Corporate Spin Can Come in Disguise

by John Stauber — September 10, 2006 - 2:09pm
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"If McDonald's makes the case that fast food is nutritious or ExxonMobil argues against higher taxes, it looks like simple self-interest. But when an independent voice makes the case, the ideas gain credibility. So big corporations have devised a form of idea laundering, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to seemingly independent groups that act as spokesmen under disguise. Their views wind up on the opinion pages of the nation's newspapers - often with no disclosure that the writer has financial ties to the companies involved. A few examples: James K. Glassman, a prominent syndicated columnist, denounced Super Size Me, a movie critical of McDonald's. Readers were not told that McDonald's is a major sponsor of a Web site hosted by Glassman. ... Steven Milloy, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote a column in the Washington Times that sided with the oil industry against windfall profits taxes. Readers weren't told that groups closely affiliated with Milloy have received at least $180,000 from ExxonMobil. By having others deliver their talking points, the companies stay above the fray, said John Stauber, whose Center for Media and Democracy tracks corporate front groups. 'What these companies are doing is paying somebody else to attack their critics while keeping their fingerprints off the attack.'"

Main Source: 
St. Petersburg Times (Florida), September 10, 2006

Comments

Super Size...Nonsense

Submitted by MediaSentinel on September 14, 2006 - 3:14pm.

PR Watch is usually insightful and on the cutting edge of reporting about unethical PR and media collusion. But you really ought to get off the "Bash McDonald's" bandwagon.

It's one thing for Dow Chemical or DuPont to poison a river and the people who live around it, and deny it ever happened.

It's quite another when individuals choose to stuff their faces with fast food several times daily and then blame the golden arches for their predicament. And as interesting a movie as it was, I, too, criticize "Super Size Me"...for how absurd was it for Morgan Spurlock -- or anyone, for any reason -- to live off a diet of fast food for 30 days straight? I have been patronizing McDonald's as long as I can remember, and I am in my late 40s. And I cannot recall one instance of that corporation telling me that its food was "healthy." As for when I was a child, guess who determined my meals? My mom. Doh!

There is, or ought to be, some notion of personal responsibility in this country. As I've said before, anyone who doesn't know that a diet of fast food is not good for one is culpably ignorant. And anyone who is too lazy to otherwise provide for his or her nutrition in a more healthy and sensible fashion deserves what he or she gets.

CMD's coverage of this topic is a disgraceful low point in your otherwise laudable crusade.

And consider this: How about if, when an "obviously" obese person walks into a fast food outlet - or even a grocery - he or she is denied anything but salad and bottled water?

I am so tired of the media

Submitted by jupiter on September 11, 2006 - 4:57am.

I am so tired of the media (or rather, the hand that hides itself in the glove we know as "the media") working its will on the people. It is a joke that they report the news instead of create it. They report just enough actual news to keep us guessing, when they report a story.

What gets me is this: So often these news sources wear shrouds of things like "conservatism" as if that makes them more next-to-God or something, or like it authorizes them to take on a more PARENTAL role towards the rest of society, like the rest of us are small children, if they cannot just incriminate us entirely, such as turning someone who gives another person a drink of water into a felon, if that person happens to be an unregistered alien from another country, etc.

Okay on this "next-to-God" guise --- so many people can hardly tell when this (so-presumed) "next-to-God" apparatus is lying, or severely twisting the truth with unsubstantiated allegations, and ones that have all been refuted at that. But if one does know, it sheds a different light. Then you know that it is not a matter that just maybe they are not telling the truth.

Anyway as I was starting to say (before I almost "spilled the beans" on something else), on this "next-to-God" guise --- well it is such a total farce. I might not know too much about God or his magnamity, but I think I do know that it is one of the ten commandments is to not "bear false witness against thy neighbor."

Okay sorry but I see straight through that, when they are lying and I happen to know the facts from a small insider's perspective, that if God meant anything by making it one of the ten commandments to not lie about other people, that they are ANYTHING BUT NEXT TO GOD!!!

They can use the word "conservative" on themselves all they want and until they are blue in the face, but as far as this word making them next-to-God, it just ain't true when they are going to make a practice, hobby, or vocation of lying in order to work their own will upon the people and yes even macro-society as a whole.

"Conservative," next-to-God, my foot. I don't know what else to say. But this is a total farce --- the media is a total farce.

Someone once said that anything they ever read in the paper that they also happened to have personal information about, that the paper got it grossly twisted and wrong. Well excuse me but I also notice that on the rare instances I happen to know about something too (that not many others would), it is a predictable pattern that the paper gets it wrong --- severely wrong, and on important matters, and it all boils down to violating the one of the ten commandments to "not bear false witness against thy neighbor," so this idea that they are next-to-God is a total farce.

Do we want the media to "serve" as our dictatorship? Do we want dollar bills to "serve" as our dictatorship? It's up to us. Meanwhile, I'm sure that "the media" will try to get as much mileage out of their lies as possible, until we all catch on. They're treading on thin ice with me. And no, I cannot "worship" a liar, or even appreciate one very much.

Don't forget Mikie Fumento

Submitted by Pani113 on September 11, 2006 - 2:25pm.

Don't forget Mikie Fumento who bashes fat people, then tells us second hand smoke, global warming and pesticides aren't so bad. He
has to be on someone's payroll. Something as tacky as him in
bikini briefs had to have been bought and paid for, not even an
attention hound like him would do that for free. Yuck, about as
sexy as a hicky from Karl Rove!