-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: 27 Sep 1999 19:21:44 -0000 To: List Member <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "Common Courage Political Literacy Course" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Are You a Target of the "News"? Information on this email course is at the bottom. For Whom the Camera Blinks Corporations spend more than $10 billion on public relations every year. But we don't have to worry. First, lies are readily apparent. Second, there are limits to how much misinformation is possible. Take the news: as Dan Rather's autobiography proclaimed, "The Camera Never Blinks." If only. From advertising to lobbying, from censorship to coopting the enemy, from hiring experts to lying with statistics, public relations has become the science of making democracy safe for corporate power. Many of these topics will be the subject of future emails, but for now, consider just five techniques deployed to affect what you see as "news." First, size matters: there are 130,000 reporters in the U.S. -- and 150,000 practitioners of PR. "The best PR," boasts one PR executive, "ends up looking like news." By one study's estimate, 40% of all news is unedited material straight from PR offices, much of it in "video news releases" that are often run on TV news programs with no mention of the firms who produced them. If you can't see the interests of those telling you the "news," you can't decipher the bias. A powerful lock on what the media do produce is corporate control of advertising revenue the media depend on to survive. "Large corporations pump $100 billion per year in advertising dollars into the coffers of U.S. media alone," write John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, authors of " udge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry." Quoting media critic Ben Bagdikian, they note "selecting news in order to make advertising more effective is becoming so common that it has achieved the status of scientific precision and publishing wisdom." The authors continue, "PR executive Robert Dilenschneider admits that 'the notion that business and editorial decisions in the press and the media are totally separate is largely a myth.'" A third influence is that this power is concentrated through mergers and acquisitions: "Two of the biggest PR firms, Burson-Marsteller and Hill & Knowlton are owned by two of the biggest advertising conglomerates, respectively Young & Rubicam and the WPP Group. These two PR/advertising giants purchase billions of dollars of media print space, TV and radio time. Their clients include Philip Morris, McDonald's, Ford Motor Company, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Nutrasweet, Revlon, Reebok, and hundreds of other major advertisers," write Stauber and Rampton. Another means to curry the media's favor--do they really need more?--"is to court individual journalists who have become media celebrities, offering them large sums of money for a brief appearance and talk," Stauber and Rampton write. "During the 1993-94 debate over health care reform, the National Journal reported that drug companies and trade associations were 'practically throwing money at journalists to get them to speak at their events.'" They cite a more recent example in ABC News's Cokie Roberts who accepted a $35,000 fee to speak to the Junior League of Fort Lauderdale, subsidized by JM Family Enterprises, a multi-billion dollar company that distributes Toyotas. In a fifth but by no means last tactic used to shape the news, "PR firms also hire journalists to participate in training sessions so PR flacks can hone their skills in handling media situations. In Sierra Magazine, reporter Dashka Slater describes her experience working for Robert J. Meyers and Associates, a Houston-based consulting firm that hired her and two other journalists to help ARCO Petroleum practice its PR plan for handling the news media following environmental disasters. In a staged run-through of an oil spill, Slater and the other reporters were assigned to play the part of the 'predatory press.' Professional actors were brought in to play the role of environmentalists. ARCO employees and government officials played themselves. 'The drills give company flacks the opportunity to practice varnishing the truth just in case the mop-up doesn't go as planned,' wrote Slater. 'Mostly the company and government spokespeople did what they had learned to do in numerous media-training workshops: convey as little information as possible in as many words as possible.' In the past 6 years, Meyers and Associates have conducted more than 400 such training drills." Whether it's creating the news, funding the news, concentrating its power, buying journalists, or using journalists to practice dry runs for crisis management, PR firms don't have to worry whether the camera blinks: they control what it looks at. For more info about "Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry," click on http://www.commoncouragepress.com/sludge.html "How Corporations Get In Your Head," a great back and forth Beyond the Book interview with John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton is also available: http://www.commoncouragepress.com/sludgeinterview.html TOMORROW: Laura Flanders on what happens when women are sidelined in reporting. This is the free Political Literacy Course from Common Courage Press: A backbone of facts to stand up to spineless power. Email 15, September 27 1999. Week 4: The News Media On Your Mind. 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