Marlboro ads at a Formula One raceSecret documents recently obtained by British reporters under the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act that show former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered tobacco sponsorship exempted from a new law banning tobacco advertising at sporting events. Blair's action came immediately after his political party, the Labour Party, received a secret donation of one million British pounds from Bernie Ecclestone, the president and CEO of Formula One Motorsports. After winning the general election in 1997, the Labour Party had pledged to ban tobacco advertising, and in June 1998, the European Union formally adopted a directive prohibiting all tobacco advertising and sponsorship in the EU. The secret papers show, though, that within hours of his October 16, 1997 meeting with Ecclestone, Blair demanded the U.K. policy be changed to allow tobacco companies to sponsor Formula One car races, and that his aides went on to help him hide the truth behind the change. Philip Morris was the largest tobacco sponsor of Formula One racing.

Mark Grundy, who works for the PR firm Edelman, sees business opportunities in climate change. He writes about the December 2009 COP15 meeting in Denmark, where world governments will try to negotiate a binding new agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. Grundy describes the COP15 meeting as "the biggest global opportunity for carbon messaging of the next four years... COP15 is a major opportunity for all my U.S. clients to go well beyond their European counterparts in the 'green image wars.'" After waxing lyrical about the "$100 billion commodity carbon market," Grundy concludes that if corporate executives still aren't persuaded that they should attend, they should ponder one point: "Where do you think every respected, environmental reporter on the planet will be between 30 November and 11 December next year?" As CMD previously reported, Edelman's London office is assisting EON UK in its efforts to persuade the UK government to approve the coal-fired Kingsnorth Power Station. The power station would emit several hundred million tonnes of carbon dioxide in its working life.

Like many others, New York Times journalist Larry Rohter describes former Greenpeace activist-turned-industry consultant Patrick Moore as "the co-chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear group." (Two weeks earlier, Rohter co-authored a blog post that used an identical description of Moore.) What Rohter doesn't mention is that the coalition is a front group funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). After referring to Moore, Rohter notes that NEI is broadly supportive of plans such as Republican Presidential candidate John McCain's commitment to build 45 new nuclear power stations. An announcement for an upcoming CNBC special on nuclear power makes a similar mistake. The announcement describes Moore as an "environmentalist" who "supports America's nuclear revival and tells CNBC why he's made this stunning about face." Maybe because that's what he's paid to do?

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 the pressure on the Pentagon pundits, how AIG learned an important PR lesson, and Israel's new brand. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," what do ROTC recruiters, the Nigerian military and the war on drugs have in common? 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!

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's meteoric rise to prominence on the national political scene after only 21 months in office came about with the help of a media relations and marketing consulting firm hired to draw national attention to the state's proposed natural gas pipeline project. Alaska's Department of Natural Resources paid public relations expert Marcia Brier of Needham, Massachusetts $31,000 to pitch stories to the national media that promoted Palin as the driving force behind the pipeline and getting the state legislature to go along with it. Brier sent press releases to national media outlets portraying Palin as an "upstart governor" and crusader against Big Oil, the same story line Palin now uses in her campaign with John McCain. Some state legislators take exception to the portayal of Palin as the sole force behind the pipeline, when many other people worked on the project. Once the PR campaign began, Palin was away from the Legislature so much that lawmakers started sporting red and white "Where's Sarah?" buttons. Among Brier's past clients is a 23 year-old Saudi prince, Bader al-Saud, whom she helped to get a plea deal in a vehicular homicide case after he was arrested for drinking and driving in Martha's Vineyard in 2005.

"An e-mail went out last week to government agencies to get working on a project to lay out 'THE BUSH RECORD,'" reports Al Kamen. The e-mail tells agencies to "provide a one or two paragraph summary on the overarching communications strategy for your Department," listing any plans to produce "a document listing your Department's major accomplishments over the past eight years, a video of Department successes, etc." It also asks agencies to categorize accomplishments as one of the "three main themes of 'Kept America Safe & Promoted Liberty Abroad,' 'Lowered Taxes & Reformed Government,' and 'Stood on Principle / Tackled Tough Issues / Showed the Way Ahead.'" Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Tony Fratto said it's "only natural to collect data" to help reporters writing retrospectives on the George W. Bush administration. Otherwise, the public may not be aware that "minority education test scores went up or that teenage drug use is down 18 percent," he added. Kamen concludes, "Looks like a pretty big PR blitz."

The defunct $10,000 billThe insurance company American International Group (AIG), which "vowed to temper spending after hosting a conference at a California resort amid a federal bailout," belatedly canceled "a similar event planned for next week at a $400-a-night hotel." The U.S. government loaned AIG $85 billion in September and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York just loaned the company another $37.8 billion, to "replenish liquidity." Members of Congress harshly criticized AIG's earlier luxury conference, which cost $440,000. Before AIG canceled its more recent event, it considered buying ads to explain that such conferences are necessary to "motivate and educate" independent agents selling AIG coverage. But AIG's public relations consultant, George Sard, warned against the move. Sard, who heads the PR firm Sard Verbinnen & Co., emailed that "to spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks." However, Sard mistakenly sent his advice to a Bloomberg reporter.

"Documents and emails released this week ... suggest Pfizer's marketers influenced" research on the drug Neurontin "by declining to release or altering the conclusions of studies that found no beneficial effect from Neurontin for various off-label conditions," reports Keith Winstein. The Food and Drug Administration approved Neurontin for epilepsy and shingles. In 2004, Pfizer's Warner-Lambert unit admitted to promoting "off-label" uses. Companies can't promote drugs for unapproved uses, though doctors can prescribe off-label. Pfizer paid $430 million for the offense and claimed it ensured "there was no improper marketing after it purchased Warner-Lambert in 2000." But the new documents, which were submitted in a lawsuit against Pfizer, detail more recent attempts to boost off-label sales. After one study showed Neurontin didn't lessen diabetic nerve pain, a marketer suggested "delaying the publication for as long as possible." One researcher emailed that she was told "not to publish anything that damages Neurontin's marketing success." Pfizer also failed to publish results that Neurontin didn't ease post-operative nerve pain. Lastly, after the drug was shown to have no effect on bipolar disorder, a Pfizer consultant writing up the study excluded 16 patients and changed how other patients were characterized, thus "turning a failure into a success."

The British "country brand capital development" firm Acanchi is crafting a "new image" for Israel. "Our research shows that Israel's brand is essentially the [Israel-Palestine] conflict," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry official Ido Aharoni. "Even those who recognize that Israel is in the right are not attracted to it, because they see it as a supplier of bad news." Israel previously worked with the ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi and U.S. political consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg to address its image problem. The rebranding effort began after September 2001, when government officials realized "Israel had an opportunity to escape its image as the main source of conflict with the Islamic word," because the "war on Islamic terror" had "gone global," reports Haaretz. As part of its rebranding, the Israeli government has launched an official MySpace page and invited "international journalists to tour Israel's wine industry." The Israeli government hired Acanchi in August 2008. Acanchi founder Fiona Gilmore recently toured Israel, as her firm prepares to "launch the new brand." The firm will highlight "Israel's scientific and cultural achievements." Acanchi "has helped to rebrand locales ranging from Lebanon to Northern Ireland."

Armstrong WilliamsThe second debate between the major party U.S. presidential candidates didn't address immigration policy. That disappointed the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In September, FAIR held its third annual "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" event, where it brings "dozens of talk radio hosts from around the country" to Washington DC, to do broadcasts on immigration issues, while FAIR supporters lobby members of Congress. This year's radio hosts included Armstrong Williams, while CNN's Lou Dobbs broadcast from the event. "We had talk hosts broadcasting for four hours each day -- 336 hours of radio time across virtually the entire country," said FAIR's Bob Dane. The Republican PR firm Shirley & Bannister Public Affairs booked the radio guests, including members of Congress, authors and "other high-profile figures of the immigration movement." Although the presidential "candidates are not talking about" immigration and border security, complained Dane, "this event is a loud reminder that we aren't and will not be silent."

In November of last year, a panel of scholars met at the New York Public Library to mark the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's landmark essay, "Politics and the English Language," and to discuss the current state of propaganda in American politics. A video from that panel is now available on the internet. How are political messages framed? How are they decoded by their audience? These and similar questions are explored by panelists including George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics and a guru of Democratic political messaging; Republican pollster and messaging consultant Frank Luntz; and Drew Weston, a professor of psychology and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Among other things, the discussion demonstrates that political pundits are no better at predicting the future than anyone else. (Luntz, for example, repeatedly predicts that Hillary Clinton will become the next president.) But if you want to understand how rhetorical framing works and how political strategists strategize, this 85-minute video provides some interesting examples.

The Washington Post provides more information on the previously reported $300 million paid to private firms to propagandize Iraq over the next three years. The contractors will "produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to 'engage and inspire' the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government. ... The four companies that will share in the new contract are SOSi, the Washington-based Lincoln Group, Alexandria-based MPRI and Leonie Industries." Although U.S. law bans propagandizing domestic audiences, the contract lists "Iraqi, pan-Arabic, International, and U.S. audiences" as targets. One Pentagon official said information operations "helped in developing attitudes" against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and "could potentially be helpful" in minimizing Iran's influence. Another official admitted that Iraqi audiences rarely "know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government."

"The Federal Communications Commission has begun notifying several TV military analysts that it is probing congressional complaints that the pundits did not properly disclose their ties to the Pentagon when reviewing the war in Iraq on air," reports Paul Bedard. The FCC sent letters to some of the so-called "Pentagon pundits" on October 2, in response to a complaint filed with the agency by Representatives John Dingell and Rosa DeLauro. Several of the pundits named in the New York Times expose of the Pentagon pundit program were employees of or lobbyists for military contractors. The FCC letter to the pundits "suggests that TV stations and networks may have violated two sections of the Communications Act of 1934 by not identifying the ties to the Pentagon." The agency is asking the pundits "to respond to the allegations of wrongdoing within 30 days."

In April 2008, the New York Times exposed the Pentagon pundit scandal, where the Defense Department cultivated retired military officials who are frequent media commentators, to serve as "message force multipliers" for Bush administration policies on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and other controversial topics. In response, members of Congress condemned the program and called for investigations. Three investigations are pending, but one bill recently passed Congress. Senator John Kerry, its lead sponsor, says the measure will ensure that "taxpayer money isn't used to peddle propaganda on the American people." But the measure, introduced as S. 3099, neither defines what constitutes "propaganda" nor establishes enforcement mechanisms. It also bans Pentagon propaganda "within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized," without clarifying if that extends to web-based or broadcast materials intended for foreign audiences but accessible from the United States. The Defense Department has claimed that propagandizing U.S. audiences is permissible, as long as that was not the government's intent.

1974 ad for "True" brand low-tar cigarettes The U.S. Supreme Court opened its 2008-2009 session today by hearing a case about whether cigarette makers have defrauded smokers with implied claims about the relative safety of "light" and "low tar" cigarettes. At issue is the question of preemption, a legal doctrine that holds that federal laws can take precedence over some state laws. The tobacco companies are arguing that they should not be held responsible for labeling and advertising that was approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC, which has long required that cigarette packs be labeled as to how much "tar" and nicotine they deliver, argues that the agency itself was fooled because tobacco companies hid internal research data that showed smokers did not benefit from switching to light or low tar cigarettes. In August 2006, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler, in the landmark U.S. Department of Justice case against the industry, ruled that cigarette makers purposely misled smokers into believing that light cigarettes were more safe than regular cigarettes, and now more than 30 class action lawsuits on the issue of the tobacco industry's "light" and "low tar" cigarette fraud are currently pending across the U.S. The Supreme Court's ruling in this case could either affirm or invalidate all of them.

Medical research conflicts of interest are in the news lately, thanks to recent congressional hearings by Senator Charles Grassley. But are journalists part of the problem? A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that reporters for print and online media outlets failed 42 percent of the time to mention drug company funding of research cited in their stories. When asked, however, 88 percent of newspaper editors insisted that their publications "always or often" included funding information in their stories -- even though only 3 percent actually had a policy requiring such disclosure. "If you're wondering about professional standards," comments Merrill Goozner, "the Association of Health Care Journalists lists reporting the financing of research and conflicts of interest of researchers as its number one guideline for health care reporters. This latest survey shows that the word has yet to filter down to the majority of reporters out there." The JAMA study also found that 67 percent of news stories mentioned the brand names of drugs rather than their generic names, further reinforcing pharmaceutical industry marketing campaigns. Once again, editors of the offending publications claimed that their reporting practices were better than they actually were, with 77 percent of editors insisting that they always or often reported only the generic names of medications.

Contact:
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Phone: (202) 277-6427; Email: conor@sourcewatch.org

The non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has launched a unique website to help safeguard the fairness and integrity of US elections, using the power of citizen journalism. The Election Protection Wiki is now online at http://www.EPWiki.org . It enables citizens, journalists and government officials to actively monitor the electoral process in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. CMD and its community of volunteer editors will continue to improve, expand and update the EP Wiki beyond the upcoming November 4th election.

The EP Wiki is part of CMD’s award-winning SourceWatch website and operates on wiki software which allows anyone who registers on the website to participate in creating and updating articles. SourceWatch contains in-depth articles on every member of (and most candidates for) the US Congress at http://www.Congresspedia.org . CMD employs both professional and volunteer editors who work together online to ensure articles are fair, accurate and fully documented.

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The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), a UK government agency charged with deciding whether drugs should be subsidized by the British government, has been criticized by some patient groups for refusing to approve new and expensive drugs. Groups including the National Kidney Federation, the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance, the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, Beating Bowel Cancer, the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Alzheimer's Society have all objected against NICE decisions. "All of these charities received sums of up to six figures from drug companies in 2007," reports Jeremy Laurance, the health editor with The Independent. "A positive decision by NICE on a drug not only guarantees sales to the NHS but can influence global markets worth billions of pounds. Yet none of the charities named has criticised the high prices charged by the pharmaceutical companies for their products in their recent campaigns," he wrote.

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 the dangers posed by environmentalists, university payola and the FDA's spin doctors. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we learn about one patriotic sounding front group. 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!

On October 1, 2008, the city of San Francisco put a law into effect that prohibits the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies. Walgreens drug store chain and Altria/Philip Morris have filed lawsuits against the city over the measure. In a September 30, 2008 statement about the new law, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom related the city's simple rationale: "Pharmacies should be places where people go to get better, not where people go to get cancer."

Familiar corner drug store chains like Rite Aid and Walgreens have long cultivated an image of being all about health. Their web sites feature photos of friendly-looking pharmacists in white coats ready to help us with our health care needs. The Rite Aid company Web site tells us they are "committed to the healthcare needs of our customers." CVS says its vision is to "strive to improve the quality of human life" by making "high-quality health and pharmacy services safe" and easy to access. Walgreens says it stands ready to help people by supplying "health and wellness products" and health information. If all this makes you feel that these drugstore chains have your best interests at heart, it's certainly by design. But don't be don't be taken in too easily.

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