returning home, Brian Page began vomiting and had diarrhoea. As Page's symptoms were initially indistinguishable from a bout of the flu, his doctor gave him a medical certificate and sent him home. Page took to bed for the next three days but on the fourth day went back to work, even though he wasn't feeling well. His boss noticed that Page was unable to write properly and seemed disoriented and confused by his work. He was so concerned about Page that he called a taxi and sent him home, but by then Page recognised something was seriously wrong and went straight to Liverpool Hospital. What was unknown to Page and his doctor was that he had been exposed to Legionella bacteria. If detected early, Legionnaires disease can be treated with antibiotics. Untreated, it can be a killer. Two days after being admitted to the intensive care unit of Liverpool Hospital, Page died. On what would have been his 43rd birthday, more than 100 family and friends attended his funeral.¹⁴

On Tuesday, the Center for Media and Democracy and the Sunlight Foundation launched a new collaborative, citizen-driven project on Congresspedia to build profiles on the hundreds of challengers for congressional seats, which will compliment the existing profiles on every member of Congress. The project is non-partisan and, in true open-source fashion, is free for anyone to participate -- even the candidates themselves.

Even for official party nominees, information on challengers is usually woefully inadequate and information on primary challengers is often nearly non-existent. The explosion of citizen blogging in the last few years has created a wealth of individual opinions and perspectives, but what has been lacking is a central repository of collaboratively produced, in-depth and accurate information. The Wiki the Vote project, due to its easily editable wiki format, will be just that.

The big two issues in the 2008 elections - health care and the war - dominated the news out of the Capitol dome this week while (of course) more federal investigations into members of Congress slowly moved forward and yet another senate Republican announced his retirement.

President Bush vetoed the significant expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but Democrats have vowed to pass it again, this time with a veto-proof majority. With the bill last receiving 265 votes in the House (including 45 Republicans), they may be able to pull it off.

Contact:
John Stauber, (608) 279-4044
Diane Farsetta, (608) 260-9713

An abridged extract from Bob Burton's Inside Spin: The dark underbelly of the PR industry.

A hallmark tactic of activist campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s was the use of consumer boycotts to punish recalcitrant companies. By the 1990s, however, the trend was more towards developing standards and accrediting retail products that passed muster. The theory was that an accredited product would be rewarded by consumers while the laggards would be under financial pressure to lift their game. One of the pioneering projects during the 1990s was the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which was established by a broad coalition of non-profit groups. Its aim was to shift timber production to sources designated as more sustainable and reduce the market share for forest products derived from the destruction of the world's great forests. Despite numerous problems, the FSC label had some impact, especially in Europe.

Fisheries were next. As Greenpeace in Europe stepped up its campaign against unsustainable fisheries, Unilever, which supplied approximately 25 per cent of the European and US demand for frozen fish, began to feel the heat. The company's Birds Eye and Iglo brands in particular were vulnerable to consumer pressure.¹⁰ Simon Bryceson, a consultant to the global PR firm Burson-Marsteller, advised Unilever that it should bypass Greenpeace and instead develop a partnership with the more 'conservative' WWF.¹¹ Unilever and WWF split the US$1 million start-up costs, and in 1997 the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was launched as a nonprofit organisation, headquartered in London. For Unilever, accreditation offered the prospect that it could marginalise Greenpeace and reassure skittish customers. As a trial run, the MSC drafted principles and criteria for assessing what constituted a 'sustainable' fishery. These were then tested against three small-scale fisheries, including the West Australian rock lobster fishery. All passed.

CN8's Janet ZappalaThe Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced four more fines against Comcast, for its cable channel CN8 having aired multiple video news releases (VNRs) without disclosure. But the bigger story is the FCC's reasoning behind the fines.

In the new notice, the FCC states that "the VNR itself was the 'valuable consideration' provided to CN8." This is the first time that the agency has equated VNRs with "valuable consideration," an argument that the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has long advanced.

What does this mean and why is it a big deal? Basically, it shoots out of the water a favorite argument of broadcasters and their friends in the PR industry: that disclosure is only required when stations are paid to air VNRs, or when VNRs deal with controversial or political issues.

The big issues this week include whether President Bush will carry through on his threat to veto the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion, which had broad support from Republicans in addition to all Democrats. Congressional Democrats are also likely this week to respond to Bush's request last week for an additional $42 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which brings 2008's total to $190 billion.

For information on what's happening in the committees, see below for a full listing of committee hearings, courtesy of GovTrack.us.

Hearings Schedules:

Patrick Moore"Much of the environmental movement, including Greenpeace, has lost its way when it comes to nuclear power, caught up in politically correct ideology and stooping to sensationalism to garner support," declared a recent media alert announcing the visit of one-time Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore to Toronto. The alert continued, "In Ontario, CANDU nuclear energy is the greatest single contributor to carbon reduction relative to all other energy producing technologies."

The alert, which was distributed by Laurie Weir and Josh Turner from the Canadian PR company Trillium Corporate Communications, prominently featured Moore's claim that was a "founding member" of Greenpeace. It didn't mention who was sponsoring his tour or that Moore works as a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Institute in the U.S. The day following the Toronto event, Moore promoted nuclear power at an event hosted by the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce in the province of Saskatchewan.

The debate over nuclear power and uranium mining involves major questions of potentially massive economic costs to consumers and taxpayers, the safety of the population, the potential for weapons proliferation, the creation of a long-term radioactive legacy and significant impacts on indigenous communities. With such potentially large downsides, probing journalism is essential to ensure that citizens can make informed choices rather than be served a diet of nuclear industry spin dressed up as news.

Of course, any journalist with internet access would be easily able to check out a little on Moore's background, his history of nuclear advocacy and ask some questions about who exactly he was working for. After all, the Canadian Association of Journalists statement of principles sets out that journalists "will report all relevant facts in coverage of controversies or disputes." But how often does this happen?

The VNR that cost Comcast $4,000

The Comcast fine is the first-ever sanction for airing a VNR, a sponsored PR video that mimics the structure and style of television news reports. The fine is a direct result of Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) investigations, and of a joint complaint filed with the FCC by CMD and Free Press.

The FCC's action against Comcast is precedent setting. It firmly rejects the public relations industry's argument that no disclosure is needed if television stations are not paid to air VNRs. Hopefully, the FCC will soon address the nearly 140 other undisclosed VNR broadcasts that were documented in CMD's two reports, "Fake TV News" and "Still Not the News."