Turns Out They Did Know Jack
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Hundreds of pages of documents, released Monday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee," show that convicted lobbyist
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Ethics
Pentagon Pundits, Media Reform and Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly
As Paul Schmelzer wrote on the Minnesota Independent website, "There were two National Conferences on Media Reform in Minneapolis over the weekend: the one I attended and the one Bill O'Reilly, Juan Williams and Fox News talking head Mary Catherine Ham didn't."
O'Reilly's show tried to manufacture controversy about the conference, which I and others from the Center for Media and Democracy attended. But before addressing that, how about some real news on a genuinely controversial issue?
During Sunday's closing plenary, FCC Commissioner and fake news foe Jonathan Adelstein pledged to push for multiple thorough investigations of the Pentagon military analyst program. So far, the Pentagon's Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, have launched inquiries into the Defense Department's secret cultivation of military pundits. But those investigations aren't enough.
Obama, McCain Battle for the Mr. Clean Campaign Image
Submitted by John Stauber on
NPR reports that "Barack Obama, exerting his new power as leader of his party, has told the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to eschew all contributions from Washington lobbyists and political action committees (PACs). ...
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Shifting Focus, Anti-Abortion Groups Oppose Contraception
Submitted by Anne Landman on
On June 7, the anti-abortion groups American Life League (ALL) and Pharmacists for Life launched a new national campaign called "Protest the Pill Day 08: The Pill Kills Babies." Their goal is to convince American women to stop using oral contraceptives, which they believe kill people.
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McClellan and the Ethics of Spin
John Stodder has written the most interesting commentary I've seen from within the public relations industry about former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan's new book. It's interesting in part because Stodder is an interesting figure. For those who remember this sort of thing, he was one of two executives at the Fleishman-Hillard PR firm (the other was Douglas Dowie) who were convicted in May 2006 of multiple counts of conspiracy and fraud in a scheme to overbill the city of Los Angeles for public relations consulting services.
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Tries to Explain "Menthol Loophole" in FDA Bill
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who negotiated with Philip Morris to draft the bill to allow the
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Corporate-Sponsored "Slacktivism": Bigger and More Dangerous than the Urban Dictionary Realizes
Recently while browsing the Web I came across UrbanDictionary.com, which is sort of a wiki of contemporary slang. I found some of the newer words listed there amusing, like "hobosexual" (the opposite of metrosexual; someone who cares little about their looks), "consumerican," ("a particularly American brand of consumerism"), and "wikidemia" ("an academic work passed off as scholarly yet researched entirely on Wikipedia").
Waste Not, Want Not for Friends on the Campaign Trail
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
After top campaign aides resigned over unsavory lobbying activities, Republican presidential candidate John McCain "adopted a five-point policy ... to help restore his reputation as a Washington reformer," reports the Wall Street Journal.
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Citing Menthol Exemption, Black Group Pulls Support for FDA Tobacco Bill
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The National African American Tobacco Prevention Network (NAATPN) has withdrawn its support for a bill allowing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.
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Make 'Em Sick, Fix 'Em Up: VCU President Profits All Around from Tobacco
Submitted by Anne Landman on
After the New York Times revealed a secret research contract between Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Philip Morris earlier this month, Style Weekly, a Richmond, Virginia newspaper, investigated VCU President
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