Women

"St. Martin's Press has brought in Shirley & Banister Public Affairs to drum up conservative support for a new book accusing women's magazines of a liberal bend and constant focus on the 'woes of womanhood,'" reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

The American Plastics Council recently launched a new marketing campaign that targets women and children. APC, through its ad agency Grey Worldwide, will spend $19 million on TV and print advertising, one of its lowest marketing budgets in the 11 year history of the trade association, MediaPost reports. "Because one of [APC's] targets is mothers of infants, Grey has gotten the American Plastics Council spots on The Newborn Channel.

"Last April, several hundred black-tie and couture-clad worthies crowded into the ornate ballroom of the Washington Ritz-Carlton for one more dinner on the spring charity circuit," writes Alicia Mundy - namely, the annual gala of the once-respected Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization whose stated mission is "to improve the health of women through research." In recent years, however, SWHR has become increasingly dependent on corporation contributions from pharmaceutical companies.

A new study by Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) shows that 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed on the nightly network news in 2001 were white, 85 percent were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican. Big business, too, was overrepresented. In a year in which the country lost 2.4 million jobs, corporate representatives appeared about 35 times more frequently than did union representatives.