Bob Burton's News Articles

Anxious Al Caruba

by Bob Burton — February 7, 2006 - 5:11pm
  • Topics: Environment, Media, Public Relations

    • Alan Caruba, from the CDFE website

    Alan Caruba is a public relations professional who is so anxious about issues like environmentalism, immigration and the United Nations that he runs the National Anxiety Center. Caruba, who states on his website that his clients include or have included "chemical and pharmaceutical companies, think tanks [and] trade associations," writes a weekly column, called "Warning Signs," which is run by conservative websites.

    In last week's column, Caruba, an "adjunct fellow" at Ron Arnold's anti-environmentalist Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), expressed anxiety over our SourceWatch article on his friend Michael Fumento. The title of his column was "Smearing Conservative Writers."

    Inside the Tobacco Industry's Files

    by Bob Burton — February 1, 2006 - 1:02am
  • Topics: Citizen Journalism, Corporations, Health, Tobacco

    • As the Center for Media and Democracy has noted, the tobacco industry pioneered many deceptive public relations tactics, casting a long shadow over science and health reporting, as well as the public's right to know.

    Before its fall from grace, tobacco industry created front groups courted journalists and obscured damning scientific evidence. But, inadvertently, the industry is now helping independent researchers and reporters understand how PR is used to obscure facts and shape public debates.

    Correction: DuPont & Invista Hype Nanotechnology-Free Product as "Nano"

    by Bob Burton — February 1, 2006 - 1:02am
  • Topics: Corporations, Marketing

    • In the original version of the blog post, "Environmental Defense or Nanotech Defense", I cited a webpage, which stated that a DuPont created Teflon leather protection product "works on the nano scale", as an example of the company having nanotechnology products on the market.

    Subsequently, a reader disputed that Teflon could be a nanotechnology product and described the company's use of the word "nano" as marketing hype. After requesting clarification from DuPont, one of its nanotechnology researchers, David B. Warheit, has confirmed that the Teflon leather protector is not a nanotech product. We have corrected both the original blog and the article in SourceWatch. Invista's promotional page on the DuPont Teflon leather product, however, remains unchanged and potentially deceives consumers of its product into thinking that it is based on nanotechnology. A request to DuPont's PR section for a copy of the June 3, 2003 media release announcing the new Teflon product, which I noted in the original post has gone missing from its news archive, has so far gone unanswered.

    Environmental Defense or Nanotech Defense?

    by Bob Burton — January 18, 2006 - 11:38am
  • Topics: Corporations, Environment, Health, International, Labor

    • If you have concerns about the development of nanotechnology, you might want to keep an eye on the 'partnership' between the chemical industry giant DuPont and Environmental Defense (ED), the New York-based environmental group.

    The project, according to a joint media release issued in October 2005 by ED's Fred Krupp and DuPont's Chad Halliday, is to "identify, manage and reduce potential health, safety and environmental risks of nano-scale materials across all lifecycle stages." Once developed, the framework will "then be pilot-tested on specific nano-scale materials or applications of commercial interest to DuPont."

    To be fair, ED has flagged concerns about there being inadequate health and environmental assessments of nanotechnologies to date. However, ED hasn't mentioned publicly what they think about DuPont and other companies having products that are already on the market without such assessments.

    Tracking the Zigs and Zags of Issues

    by Bob Burton — December 10, 2005 - 12:11am
  • Topics: Citizen Journalism, Public Relations

    • By anybody's standards, the last few weeks have been unusual. The Mirror, a British tabloid, reported receiving a leaked government memo which purportedly shows that George W. Bush wanted to silence Al Jazeera's journalistic coverage of Iraq with a bombing strike on its Doha, Qatar headquarters. When a memo of the April 16, 2004 meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair was leaked, Blair wanted the British media gagged to stop the public from finding out other details of his chat with Bush. While he doesn't want discussion of his meeting with Bush, Blair does want to foster public debate over his plan to expand nuclear power as a 'solution' to climate change.

    Fake News: It's the PR Industry Against the Rest of Us

    by Bob Burton — November 15, 2005 - 3:42pm
  • Topics: Video News Releases, Ethics, Public Relations, U.S. Government

    • Be careful what you ask for. That may be the take home lesson for the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

    Never Whoosh A Spook!

    by Bob Burton — September 16, 2005 - 4:20pm
  • Topics: Activism, International, War / Peace

    • Non-violence training workshops I attended in the 1980s often featured, as a tension-breaker or wind-down game, a little exercise known as the whoosh.

    For the uninitiated, a whoosh consists of one person standing in the centre of a circle of people holding hands. Starting from a low crouch, the circle slowly moves in with the pronunciation of whooooooosh building to a crescendo as the group converges, culminating with an enthusiastic jump. The person in the centre is then considered to have been whooshed.

    If such exercises are still in non-violence training workshop manuals, maybe it's time a warning label was added: Never whoosh a spook!

    Why? This week the Australian government deported Houston-based peace and environmental activist Scott Parkin, after revoking his six-month visitor visa. No reason was given; for all we know, Scott whooshed some hapless, wet-behind-the-ears Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) spook sent to spy on one of the non-violence training sessions he was attending.

    From a Lead to An Article in Two Days

    by Bob Burton — September 14, 2005 - 1:27am

    I'd never heard of Safia Taleb al-Suhail, an Iraqi woman who George W. Bush praised during his February 2005 State of the Union address until I was sent an email link to an article in The Independent, a major UK newspaper. The article referred to her expressing concern about the impact of draft Iraqi constitution on women.

    "When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women. But look what has happened: we have lost all the gains we made over the past 30 years. It's a big disappointment. Human rights should not be linked to Islamic sharia law at all. They should be listed separately in the constitution," she complained to Andrew Buncombe of The Independent.

    As it was early morning and I had a lot of e-mails to get through, there was no time to dig any further myself. So I posted it to the talk page of a regular SourceWatch contributor, Artificial Intelligence (AI). Within two days AI has compiled an article reviewing Safia Taleb al-Suhail's background, her role in Iraqi politics and a listing of links to online articles by and about her over the last three years. Hugh Manatee found a photo that could be added in too. It is a small illustration of how a wiki-based project like SourceWatch facilitates collaborative research and writing.

    Pat Robertson & SourceWatch

    by Bob Burton — August 24, 2005 - 5:08am
  • Topics: Religion

    • There's never a quiet day at SourceWatch, our open-source encyclopedia of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. Some days, articles that have been patiently compiled by our volunteer writers over months, are suddenly in demand.

    Pat Robertson

    A case in point is the article on the founder of the Christian Coalition of America, Pat Robertson, who proposed in a broadcast on his 700 Club program that covert American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Associated Press quoted Robertson stating. Over the last eighteen months a number of regular contributors have compiled a comprehensive listing of online news stories on Robertson spanning the last decade. Others have started profiles on the various organisations Robertson is involved in.

    Meanwhile Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside George W. Bush's ranch has put a spotlight on the cost of the war in Iraq. In a column last week for O'Dwyer's PR Daily, Kevin McCauley, contrasted Sheehan's vigil in the Texas heat with Bush remaining "cocooned in Crawford, sticking to the script of appearing only before supporters and people in the Administration."

    In the last week over eighty new articles have been started as well as numerous additions to existing pages.

     

    When Real News Dents The Fake News Business

    by Bob Burton — August 15, 2005 - 3:00pm
  • Topics: Corporations, International, Media, Public Relations

    • There's good news for citizens and bad news for investors in the latest quarterly financial report of Medialink Worldwide, the biggest player in the fake news business.

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