Sheldon Rampton's News Articles

Calling John Rendon

by Sheldon Rampton — January 13, 2005 - 2:20am
  • Topics: Public Relations, War / Peace

    • John Rendon is CEO of the Rendon Group, a secretive public relations firm that often provides behind-the-scenes advice to the U.S. military. Over the years, we've received dozens of phone calls from journalists who have sought interviews with Rendon about his work on behalf of the Iraqi National Congress, but no one has been able to get him to say more than "no comment."

    We were a little surprised, therefore, when a telephone message was left for Rendon in our office by someone identifying himself as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. A transcript of that message is as follows:

    Milloy Blames Environmentalists First

    by Sheldon Rampton — January 1, 2005 - 4:29am
  • Topics: Environment

    • Steven Milloy, the self-proclaimed critic of junk science at Fox News, rarely misses an opportunity to bash environmentalists. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, he falsely claimed that the collapse of the World Trade Towers could have been delayed if only the builders had used more asbestos. He also has a habit of distorting other people's words when it serves his agenda. (A recent example of this was featured on RealClimate.org, a weblog for climate scientists.)

    Milloy's response to the Asian tsunami is similar. In a column for Fox News, Milloy accuses environmentalists of exploiting the disaster by trying to blame it on global warming. In order to make this seem plausible, however, he has to misquote the environmentalists he is attacking.

    Smart ALEC in the Classroom

    by Sheldon Rampton — December 30, 2004 - 12:21am
  • Topics: Education

    • The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded conservative advocacy group that specializes in lobbying state legislatures for enactment of favorable legislation, has issued a "2004 Report Card on American Education" that provides an instructive example of the ways that industry-funded organizations manipulate information to reach foreordained conclusions.

    ALEC's report, which comes packaged with a glossy clip-art cover showing a pencil, ruler and other classroom implements, was authored by Andrew T. LeFevre, the President of LeFevre Associates, a PR/lobby firm based in northern Virginia. It was edited by Lori Drummer, who heads ALEC's education task force, which is "responsible for overseeing the development of ALEC policy related to education reform and school choice programs" - euphemisms for school privatization, which ALEC advocates.

    Thanks for the Advice

    by Sheldon Rampton — December 20, 2004 - 2:57pm

    Some 114 people responded to our recent survey asking for comments about the recent design of our sister website, the Disinfopedia. Here's what they had to say:

    89.5% said they had used the Disinfopedia to look up information; 22.8% had added information to it themselves.

    The response to the new design was mostly favorable, with respondents giving it an average rating of 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5.

    Mo' Better News?

    by Sheldon Rampton — December 15, 2004 - 12:50pm
  • Topics: Media

    • Wikipedia, the successful open source encyclopedia, is launching a daily news website called Wikinews. Its goal is to "create a diverse environment where citizen journalists can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events." Will it succeed? I think it's got some problems, but also potential.

    Spinsanity's Inanity

    by Sheldon Rampton — July 9, 2002 - 8:40pm
  • Topics: Human Rights, International, Politics

    • The Spinsanity.org website has on occasion published insightful commentaries on misleading uses of political rhetoric in the United States. In July 2002, however, Spinsanity itself published a deceptive attack on the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). After FAIR criticized U.S.

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