Diane Farsetta's News Articles

Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

by Diane Farsetta — September 1, 2009 - 7:38am
  • Topics: Cause-Related Marketing, Issue Management, Corporations, Health, International

    • Even critics of World Water Week, held annually in Stockholm, Sweden, agree that it's an important forum where thousands of people working on water issues share information.

    This year's event, held from August 16 to 22, placed special emphasis on the relationship between water and climate change. The closing statement (pdf) was literally a message to COP15, the major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December. "Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt," it reads, adding that "water-related adaptation" should be seen as part of the solution. The statement also calls for funding "to assist vulnerable, low income countries already affected by climate change," along with longer-term adaptation efforts.

    So why are there critics of World Water Week? In a word, Nestlé.

    Pentagon Propaganda Gets a Pass

    by Diane Farsetta — July 23, 2009 - 7:25am
  • Topics: Pundits, Third Party Technique, Propaganda, U.S. Government, War / Peace

    • Is there a difference between covert propaganda and secretive campaigns to shape public opinion on controversial issues? The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) apparently thinks that there is.

    The GAO recently ruled that the Pentagon pundit program did not break the law against taxpayer-funded domestic propaganda. The program involved some 75 retired military officers who serve as frequent media commentators. From 2002 to 2008, the Pentagon set up meetings between the pundits and high-level Department of Defense (DOD) officials. The Pentagon's PR staff not only gave the pundits talking points, but helped them draft opinion columns and gave them feedback on their media appearances. The Pentagon also paid for the pundits to travel overseas, following carefully-scripted itineraries designed to highlight successes in Iraq and humane measures at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

    Pentagon Rejects Its Own Pundit Program Whitewash

    by Diane Farsetta — May 6, 2009 - 4:04pm
  • Topics: Pundits, Third Party Technique, Propaganda, U.S. Government, War / Peace

    • The continuing saga of the Pentagon pundit program just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, as Alice in Wonderland might say.

    From 2002 to 2008, the Defense Department secretly cultivated more than 70 retired military officers who frequently serve as media commentators. Initially, the goal was to use them as "message force multipliers," to bolster the Bush administration's Iraq War sell job. That went so well that the covert program to shape U.S. public opinion -- an illegal effort, by any reasonable reading of the law -- was expanded to spin everything from then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's job performance to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to warrantless wiretapping.

    In April 2008, shortly after the New York Times first reported on the Pentagon's pundits -- an in-depth exposé that recently won the Times' David Barstow his second Pulitzer Prize -- the Pentagon suspended the program. In January 2009, the Defense Department Inspector General's office released a report claiming "there was an 'insufficient basis' to conclude that the program had violated laws." Representative Paul Hodes, one of the program's many Congressional critics, called the Inspector General's report "a whitewash."

    Now, it seems as though the Pentagon agrees.

    Corporate Think Tank Dives into Water Policy

    by Diane Farsetta — April 28, 2009 - 9:49am
  • Topics: Front Groups, Global Warming, Corporations, International, Think Tanks

    • In May 2008, the major law firm Hunton & Williams launched the Water Policy Institute (WPI), a think tank-esque, industry-supported consortium formed "to address water supply, quality and use issues," according to its website.

    After the initial flurry of press releases, WPI appeared to languish. Then, ten months after its formation, WPI issued its first white paper. "Water Wars: Conflicts Over Shared Waters" (pdf) focuses on two river basins in the Southeastern United States. The paper urges the states involved -- Georgia, Florida and Alabama -- to put aside litigation and work with federal mediators to reach an agreement on water allocation. It also supports further study of seasonal water use, ecological issues and efficiency measures.

    The white paper's conclusions seem reasonable, even obvious. So much so that it's unclear why Hunton & Williams felt the need to recruit major public relations and corporate powerhouses when forming WPI -- and what they, and the law firm, get out of the effort.

    What is clear is that WPI, Hunton & Williams and their corporate allies have a long history of siding with (or being) polluters and attempting to undermine water quality safeguards. It seems reasonable, therefore, to worry that whatever WPI is up to, it's likely to do more harm than good.

    Pentagon Pundit Expose Gets the Pulitzer

    by Diane Farsetta — April 20, 2009 - 3:43pm
  • Topics: Journalism, Third Party Technique, Propaganda, U.S. Government, War / Peace

    • It was a shocking revelation. Exactly one year ago today, the New York Times published an in-depth account of the Pentagon military analyst program, a covert effort to cultivate pundits who are retired military officers as the Bush administration's "message force multipliers." The elaborate -- and presumably costly -- program flourished at the nexus of government war propaganda; the private interests of the officer-pundits, many of whom also worked as lobbyists or consultants for military contractors; and major news organizations that didn't ask tough questions about U.S. military operations while failing to screen their paid commentators for even the most glaring conflicts of interest.

    The story was huge, but it wasn't easy to break. It took two years for reporter David Barstow and others at the Times to pry the relevant documents from the Pentagon. Seven months later, Barstow helped us further understand how the U.S. "military-industrial-media complex" works, with another front-page exposé on one spectacularly conflicted Pentagon pundit, Barry McCaffrey.

    On April 20, David Barstow received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, for his work on the Pentagon pundit story.

    Wisconsin's Balance of Power: The Campaign to Repeal the Nuclear Moratorium

    by Diane Farsetta — March 26, 2009 - 12:59pm
  • Topics: Global Warming, Nuclear Power, Lobbying, Public Relations

    • Wisconsin law sets two conditions that must be met before new nuclear power plants can be built in the state. One is that there must be "a federally licensed facility" for high-level nuclear waste. In addition, the proposed nuclear plant "must be economically advantageous to ratepayers."

    It's a law that the nuclear power industry doesn't like. Given the near-death of the planned waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, and the estimated $6 to $12 billion cost (pdf) of building one nuclear reactor -- not to mention the lack of interest from private investors and the tanking economy -- Wisconsin's law effectively bans new nuclear plants in the state, for the foreseeable future.

    Earlier this year, the major U.S. industry group Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) registered four lobbyists in Wisconsin.

    Mixing Advocacy, Scholarly Research and Journalism: Can the New America Foundation Square the Circle?

    by Diane Farsetta — February 26, 2009 - 4:12pm
  • Topics: Journalism, Ethics, Think Tanks

    • In the spring semester of 2008, I was a fellow researching a paper on think tank ethics ("The Perils of Non-Profit Journalism") at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. I was thus pleased when the New America Foundation's President, Steve Coll, spoke at the Shorenstein Center on March 11, 2008, and expressed his commitment to high ethical standards for journalists, researchers and other think tank staff.

    The New America Foundation is a Washington, DC based think tank that has pioneered the introduction of journalism to the traditional think tank mix of advocacy and research. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Steve Coll is the former Managing Editor of the Washington Post and spent 20 years at the Post as a reporter and editor. Currently, in addition to serving as New America's President, Mr. Coll writes a column for The New Yorker magazine. Launched in 1999, the New America Foundation currently employs more than 100 individuals and has an annual budget of over $10 million. Its Chairman of the Board is Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, Inc.

    Debating the Ban on Domestic Propaganda

    by Diane Farsetta — February 2, 2009 - 9:35am
  • Topics: Internet, Iraq, Public Diplomacy, Propaganda, U.S. Government

    • "I want to make sure that we strengthen prohibitions against domestic covert propaganda campaigns aimed essentially at breaking down the Constitutional barriers between who controls policy and who makes war," stressed Representative Paul Hodes. "It's an important point, given the recent history."

    Rep. Hodes was speaking at a conference on public diplomacy, held in Washington, DC on January 13. Public diplomacy is a catch-all term for the various ways in which the United States promotes itself to international audiences (as opposed to "regular" diplomacy, which targets foreign governments). These include international media, like the Voice of America; cultural and educational exchanges, such as the Fulbright Program; and a wide range of information activities, including foreign press centers, speaking events and publications. As the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy notes, the term "was developed partly to distance overseas governmental information activities from the term propaganda, which had acquired pejorative connotations."

    America Scams You: Allison Barber's Many "No-No's"

    by Diane Farsetta — December 18, 2008 - 11:30am
  • Topics: Corporations, Propaganda, Public Relations, U.S. Government, War / Peace

    • There's a telling email exchange quoted in the Defense Department Inspector General's report (pdf) on America Supports You (ASY), a Pentagon program launched in 2004, ostensibly to boost troop morale.

    Allison Barber, who founded and led ASY until her recent resignation as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Internal Communications and Public Liaison (and who infamously helped President Bush stage a teleconference with troops in Iraq), asked in a June 2004 email: "Overseas, we make troops [not living on military bases] buy a digital receiver for their televisions so they can see AFRTS," the American Forces Radio and Television Service. "Is there a way for me to make this situation know [sic] to corporate America and offer them the option of 'sponsoring' a receiver? So the receiver might have a sticker on it that says 'brought to you by Sears'."

    An attorney with the Defense Department's Standards of Conduct Office responded sharply: "Of course, you may not solicit anyone, especially corporate America, to sponsor the receivers. That's a no-no."

    The 2008 Falsies Awards: In Memory of the First Casualty

    by Diane Farsetta — December 10, 2008 - 4:07pm
  • Topics: Activism, Iraq, Election 2008, Global Warming, International, Media, Propaganda, Public Relations, U.S. Government

    • There's nothing quite like a hotly contested election. The candidates have their devoted supporters and angry detractors. Then there are vigorous debates over the issues, while some people question the integrity of the entire process.

    We speak, of course, of the Falsies Awards.

    This year marks the Center for Media and Democracy's (CMD's) fifth annual Falsies Awards. The Falsies are our attempt to shine an unflattering light on those responsible for polluting the information environment over the past year. We're happy to report that more people -- nearly 1,450 -- voted in this year's Falsies survey than ever before! We're also bestowing special recognition on one of this year's "winners."

    Falsies recipients can collect their prizes -- a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, our two cents and a chance to atone for their spinning ways by making a detailed public apology -- by visiting CMD's office in Madison, Wisconsin. This year's Gold and Silver Falsies go to masters of war deception, while the Bronze Falsie recognizes a massive greenwash campaign. The first-ever Lifetime Achievement Falsie goes to a serial corporate front man, while a determined (if at times laughable) attempt at nation re-branding wins dishonorable mention. Then there are the Readers' Choice Falsies and Win Against Spin Awards, nominated by our survey participants.

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