In the news
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- U.S. Drone Strikes: A Propaganda Bonanza for the Taliban?: A recently-released study from the New America Foundation finds that after inheriting the drone program from President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama has dramatically escalated the number of unmanned air strikes in Pakistan by U.S. Predator and Reaper drones. The U.S. has made 43 strikes in Pakistan in 2009 -- only two of which occurred while Bush was still in office -- compared to 34 in all of 2008. While the drones have killed some top terrorist targets, there is concern that the robotic strikes are alienating Pakistani citizens and handing devastating propaganda victories to the Taliban, which uses each strike, and its associated killing of innocent civilians -- to drive up popular outrage against the U.S.
- Insurance Industry Lobbyists Poised for Healthcare Win: The U.S. health insurance industry is, Noam N. Levey and Lisa Girion report, "on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests.That achievement, should it stand up in the final legislation, would be the capstone of a sophisticated lobbying and strategic campaign that began even before Obama was elected president." The campaign, they report, has been "developed by one of Washington's savviest lobbyists, Karen Ignagni", the President and CEO of the industry group, America's Health Insurance Plans.
- U.K. Government Backs Self-Regulation for Lobbyists: The U.K. government has rejected a parliamentary committee's recommendation for the mandatory registration of lobbyists and the disclosure of their meetings with civil servants. The Cabinet Office dismissed the recommendation claiming that this “would involve collating a huge amount of information and divert significant resources within departments”. Nor did the Cabinet Office support the establishment of a mandatory register of lobbyists. Francis Ingham, the director-general of the Public Relations Consultants Association, welcomed the decision.
- Rick Scott Urges Anti-Health Care Front Groups to Coordinate Their Attacks: Multimillionaire former hospital CEO Rick Scott, founder of the anti-health care reform group Conservatives for Patients Rights, last week distributed a memo to allied groups fighting health insurance reform to try and coordinate the groups' opposition to the so-called "public option." In the memo, Scott wrote that health care reform bills now emerging from the house and senate will be "target-rich environments" but he urged the groups to synchronize their strategies in attacking the bills. He wrote that the goal is to develop a "divide and conquer" strategy.
- How Obama Manages the Liberals: Christopher Hayes reports, "From day one the (Barack Obama) administration has pursued a strategy of keeping its progressive allies on the White House playbook. In a weekly Tuesday night meeting called Common Purpose, representatives from dozens of well-established progressive groups--environmental organizations, labor unions, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign and others -- gather at the Capital Hilton to meet with White House reps. According to about a half-dozen people who attend, the meeting is generally run by deputy chief of staff Jim Messina and attended by political director Patrick Gaspard, as well as staff from Organizing for America."
- New York Times Admits Shutting Out Single-Payer: The media analysis group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) issued an action alert September 22 titled "NYT Slams Single-Payer" that described lopsided reporting in a New York Times article about "Medicare for all," a form of a single-payer health care system. FAIR noted that the article, titled "Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely", laid out a list of arguments against single-payer while failing to include any balancing responses from the option's supporters. In explaining the slant, article author Katharine Seelye said she was trying to explain why Medicare-for-all was "not going anywhere."
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Recent blogs on PR Watch
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- Mary Bottari reports from the streets of Chicago on the first major American protest against the banks since the financial meltdown in September 2008. See LIVE! From the Big Showdown in Chicago, October 26;
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Editor's pick of the week
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One of the groups spearheading opposition to proposals to reform the U.S. healthcare system is FreedomWorks. In 2009, FreedomWorks has been a prominent opponent of proposals by U.S. President Barack Obama to reform the U.S. healthcare system, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill to address global warming, and state proposals to raise taxes. Who are they?
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Projects for citizen editors
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With the Waxman-Markey climate change bill before the U.S. Senate, coal and energy utility lobbyists are out in force. While the legislation will only have direct effect in the United States, it will indirectly have a major influence on the negotiation of a replacement agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. (The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change hopes to complete a new climate change agreement at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen in December.) Earlier this year, the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative journalism group based in Washington D.C., launched a database on the mostly corporate lobbyists working on climate change issues. If you would like to help bring to the fore the details of the lobbying firms and individual lobbyists helping the top ten U.S. power utilities, here's a citizen journalism project that you can help with. See here for more details. If you have never added material to SourceWatch before, don't worry, as three of our regular editors are at hand to help get you started.
If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here, here and here. Hold onto your hat, have fun, and thanks for your help!
And if you would like to work on something else, take a look at some of our earlier citizen journalism projects here.
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Popular articles over the last week
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The most popular pages over the last week have included those on Tom DeLay, the former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who made an appearance on ABC's Dancing with the Stars program. Other popular page have been the listing of Existing U.S. Coal Plants, Public relations firms, think tanks, greenwashing and Corporate Social Responsibility. The most popular new page has been the Inside Zion Oil article which looks at an oil exploration company that blends religion with its search for oil in Israel.
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What they're saying about SourceWatch
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"The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy have done incredible work documenting fake grassroots ("astroturf") groups. Here, they're helping protects the rights of all Americans to exercise their right to vote. They are completely non-partisan. These guys are the real deal." Craig Newmark, Craig's List
"A truly impressive project based on cutting edge web technology." David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.
"The troublemakers at the Center for Media and Democracy, for example, point to dozens of examples of "greenwashing," which they defined as the "unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government or even a non-government organization to sell a product, a policy" or rehabilitate an image. In the center's view, many enterprises labeled green don't deserve the name.—Jack Shafer, "Green Is the New Yellow: On the excesses of 'green' journalism", Slate, July 6, 2007.
"As a journalist frequently on the receiving end of various PR campaigns, some of them based on disinformation, others front groups for undisclosed interests, [CMD's SourceWatch] is an invaluable resource."—Michael Pollan author of The Botany of Desire
"Thanks for all your help. There's no way I could have done my piece on big PR and global warming without the CMD [Center for Media and Democracy] and your fabulous websites."—Zoe Cormier, journalist, Canada
"The dearth of information on the [U.S.] government [lobbying] disclosure forms about the other business-backed coalitions comes in stark contrast to the data about them culled from media reports, websites, press releases and Internal Revenue Service documents and posted by SourceWatch, a website that tracks advocacy groups." Jeanne Cummings, 'New disclosure reports lack clarity", Politico, April 29, 2008.
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