Journalism's Decline

By Alan Caruba

I stopped my subscription for my local daily newspaper a couple of years ago. I just stopped subscribing to Bloomberg Business Week, thus saving $65 a year. I don’t know anyone who subscribes to either Newsweek or Time magazines. I receive The Wall Street Journal every morning because I like holding a newspaper in my hands, turning the pages, reading news articles "the old fashioned way."

Being a “pundit”, I spend an hour every morning visiting various news and opinion websites and blogs in which I have some confidence. At my age and with my experience as a former full-time journalist, I am less inclined to rely on the mainstream press because it is largely propaganda.

And I know something about propaganda because, having left journalism in the 1970s, I ventured into public relations to make a living. What that has taught me is that virtually everything the mainstream media prints or broadcasts is a handout from a public relations agency or, in the case of government, the torrent of questionable information that pours forth from the White House, Congress, and the many departments and agencies seeking to justify their existence.

All governments seek to influence the news stream. Totalitarian governments have an easier time because a journalist who becomes a problem either goes to jail or is killed. In a democracy, controlling what journalists receive involves a virtual army of government workers engaged in PR. The most visible example is the White House spokesperson and his daily briefings.

The Internet has had a severe impact on newspapers. The decline has been in progress for a long time. As often as not readers have concluded that their daily newspaper is no longer a source of accurate information. The majority are owned and put together by liberals, slanting the news toward their political orientation.

The mainstream media played a huge role in the election of President Obama and now are experiencing blowback from Americans who are disenchanted with him, but the truth is that newspapers have been experiencing declining circulation for quite some time. With that comes declining advertising income, the lifeblood of a newspaper or news magazine.

Newsweek was owned by the Washington Post and sold for one dollar and the assumption of its debts. It is now edited by Tina Brown who made her bones over at Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. She also edits The Daily Beast, an Internet news site. Time magazine is infested with liberal editors and reporters. A former editor, Jay Carney, is now the White House spokesman.

It is, however, The New York Times that has gone from “the newspaper of record” to an appallingly corrupt purveyor of news. In my youth I was a “stringer” for the New Jersey section of The Times. It is sad to see it reach a point where its columns are literally filled with lies, big and small, and the lunatic ravings of columnists like Paul Krugman. There is no longer even a pretense at objectivity, fairness, or accuracy.

The news business is a closed circle of sorts. Press rooms at newspapers have fewer editors and reporters. Those still working are expected to generate several stories daily. The result is that they are increasingly dependent on public relations professionals who “feed” the news stream. At the same time, PR folk are dealing with fewer or thinner traditional news outlets. The result is less opportunity to get serious, useful news published or broadcast. There is, however, no end of space for celebrity, crime and sports news.

Filling in the gaps are talk radio and the 24/7 cable news outlets. Fox News dominates this area of news and anyone who has watched Fox knows it goes out of his way to always include Democrat and liberal spokespersons in its quest of being “fair and balanced.” Beyond that, when you strip out the commercials, the news is often little more than a three minute headline, interspersed with battling political consultants, lawyers, and others. News is more often discussed than reported.

Little wonder that public relations professionals are now engaged in a desperate effort to master “social media” such as Facebook and YouTube to get out their client’s message.

It is a sad commentary on the news profession that a new generation gets much of its “news” from the liberally biased “Daily Show” hosted by Jon Stewart. It is no surprise that the three network news shows have been losing their audience in droves for years now. Local news is still driven by “if it bleeds, it leads.”

This is not to suggest that journalism does not still play a significant role in how Americans perceive and receive “news”, but they now have a panoply of alternative sources from which to choose and, I believe, they are far more wary of what newspapers and noticeably biased broadcast outlets provide.

As for the local daily newspaper to which I once subscribed, I now just visit its website and check out the obituaries. If I want to know what the weather is, I look out the window.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Big BPA Lie - The BPA File, Part Three

By Alan Caruba

When I began this series about bisphenol-A, BPA, I instituted a Google Alert for Internet posts that mentioned it. From January through March it generated a report each day filled with notifications of newspaper, magazine, and Internet posts all denouncing BPA as a hazardous chemical that threatened the health of everyone from infants to adults.

More than one thousand posts were reported. Virtually all spread false information.

Such things do not happen by accident. They are the result of a concerted effort to defame BPA and they are indicative of a massive public relations effort. Serendipitously, on March 2nd the National Review published an article by Jon Entire, “Don’t Rush to Ban Chemicals” that revealed how public opinion is manipulated by the use of dubious “scientific studies” and the way most people, unschooled in science, do not realize that “one part per billion” of any substance poses no risk at all.

Entine cited a survey that found that “Canadians on average have about one part per billion of BPA in their urine, while Americans have twice that amount” noting that this “is not just meaningless, let alone news by any definition, but is part of the massive public relations campaign to get BPA banned”

“Labeling a chemical ‘toxic’ or a ‘contaminant’ is meaningless,” said Entine. “Toxicity is a question of degree; exposure is different from effect. Apples, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, citrus fruits, mushrooms, turnips, and many more foods contain occurring chemicals that are toxic—they cause cancer at large lifelong doses in laboratory rodents. Tofu is more estrogenic than BPA.”

Anyone who wants to learn the truth about BPA is advised to visit Junkscience.com, the website of Steve Milloy who has gained a solid reputation for debunking so-called “science based” fear campaigns. His data on BPA reveals that “there is no scientific evidence that BPA:

• Has ever harmed anyone despite 50 years of use;

• Acts as an endocrine disruptor; and

• Has any health effects at low doses;

Furthermore, the data debunks some of the most oft-cited and false claims about BPA.

• BPA is not carcinogenic or mutagenic;

• BPA does not adversely affect reproduction or development at any realistic dose;

• BPA is efficiently “metabolized” and rapidly excreted after oral exposure

So where does the worldwide anti-BPA public relations campaign originate?

The answer to that has to be by inference, but many trace it to Fenton Communications whose founder, David Fenton, has left-wing associations and affiliations dating all the way back to the domestic terror group, the Weatherman, for whom he was a photographer.

In a lengthy profile on DiscoverTheNetworks.org, one learns that in 1982, he established Fenton Communications, specializing in advancing the agendas of “left-wing groups.” “One of Fenton’s most widely publicized achievements was his 1989 attack against the producers of Alar, a preservative (used on apples) that he erroneously characterized as carcinogenic.” The cost to American apple growers and distributors was catastrophic. It was deceptive.

The anti-BPA scare campaign is patterned on the anti-Alar campaign and a further link is found in the fact that two of Fenton’s longtime clients, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group are leaders in the anti-BPA campaign. Moreover, BornFree, a company that specializes in products that do not contain BPA, is also a Fenton client.

In the book, “The Fear Profiteers”, Fenton Communications was identified as having “played a key role in a growing number of health scare campaigns.” At the time the book was published, Fenton was linked to “scares about Alar and apples, swordfish, leaky breast implants, and a front group (a favorite PR ploy) Health Care Without Harm that put forth lies about the alleged, but unproven danger of phthalates; chemicals used to make plastic flexible products for IV bags, nipples, and children’s toys.

Suffice to say Fenton Communications is opposed to anything that has to do with plastic, no matter how useful and safe the product may be. BPA has been in use for over fifty years to line the insides of metal and plastic food containers, protecting against spoilage. More than 6,000 studies have been made over the years and none have demonstrated any hazard.

“If you have been scared about food or pesticides in the last ten years,” said ‘The Fear Profiteers’, “chances are Fenton Communications played a key role in provoking that fear. The fears just don’t ever stop. But they all have one thing in common—a lack of evidence and abundance of deceit.”

The anti-BPA propaganda that has been put in motion is multiplied by the countless journalists who simply repeat the lies, accounting for some of the most meretricious misinformation on a daily basis. This in turn is multiplied by the seemingly endless blogs and alleged “health” websites that repeat and repeat it, primarily targeting expectant and new mothers. Another favorite target are men who are told BPA affects their sex drive.

The problem for everyone, everywhere in the world, occurs when governments or entities such as the European Union ban the use of BPA despite overwhelming evidence of its safe use. That puts everyone at risk for the food-related illnesses that occur when containers no longer have the protection that BPA provides.

Editor’s note: You can read The BPA File – Part One here and The BPA File – Part Two here.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Public Relations and the World

By Alan Caruba

PR Week publishes monthly editions in addition to its other news services and the July issue is devoted to “The most powerful people in PR.” All industries have their major players, so there is nothing surprising that public relations would also have its heavy hitters, but there are some interesting insights to be gleaned from the list of the twenty-five chosen.

I have plied the magic arts and crafts of public relations since the 1970s when I gave up the notion of ever making a decent living as a journalist. Journalism offers tons of ego satisfaction, but the pay was bad back then and, by comparison with other professions, not much better today.

The major players are, not surprisingly, the ones in charge of projecting and protecting a corporate “image”, otherwise known as perception. Number one on the list is Katie Cotton, the VP of worldwide corporate communications for Apple. She is teamed with Steve Jobs its cofounder and CEO because, together, they are the dynamic due of PR for a company that is testimony to American innovation and enterprise. It’s a very good choice.

Corporate PR folk on the list include Leslie Dach, VP for Wal-Mart; Jon Iwata, VP for IBM; Ed Skyler, Executive VP for Citigroup; Sally Susman, Senior VP for Pfizer; Chris Hassell fpr Procter & Gamble; Gary Sheffer, VP for GE; Bill Margaritis, VP for FedEx; Rachel Whetstone, VP for Google, Julie Hamp, Senior VP for PepsiCo; and Teri Everett, SVP of News Corporation.

One thing should particularly be obvious and which continues throughout the list is the role of women at very high levels, even if men continue to dominate these positions. Of particular interest is the inclusion of Stephanie Cutter among the “most powerful” as an Assistant to the President for Special Projects. That is president as in President of the United States of America. While Robert Gibbs is in the spotlight as Obama’s spokesperson, Cutter played an essential role in his campaign and now in his administration.

Of the top twenty-five named, nine were women. That’s progress.

Among the other “power principals”, there are the expected CEOs of major agencies such as Richard Edelman of Edelman; Harris Diamond, CEO of Shandwick Worldwide; Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Paul Taaffe, CEO of Hill & Knowlton; and Margery Kraus, CEO of APCO Worldwide. It is worth noting that these public relations firms operate on a global basis.

In a recent public television documentary on George P. Schultz who served in many top posts, including Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, he noted that while people think cabinet members have a lot of power, their primary power is the ability to persuade people to support their policies. I cite this because the U.S. government employs a small army of “communications” people whose job is to marshal support. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. probably has more PR agencies per square mile than any other city in the nation.

Persuasion is the cash crop of public relations and perhaps the most interesting new trend is the creation of a whole new breed of PR folk whose expertise is in “social media” which is to say PR focused on using websites like Facebook, My Space, and Twitter to spread the message. There's a lot of outreach to influential bloggers as well. The emergence of the Internet has been one of the major changes affecting the profession.

Time was if a PR guy or gal “placed” a story with the wire services or a major newspaper such as The New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times, or a news magazine like Newsweek or Time that was sufficient to affect events. The loss of numerous daily newspapers and the shriveling of others have altered that dynamic. The news magazines are in their death throes.

A major contributor to this is the loss of credibility these news dynamos have brought upon themselves by pushing hoaxes such as global warming or in giving unexamined support to political agendas depending on who was in office. Investigative reporting is virtually a thing of the past as news organizations trim their staffs to the bare minimum.

The recent virtual black-out on news about the New Black Panthers and the failure of the Department of Justice to pursue voter tampering charges is yet another reason fewer and fewer television viewers turn to the network news shows for, well, news.

The rise of conservative talk radio speaks to the fact that a majority of Americans self-identify as politically conservative. The popularity of leading news and opinion websites that serve this audience is testimony to the power of public opinion.

Meanwhile the PR power players, in corporations, trade associations, special interest organizations, and in agencies, are hard at work seeking to influence public opinion.

Ultimately, however, it comes down to the quality of products and services, the actions taken by government, and the state of the economy that determines what the public thinks and does.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

BP, PR, and the Oil Spill

By Alan Caruba

I have plied the magic arts of public relations since I left journalism in the late 1960s. There was no difficulty making the transition. PR is a form of journalism insofar as it packages information, but it adds the element of advocacy. The objective is the maintenance and protection of a good reputation and good will.

By contrast, the media’s natural instinct is to go for the kill. Bad news sells and there is always plenty of bad news.

I built my PR practice telling clients that they must tell the truth. The worst kind of PR person is the one who is so eager to “spin” the story they forget that telling lies always, always, always comes back to bite them and their client.

I tell you this as someone who has watched the BP oil spill story unfold with the same fascination that a reticulated python has for a prey that is about to become dinner.

The irony is that BP, taking a page from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, avoided its mistakes. BP went out of its way to be as open to questions and to provide as much information as it thought it reasonably could. I have no doubt that BP lawyers immediately advised its management to keep its mouth shut, say as little as possible.

Lawyers always advise clients to say nothing. PR people always advise them to get out in front of the public as quickly as possible with a statement, followed by an endless series of advisories.

No one has said a word about the fact that no oil company has ever had to cap a deepwater well at such depths. Just consider how many ways BP has tried thus far.

I have a friend who, after graduation from West Point and service, spent fifty years in the oil industry. He began as a petroleum reservoir engineer and later as an oil and gas attorney.

In a discussion of the event with him, he said, “No one yet has noted that BP drilled into a monstrous oil and gas reservoir; a reservoir which could replace much of our imported foreign oil. Such a well dwarfs the best Saudi wells.”

That’s a major part of the story and that is why the oil spill is so large.

There appears to be enough oil out there under the Gulf of Mexico to free the United States from having to import 60% of the oil it uses, but only if the federal government lets oil companies drill for it. This applies to all our oil reserves, on-shore and off.

When it comes to bad PR, there is seldom anything worse than the photos of oil-drenched birds struggling for life. Here, though, is the other side of the story that is rarely reported by the mainstream press, so hats off to the St. Petersburg Times PoliFact.com.

“The latest independent reports estimate the number of birds killed by wind turbines at 100,000 per year. That’s according to a 2007 report from the National Research Council called ‘Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy Projects.’” And that may be a low estimate.

Those wonderful “clean energy” wind turbines that the Greens and the Obama administration are touting routinely kill more birds than the BP oil spill ever could or will. One of the dependable “green jobs” around wind turbines involves picking up the carcasses of dead birds.

PR experts are already weighing in on what BP has done right or wrong. I found one fascinating tidbit of news that BP has hired “a former U.S. Department of Energy official as head of U.S. media relations, as it fights to defend its reputation in the face of political attacks and public rage over its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.” Anne Kolton is the former head of public affairs at the DOE.

This takes on significance in light of the way President Obama is actually criticizing BP for its advertising campaign to explain what it is doing and to apologize to the public for the spill. That is precisely what BP should be doing!

Meanwhile, the president has been vacillating between trying to look like he’s been doing something “since day one” while at the same time putting all the blame on BP. That is grade-school petulance and incompetence.

Fraser P. Seitel, a communications consultant, author and teacher, writes for Jack O’Dwyer’s PR Newsletter, one of the most respected trade publications. Seitel wrote that, “BP has tried admirably to be candid and transparent in dealing with a terrible situation.”

Seitel cited two critical PR errors. He gave BP low marks for offering predictions early in the spill as to how much would be involved. In a crisis like this one, you never make predictions. The other error was the failure to tamp down expectations as to when the well could be capped. Other experts have discussed the hits taken to BP stock and, ultimately its reputation.

Say “Exxon” and the only thing the public thinks of is “Valdez.” There is much more to this corporation, but don’t expect to find it in the nation’s press. And, yes, Exxon’s handling of the spill in 1989 is now a textbook case of what not to do.

The BP oil spill will cause immeasurable harm to those immediately affected by it, the beaches, the tourism, and the fishing industry of the states where the oil is washing up. There is no way, nor reason, to minimize that. Keep in mind, however, the well will be capped. The cleanup will continue. The wildlife will return. The spill will become history.

The still untold story, however, is that there is an unimaginably huge amount of oil in the U.S. territorial waters of the Gulf and this is true also for the vast continental shelf of Alaska and the lower 48. That’s the good news.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Big Oil: A Failure to Communicate

By Alan Caruba

In the movie, “Cool Hand Luke”, the warden of the prison camp explains his harsh treatment saying, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

I was thinking of that in the wake of the BP oil rig disaster because, it has long seemed to me that the oil industry has failed to communicate its story to Americans. Instead, it has slunk around with its tail between its legs frequently apologizing for playing an absolutely essential role in the success of the nation.

In his new book, “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future”, my friend Robert Bryce says, “Amidst all the rhetoric about the evils of oil, the evils of OPEC, the claims that we are ‘addicted’ to oil, that oil fosters terrorism, that we can ‘win the oil endgame’, or that oil is killing the planet, the simple unavoidable truth is that using oil makes us rich. In fact, if oil didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.”

The formula is simplicity itself. “As oil consumption increases, so does prosperity. In the countries where oil demand is more than 12 barrels per capita per year, gross domestic production (GDP) is at least two times as high as those where oil demand is six barrels or lower.”

Concerning oil, Bryce points out that “for all the problems that oil creates, it also provides us with unprecedented mobility, comfort, and convenience. Although we think of oil primarily as a transportation fuel, it’s also a nearly perfect fuel for heating, can be used to generate electricity, and, when refined, can be turned into an array of products, from cosmetics to shoelaces and bowling balls to milk jugs.”

Let me point out that the world is not running out of oil. New reserves of oil are found every year. The U.S. is home to vast untapped reserves of oil and unbelievably vast amounts of coal. In both cases, the federal government has shut off access. Some States are beginning to challenge this, asserting their sovereign eminent domain.

I have been a public relations counselor since the 1970s and if I had to give the oil industry (and coal too) a grade for their efforts to make a case for their contribution to our personal lifestyles and the industrial success of our nation, I would give them both an “F”.

The Greens with their lies about “dirty fuels” and supposed threats to the planet have run circles around the oil companies. In an effort to look more Green the company’s advertising have often portray themselves as being in tune with the environmental lies about global warming. Exxon’s ads routinely refer to their efforts to offset greenhouse gas emissions even though they play no role in climate change.

Top of the list of panderers, however, has been BP (British Petroleum), an oil company squarely at the heart of the latest catastrophe. Its motto has been “Beyond Petroleum” as if to say oil was not the focus of their business. Horse feathers!

In a recent Energy Tribune commentary, Bryce, a co-editor, reflected the views of oil industry leaders referring to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster as “a reputational disaster for the entire U.S. offshore business.”

The opponents of oil always portray the industry as some evil giant, a powerful influence that shapes legislation in Congress and opinion among Americans and others worldwide. If that is the case, why has the oil industry been unable to get the offshore exploration and drilling ban lifted on 85% of the nation’s coastlines where billions of barrels of oil and cubic meters of natural gas are known to exist?

Imposed during the Carter administration, it was not until the tail end of the Bush43 administration that any effort was taken to lift the ban. President Obama made some passing remarks about lifting the ban, but the BP oil rig disaster will now ensure that access to our nation’s reserves of energy will be further delayed. The Obama administration has made no secret of its resistance to granting offshore leases.

Nor has the industry had any success it budging several administrations from their opposition to drilling in Alaska’s ANWR region, as desolate as any on Earth, but home to billions of untapped barrels of oil.

The public remains uninformed about the role oil plays in our economy and in their lives. It is central to globalization because, without diesel and jet fuel, there would be no global transportation system. Products manufactured in China and elsewhere would never reach ours or any other shores. Without oil, nothing would be delivered within the nation. Without jet fuel, people could not move about the globe with ease and speed.

Meanwhile, the campaigns of major Green organizations to deny Americans access to their own natural resources continues without any significant or successful effort to tell the real energy story.

Not all the ethanol or wind or solar could ever begin to meet the nation’s energy needs and none of these “clean energy” options deserve the billions the U.S. government is shoveling into their coffers as quickly as possible.

If Cap-and-Trade legislation becomes law, the economy will plummet and the lives of all Americans will become even more expensive to maintain.

For all the money the oil companies presumably spend on advertising and on public relations, they have been drilling empty holes for a very long time.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

LA Times Article Mentions Your Favorite Pundit Today

Now here's a way to start the New Year. Your favorite pundit is mentioned in today's Los Angeles Times and reporter, Meghan Daum, opines about the many "top ten" lists that come out at this time of year.

As a former fulltime journalist and a longtime public relations counselor, I can tell you she's right. Editors and reporters LOVE lists of all kinds on all topics.

Tiger Woods and the Morals Clause

By Alan Caruba

“Accenture takes very seriously its business ethics, corporate governance and transparency of operations. Our board of directors authorized the creation of our Ethics and Compliance program. Led by our general counsel, the program is designed to:

# Foster the highest ethical standards amongst Accenture personnel.

# Be effective in preventing, detecting and appropriately reporting and addressing any allegation of misconduct and violations of law by Accenture personnel.”

You can find this statement on the website of Accenture, a management consulting firm for whom Tiger Woods was its celebrity avatar. His image is no longer on their website because Accenture announced it has severed its relationship with the sports star.

No doubt Accenture’s general counsel reviewed the contract it has with Tiger Woods as regards his personal behavior, otherwise known as “the moral clause.” As we are learning, Tiger’s morals off the greens weren’t just a lapse of judgment, but a serious breach of appropriate behavior before and during his marriage.

Off the greens, Tiger’s life was truly the stuff of tabloids. In time, however, he will find forgiveness or just the fatigue people will have with the story. In the short term, however, those corporations and other enterprises associated with his name will want to sever relations or distance themselves.

Regrettably Tiger’s scandal is all-too-familiar. He has joined the ranks of former President Clinton, Governor Mark Sanford, former Senator John Edwards, former Governor Elliot Spitzer, and talk show host, David Letterman.

We live in one of the most sex-drenched cultures on the face of planet Earth. Sex is used to sell everything. It suffuses fashion, music, films, and sports. One can hardly watch television without commercials promising improved sexual performance and warning against the hazards of four-hour erections.

Tiger Wood’s performance on the greens has always been spectacular. That’s not Tiger's problem. His problem is the moral clause and it’s there because few suspected Tiger Woods had an appetite for porn stars and Nordic beauties, but just in case he did.

It can be argued that, until it was made public, it was none of our business, but no highly public figure can or should ask for our approval at the same time they are breaking one or more of the Ten Commandments.

Having spent my life as a public relations counselor, I can tell you that whoever is advising him is now engaged in a full scale review of every single thing written or said about him. This is being done in an effort to assess when the media feeding frenzy will peak and then begin to loose its ability to inflict further damage. That’s not likely to occur for months.

At some point Tiger will return to the tournaments that made him a millionaire, but he is not likely to return to the commercial affiliations that made him a billionaire.

By then his wife will have divorced him and moved back to Sweden, taking the children with her. Nothing can heal that marriage.

In time the public will grow tired of his apologies and be content just to watch him play. But they will never look at him quite the same again.

The morals clause will preclude the big endorsement contracts; the major paydays are over. Instead, he will have to win tournaments and, if he does, the current sordid mess will eventually fade sufficiently to let him live a more modest and, hopefully, a more moral life.

We all have a morality clause in the contract we call life. It's there for a very good reason.

The Information Deficit

By Alan Caruba

To those who have mostly known the Internet as their source of news, the notion that there is an “information deficit” may seem an odd judgment, but it is one that an old friend and longtime observer of the public relations profession recently made.

What Jack O’Dwyer, publisher and editor of Jack O’Dwyer’s Newsletter and PR Report, doesn’t know about public relations is probably not worth knowing. Ebullient and feisty, Jack has long been the nemesis of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), an organization that has managed to render itself irrelevant to the profession it proposes to represent.

So I pay attention when, in a recent blog, Jack concluded that “What the U.S. is suffering from, besides a trade deficit, is an information deficit. The root of the current financial collapse is secrecy—including ‘dubious assets’ hidden in off-balance-sheet entries.” Not all business news is devoid of insight or even outrage, but too much comes after the fact.

When you tie secrecy to the death throes of newspapers and magazines these days, you get a public that is increasingly distrustful of a government that manufactures false statistics about jobs, extends the protection of the U.S. Constitution to Islamic terrorists seeking to replace it with Sharia law, and is filled with “czars” given power to influence and determine national policy without any accountability to Congress.

You get a mainstream media so in love with Barack Obama that the protests against his administration are mocked and reports fail to address their issues.

Jack’s blog examined the findings of former journalist, Richard Sine, who received a fellowship grant to conduct a study of business journalism. He concluded that journalism schools should “close down” because students might as well study “blacksmithing, bloodletting or steamship design.”

Jack quoted Art Stevens, a former president of the PRSA, who believes that both journalism and PR are in a state of collapse.

As a longtime PR counselor, I concur because PR has long been dependent on a thriving base of newspaper and magazine outlets, in addition to broadcast outlets. As that base erodes, the capacity to inform and influence the public through them declines in tandem.

Add in an economy in freefall due to insane government “stimulus” and “bailout” programs, choking government regulation, the prospect of increased taxation, debt unto the third generation to come, and I can personally attest that the market for PR services has been in serious decline.

Public relations which had its beginnings in the early 1900s had been peopled with former journalists and thus was generally based in journalistic standards of accuracy and the free exchange of information. An early PR practitioner, Ivy Lee, counseled corporate clients to be responsive when the press came calling.

“In today’s strictly controlled environment,” Jack wrote, “PR pros jeopardize their careers by meeting with journalists or even talking to them on the phone.” He placed the blame on corporate lawyers, chief financial officers and even the marketing departments for shutting off the information spigot. Ironically, this applies as well to the five advertising and PR conglomerates as well.

When you put together the secrecy practices, the failures of government oversight, and the inadequacies of business reporters from recent generations of J-school and PR graduates, you end up with a perfect storm that culminates in the sudden collapse of the financial system that no one was monitoring sufficiently to protect the public.

It has largely been left to trade associations, think tanks, and ad hoc groups such as the Tea Party organizers, to make essential information about the conduct of national affairs available. They frequently have been forced to by-pass traditional journalism outlets in order to reach the public via Internet news and opinion sites, blogs, newsletters, and other means.

This explains why traditional journalism outlets continue to report on “global warming”, “greenhouse gas emissions”, and other bogus “science” while the public observes that, wherever they are, the climate is getting colder. This disconnect continues to undermine the diminishing credibility of most mainstream media outlets.

The forthcoming Copenhagan UN climate conference will be reported as “news” instead of being exposed as an effort to use false science to initiate a one-world-government treaty and the creation of a market for bogus “carbon credits.”

This explains, too, why Bernie Madoff was able to fleece investors of billions with his bogus hedge fund until the unraveling of the economy exposed him when neither the Securities Exchange Commission, nor the mainstream business press took notice of his ponzi scheme.

This explains why the mainstream press continues to avoid “offending” Muslims and, like the Obama administration, avoids the fact that a segment of fanatical Islam threatens the world with terrorism to advance its goal of a global caliphate. Destroying the U.S. is the key to their plan.

You are reading this on the Internet. Neither Jack’s, nor mine, nor other experienced, knowledgeable public relations professional’s, nor business reporters’ insights and information is available in a mainstream press that continues to censor the truth.

Editor’s note: For those seeking PR counseling and editorial services, you are invited to visit my website, www.caruba.com.

Watch for the Signs

By Alan Caruba

There are some lessons one learns from a life spent first as a journalist and then for many decades as a public relations professional. You cannot succeed in PR if you cannot spot the early signs that the media herd is heading in one direction or the other.

It was obvious from the beginning that the mainstream media (MSM) fell in love with Barack Obama. Like Chris Matthews, it was a complete crush. Obama was the anti-Hillary, come to save America from her shrill voice and to redeem our sad history of racism.

At this point, however, it is just as obvious that he has managed to say and do any number of things that have aroused the distrust of the all but the 28% of those convinced he is a dandy President. The rest no longer feel that way.

The MSM is presently sticking its finger in the wind to find out which way it is blowing. They are checking Rasmussen and Gallup polls. Once they conclude that Obama is unpopular to a point beyond which they can no longer obscure or influence, they will do what all fearless MSM do; they will begin to gang up on him.

By the time Jimmy Carter left office, even the Peanut Farmer’s Gazette was glad to see him go.

Watch the signs. The week that either (or both) Time Magazine and Newsweek publish a cover story asking, “What Went Wrong?” or “Healthcare Reform is Very Sick” or anything similar that suggests—gasp!—Obama has suffered a major political setback, you can be confident that, in their editorial board offices amidst leather chairs and a huge polished mahogany table, someone will have intoned, “It’s not going well for Obama.”

The other beacon to watch is, of course, The New York Times. When Maureen Dowd can tear herself away from berating Sarah Palin to say an unkind word about Barack Obama, you know the beginning of the end will have arrived. When Paul Krugman thinks out loud that maybe a three trillion dollar debt is probably not a good idea, the banana peel will have been thrown into the Rose Garden.

When the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson can no longer find an excuse for Barack Obama’s blunders and inability to sell a very bad healthcare reform and even worse Cap-and-Trade tax on energy, you might as well break out your GOP lapel pin and start to wear it in public.

There’s a reason for the rapid demise of the Obama Dream. It’s called reality.

Americans are not great fans of those who spend all of their time “apologizing” for the U.S.A. and blaming others for why the job they wanted has turned out to be a real stinker. It is now Obama’s foreign policy, Obama’s economy, and Obama’s gay rights agenda. Despite all the “green shoots” and other alleged signs that the economy is getting better, real people know it’s not.

Coming to a town near you or maybe your street, will be more mortgage foreclosures. Banks are being closed and their assets sold to other banks, but while that is a palliative measure to protect customers, it doesn’t change the fact that credit flow is still a trickle. A credit card meltdown is likely on the way. Job losses? Yes, that too.

Plainly speaking, the federal government is running out of monetary tricks to make the Recession go away. It will never dawn on them to actually cut spending. It is only now just dawning on them that the public hates the billion-dollar “bailouts” and “stimulus” bills.

The MSM is shedding jobs as if a plague has struck their newsrooms. And it has. First they shed their credibility as objective and reliable sources of news and now they are shedding consumers of news who prefer Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

We are all just weeks from the first significant cracks in the MSM herd mentality regarding Barack Obama, his ever growing circle of “czars”, and those wacky Congress critters like Pelosi and Reid. By the end of the year, the MSM will desert him.

As a PR Counselor, I would advise Obama to say something critical about al Qaeda’s perpetrators of 9/11 and not blame the victims when that anniversary comes around. Otherwise, he’ll be able to watch the slow drift of the MSM turn into a stampede.

Too Much Obama

By Alan Caruba

Even after his first four years in office, the voters still preferred George W. Bush to the effete John Kerry. By the end of the second four years, during which our attention was focused on the war in Iraq, Americans were just plain tired of George W. Bush.

Those not suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome had simply succumbed to the fact that eight years of the same person in the White House, no matter who it was, had worn out his welcome. That’s the genius of the Founding Fathers who established a four-year term and the lesson which led to the 22nd Amendment in 1951 that limited all presidents to two terms only.

The sudden financial crisis just before Bush left office exacerbated the feeling because Americans were told that it would take $700 billion to get us out of the mess. Never mind that Bush had warned against the huge exposure that Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae represented, it was a death blow to the lackluster campaign of John McCain.

It is significant, therefore, that six months into the first year of his term, President Barack Obama has already managed to wear out his welcome. It’s too much Obama. It’s a television commercial played over and over again until the only recourse is to pick up the remote control and hit the mute button.

On Wednesday evening, the President will hold another prime time press conference. He has become the incessant pitchman of Obamacare and the ratings are likely to reveal that almost any other program playing opposite him will garner better ratings.

Americans are increasingly wary of bills in excess of a thousand pages that members of Congress do not read before passing. They have reason to be. The deficit and the debt are predicted to reach astronomical levels unseen in the entire history of the nation. They will be nation-killers if the brakes are not applied, revisions made, and repeals undertaken.

As a longtime practitioner of the arts of public relations it is no surprise to me that the profession is taking notice of the Too-Much-Obama Syndrome. The Ragan Daily News Feed, directed to PR folk, called attention to the July 22 edition of The Daily Beast in which former newsman Sam Donaldson addressed “Obama’s Misguided Media Blitz.”

Having obviously not paid attention to recent polls, Donaldson asserted that “The public wants a health-care overhaul.” No, it doesn’t. It wants to see what can be done to reduce costs, but it likes the present system which is widely seen as the best in the world.

In a post on Rasmussen Reports, Tony Blankley, formerly an editor and columnist with The Washington Times and now a vice president in the Washington, D.C. office of Edelman Public Relations, warned that “All we can know for sure is that the Democrats’ comprehensive health care reform legislation will empower bureaucrats comprehensively to make all decisions, vital and trivial, regarding your health care coverage or non-coverage. The comprehensive power of the federal government will completely and totally extinguish your control over your health treatment.”

Meanwhile, Donaldson is advising Obama saying, “He should insist on ramming through a bill as long as it truly accomplishes the overall goals…” The problem is that is no one knows its goal beyond a government takeover of twenty percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.

What the public knows is that the President lies. A lot. You may have disagreed with George W. Bush and I frequently did, but I never felt he was deliberately and knowingly lying to me. Liberals, of course, kept repeating the mantra that “Bush lied, people died” but the only people that died in America from the threat of Islamo-fascism did so on September 11, 2001.

Under Obamacare people who are ill will die and we know this from the socialist healthcare programs that exist in Canada and Great Britain.

Politically, we’re told that the passage of Obamacare will determine whether Obama can exert “leadership” within his own party while it controls Congress. Obama recently said, “This isn’t about me”, but it is all about Obama. The dizzying, frightening first six months of his term have been all about Obama. The mainstream media have seen to that.

Now, however, Americans are gathering in greater numbers to protest Obama and his horrid intention to raise taxes in the midst of a recession, to overthrow the Second Amendment, to take control of the auto industry, banks, insurance companies, healthcare, ad infinitum. They did so on July 4th at thousands of “Tea Parties” and they will do so again on September 12 in Washington, D.C.

The televised press conference, a manipulation of the White House press corps which is demonstrating resistance to his charms, is not proof that Obama is succeeding in this quest to control the most intimate and essential element of our lives, our health, but proof that he is failing.

The Senate is beginning to assert its purpose, the slow deliberative final say on proposed legislation. It is controlled by a Democrat majority, but that majority is beginning to read the polling numbers, react to the thousands of emails in opposition to Obamacare, and retreating to a position in which they can avoid the same rejection they are seeing occur for the President.

As of July 22nd, Obama had 1278 days to go in his term. He is visibly aging.

Americans are stirring from their media-induced stupor.

ADDENDUM: After the Press Conference

This was the fifth press conference President Obama has held in six months and the fourth in prime time. The man has a lot to say to America!

It took him eight minutes to reply to the first question. He received eleven questions in all and he lied a lot during the course of the hour. The biggest came early when he said he wanted to "keep government out of healthcare decisions."

The whole purpose is to make government part of all healthcare decisions. In order to do that, it must have all your medical records and, with "reform", it will. Goodbye patient-doctor privacy.

One theme that crept into the answers that followed his Obama's distaste for the wealthy in America; people who through hard work, better, more advance skills, wiser investments, simply earn more than most people. He's also not keen on banks and financial institutions giving bonuses to their highest producers of profit even though that is a standard process and one built into contracts.

Another theme was the "inefficiencies" of the present Medicare and Medicare programs which, he said, can be solved in order to save money. All government programs have inefficiencies and always have. They rarely get fixed. The so-called Stimulus Bill is a perfect example of inefficiency when most of it is directed to help states reduce the amount of money they owe for federally mandated programs. As for creating new jobs, well, forget about it.

President Obama is no fan of Wall Street, yet much of the problem that occurred was due to the failure of federal oversight agencies to do their job. That's how Bernard Madoff was able to defraud people and institutions of billions for years. There's plenty of regulatory law on the books regarding Wall Street. It is not sufficiently and effectively enforced.

I don't know how many people watched, but I doubt they can call on decades of watching government function as I can. What they saw was yet another slick performance by the President, but what they didn't see was the slight of hand that will add trillions more to the national debt and require the rationing of treatment. It means your parents or grandparents, when they get ill, will be denied treatment because it is old people who require the most care. They will be sent home to die. I have seen it happen.

Can Obama pull it off? His own Party is in retreat because they cannot find the money to pay for these "reforms" and they are hearing from too many constituents who don't want any more reform of an already costly "entitlement."

The Nielson Ratings:
Draws 4.1 Million Fewer Viewers Than Third Press Conference

In a continued push for congressional support of health care reform President Obama held his fourth prime time press conference on Wednesday July 22, 2009. The conference was carried live from 8:00PM to approximately 9:00PM on 11 networks. The sum of average audience for those networks was 24,682,519 viewers and had a combined household rating of 16.3. The networks carrying the press conference were ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision*, Telemundo*, BBC-A, BET, CNBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC.

Viewing to last night’s press conference was down 14% from his April 29 press conference and down 50% from his first primetime conference on February 9.

Where to Get "Eco-Malled"

By Alan Caruba

In case you haven’t yet figured out that environmentalism is just one vast scheme to part you from your money either directly or with government subsidies for "eco-friendly" nonsense like ethanol in your gasoline, I give you EcoMall.com.

For those with weak stomachs, read no further. “With the distressing state of the environment on people’s minds this year, they are thinking more than ever about the environmental impact of their gift choices.”

Raise your hand if (1) the environment is distressing to you or (2) if you give a rat’s patoot about the environmental impact of the gifts you intend to give?

The 14-year old Eco Mall is just a marketing scheme and one that, like most environmental schemes, uses guilt and fear to get you to part with your money. “The news is filled with stories that link our consumer habits and the products we buy with our health and the health of the planet.”

I cannot think of a single occasion I or anyone I know was worried about the "health of the planet" when picking out a product of any description. This kind of supposed awareness that every single product we purchase has anything to do with the planet’s welfare is borderline insane. The planet is billions of years old. Will buying an eco-product really make any difference?

“2007 may be the year when the awareness of all things ‘green’ really hits the mainstream.” Well, if you’re running an operation called the Eco Mall, I suppose you surely hope people will fall for the foolishness of paying more for the privilege of being greener than thou. This is the same marketing ploy used to sell obscenely priced “organic” food.

The Eco Mall has more than 60 shopping categories filled with items by “socially responsible manufacturers and distributors.” Give me a break! Just how stupid am I supposed to be to care whether an item is produced by a “socially responsible manufacturer”? As opposed to what?

When it comes to imports from China, can I really know if the manufacturer is using slave labor? Odds are he's paying far less than an American competitor. Much of the manufacturing that used to be done in America has been shipped overseas. The result is cheap prices in Wal-Mart and fewer "sustainably" paying jobs for Americans and our growing population of illegal aliens.

Apparently “socially responsible” just means higher cost to the consumer. As for all those companies advertising on television to demonstrate their environmental credentials, do not be fooled. BP Oil, for example, has a remarkably poor safety record regarding their facilities and earlier this year replaced their very Green CEO in favor of managing the company to produce something called a profit.

But if you are still idiotic enough to buy at the Eco Mall, you can purchase “organic” cotton clothing, coffee or chocolates. The suggestion is that anything not made of cotton is not organic, i.e. natural, but what about wool from sheep? Silk from silk worms? As for synthetic materials, they are probably some of the most wonderful inventions of the past century. Coffee and chocolate start out as something grown in the earth. That means that all coffee and chocolate is organic. If you think that pesticides and herbicides are not used to protect such valuable crops, you might as well move to Mars.

You can buy “natural body care” products at the Eco Mall. Do you have any idea what chemicals are in soap? Get real! There are all manner of soaps from the strictly practical to the exotically perfumed, but all are organic because all use chemicals and materials that begin life as something on or in the Earth or made from animal fats and such.

“Going green is such a rewarding journey” says the Eco Mall news release, but mostly if you are the Eco Mall, selling over-priced products to people dumb enough to buy into the whole Green message of moral superiority.

Don’t get Green-malled. Get smart!

Green PR to Influence Presidential Candidates

By Alan Caruba

Have you ever wondered why hardly a day goes by without your reading or hearing about some Green program? It’s not just happenstance. The environmental movement has one of the most varied and impressive public relations programs extant. And it spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.

Take, for example, a $250,000 contract that Fraser Communications, a Los Angeles PR and advertising firm, just secured to promote the Presidential Climate Action Project. It is described as “an academic, government and interest group push to make climate change a priority for the next U.S. president.” Think about that, we haven’t even had a primary yet, but this program is already thinking about how to bring pressure on whoever is elected to continue dealing with climate change or, as it used to be known, “global warming.”

About the only person still using the term “global warming” is the gaseous former Vice President, Al Gore. He has, despite his Nobel Prize, evolved into a laughing stock for his near-term predictions of global catastrophe.

The Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP) has an “advisory committee” that includes the Johnson Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and the National Wildlife Federation, among other groups.

One almost instantly wonders why a governmental agency like NOAA that presumably takes its direction from Congress is involved in trying to influence a future president? Isn’t that just a tad inappropriate? Unethical?

As to the others, from the beginning when the environmental movement first took off, it has been leftist foundations that have provided the funding, so there’s no surprise in that. Here again, however, one wonders what the National Wildlife Federation’s interest in climate change is all about? Since the Green mantra is that climate change is manmade, the result of human activities, why is a group devoted to bison, bunny rabbits, and other furry creatures involved?

The whole object of this endeavor and the charge that its PR firm will undertake is to apply “public persuasion” strategies related to policy and the environment. The key goal is to “set the stage for candidates running for public office in 2008 to take positions on specific proposals to address climate, energy, and national security.”

Whoa! The name of the project is “Climate Action”, but it turns out that this Green project is also about energy and national security.

One can understand “energy” because the primary goal of the Greens is to cripple the ability of the U.S. to acquire the energy resources it requires to maintain our economy and our lifestyle. Using the Endangered Species Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, and every other means, the bottom line is to insure that no coal-fired electricity utilities be built anywhere and to continue to slow any progress toward nuclear facilities. As for oil, they hate it. That’s why they have conspired to limit access to the billions of barrels of oil untapped in ANWR, Alaska’s North Slope, and 85% of our nation’s continental shelf.

You want national security? You better be able to fuel our Air Force squadrons, our Army’s tanks, and our Navy’s carrier fleets. You better cut our current 75% imports of oil and become more self-sufficient.

But somehow I suspect that PCAP’s agenda is about influencing presidential candidates to take positions that they genuflect to the myth of global warming. That means a President who will sign off on carbon dioxide limits on every industry and activity that might emit CO2. And that includes backyard barbeques.

Public Relations, Consumer Confidence, and Liars

By Alan Caruba

I was interviewed recently by a reporter for National Public Radio’s “Marketplace”, providing a sound bite about the coverage of Countrywide Financial’s problems as its stock price heads south, causing the layoff of a huge number of employees in the wake of the subprime mortgage loan debacle.

I have long been accustomed to being the “go to” guy when the press has questions about public relations and the news was about a small army of Burson-Marsteller PR folks brought in to fix the ailing home lender’s image.

When trust returns to the home mortgage industry in general, Countrywide—if it is still around—will rebuild. Meanwhile, it has to very publicly reinforce the need for ethical practices and not use “competition” as an excuse for a lack of caution.

Meanwhile, it's a good idea to keep in mind that the economy is doing just fine. Unemployment is still at record low rates. As the holidays approach, consumers will open their wallets. Some of them will look at the new housing prices and decide to buy one. The economy is amazingly resiliant.

It has been interesting to see the growth of “crisis control” in tandem with “reputation management” as an important function of public relations, but I tend to favor fighting one’s enemies long and hard before any crisis is allowed to happen. This is particularly true when it comes to issues of public policy and public opinion.

Environmental groups have, for years, used lies of every kind to advance their agenda. The result has often caused the needless loss of life as in the case of the ban on DDT. The vast "global warming" hoax threatens to waste trillions of dollars limiting "greenhouse gas emissions" by imposing "carbon taxes" when humans have no role whatever regarding the earth's climate.

Any enterprise whose success is predicated on issues involving energy, chemicals or pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and—most importantly—consumer confidence has got to be prepared to join the war against those who spread lies about the good things they do.

If not, the liars win. It’s just that simple.