Spin

It's just a game. If that helps you accept it.

From today's Spin newsletter:

"Pharmaceutical makers have already found a major loophole in the Food and Drug Administration's new draft guidelines for direct-to-consumer advertising," reports Advertising Age. The guidelines were meant to clarify risk information and increase "disease awareness" spots, those not touting any particular drug. But drug company and ad executives discovered that using the same spokesperson in product and "disease awareness" ads is technically OK. "Even the village idiot is going to make the connection between the disease and the specific product," rejoiced one marketing executive.

Like Halliburton, like every corrupt regime that hires a PR firm, the truth makes no difference. The law even less. We can get around both.

I find it very disheartening that people will use their great talents to manipulate and fool other people. Back in my college days I had to take a speech course, and one of our assignments was a "persuasive" speech. Everybody chose their topics and set about trying to persuade the rest of us toward the speaker's point of view. I really hated speech class. I liked the instructor, I liked the students' speeches, but I hated like hell to make one of my own. So every assignment, I was sure I'd fail, and this was no exception. In fact, I was absolutely certain, because this time, I was compelled to make a point. (Why? Go figger. Salmon must be my totem animal.) My speech was a negative critique of the "persuasive speech". I lambasted the whole idea and set about trying to show how to recognize when you were being sold a bill of goods and manipulated through the use of language. Communication should be about understanding, not about manipulating. The other students all looked at me like I had the big "F" painted on my face, but I was prepared to accept it. For some silly reason it seemed like the price would be worth it. How ridiculous. I bet not one of those students remembered a thing I said five minutes after class. But, to my great amazement, the instructor got up and lauded my speech!

You just never know.

More PR spin:

"Like this image of Arabian stallions at full gallop, the new Alhurra Arabic-language television network is off and running this week with news coverage beamed at the Middle East, despite significant competition and mounting controversy," Television Week writes. Top branding and advertising specialists hope their work for the US-funded Alhurra ("The Free One" in Arabic) will grab the attention of Arabic viewers, already skeptical of the network's content. Reuters reports Alhurra's slogan running between programs says, "You think, you aspire, you choose, you express, you are free. Alhurra, just as you are." Middle East Online reports that the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al-Khaleej said, "If US policy in the region were healthy and convincing, they would not resort to cosmetic means to improve their image."

Ya think? Check out this slick American-made Arab propaganda magazine: HI.  The publishers of that one must be high. "The Middle East is the Disneyland of sandsurfing." Where are the people with these ideas living? La-La Land, it would appear.

"Washington lobbyists, having endured nearly as much verbal abuse this year from the Democratic candidates as President Bush, are fighting back against what they call unfair characterizations," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua reports. The American League of Lobbyists (ALL) asked Democratic Presidential hopefuls to stop demonizing "government relations professionals."

Government relations professionals. Remember that. Not lobbyists.

"The Food and Drug Administration is looking to hire a PR firm to help it celebrate its 100th anniversary on June 30, 2006," O'Dwyer's PR writes. "It is looking for a campaign based on the 'Protecting and Advancing America's Health' theme. The PR firm is to use the campaign to celebrate the FDA's accomplishments and further its 'mission to promote and protect the public health for future generations.'" Before FDA knocks itself over patting itself
on the back with its tax-subsidized PR campaign, let's look a little harder at its record versus its mythology. We have exposed many serious instances of FDA failing as protector of public health, including dragging its feet to ban silicone breast implants, caving to Monsanto by approving bovine growth hormone, ignoring public support for and right to the labeling of genetically engineered foods and failing even at this late date to ban the feeding of slaughterhouse waste to livestock, allowing the spread of mad cow disease. Come to think of it, no wonder they need to hire a PR firm!

The website to keep you abreast of the spin: PR Watch