Putting Lipstick on a Sick Pig

by Diane Farsetta — May 5, 2009 - 3:17pm
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The National Pork Board and its public relations firm, Weber Shandwick, are working "to distance 'the other white meat' from the outbreak of swine flu in the U.S." The industry group "is highlighting health and safety measures at hog raising and production facilities in the U.S. and assuring consumers and media that pork products are safe to eat ... [and] providing media with soundbites and video from top staff." The group is pushing people to call the virus the "H1N1 flu." Pork Board head Chris Novak complained that "calling this swine flu, when to date there has been no connection between animals and humans, has the potential to cause confusion." Meanwhile, PR executives are giving the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) high marks for its flu communications. A Burson-Marsteller crisis management specialist called the CDC "pretty effective ... in informing the public and, just as importantly, in setting expectations. ... They erred on the side of overcommunication and that's exactly the right thing to do," she told PR Week.

Main Source: 
O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), April 30, 2009

Comments

required reading

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on May 17, 2009 - 12:28pm.

The best article ever written on the subject;

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters

Swine Flu Coverup - CDC, Obama, CNN, et al

Submitted by Bruce S (not verified) on May 17, 2009 - 12:25pm.

And all this time you believing they worked for you. If the public only knew the truth behind these vertically integrated pork chop hell factories that produce the poisoned meat and ever-evolving doomsday microbes that'll sooner or later kill millions, if not billions. Why, if they knew they wouldn't eat it. And so this is why the ever-smiling Dr. Gupta is turned around at the pig factory gate never to return to finish the story. Someone of importance up there in CNN's upper realm must have sent firm instructions through the gatekeeper...I mean producers to drop the investigation. The public enjoyed two, maybe three days of genuine journalism. It took that long for the irresistible weight of the agribusiness/government tag-team to force the so-called mainstream media into tight lockstep with global economic policy.

An so the coverage devolved from genuine, serious, objective reporting into an agenda-serving formula of dumbed-down non-explanations. The only place where truth has a chance of seeing the light of day is in civil court (which IMO was a prime motovator for moving focus away from the actual source and towards the actions of a frightened, confused public). Please, please, let a highly talented, determined law firm take the lead in this matter. Investigate, form a class-action, and bleed the green out of these pigs until they squeal their last.