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PATH: BS | Business | Corporations
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Fake News
Posted by Clare
(6690 views)      [E-Mail link]
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[News Media] |
| WBRZ airs 'fake' news, says media watchdog The Center for Media Democracy and Free Press, a nonpartisan media policy group, cite Baton Rouge's WBRZ as a culprit in a 10-month investigation of a national "fake news" epidemic. Specifically, the sting focused on corporate-sponsored videos passed off as news. Investigators found 77 TV stations, including WBRZ, actively disguising sponsored content from General Motors, Intel, Pfizer, Capital One and others to make it look like their own reporting. More than a third of the time, stations aired fake news in its entirety as their own, the report said. |
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Battle of the Documentaries
Posted by Pile
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[Pubic Relations] |
| In August 2004, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company told Wal-Mart, "The public believes [Wal-Mart] treats its employees poorly and is a negative force in communities." The report suggests steps for "managing change," including to "spread messages that it cares for employees, build local relationships, increase local philanthropy." McKinsey also helped prepare a memo, leaked to the New York Times last week, that proposed "numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits," in part by "discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart." With the new Robert Greenwald documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" about to be released, Wal-Mart's PR firm, Edelman, "sent reporters a press kit last week attacking claims made in the film's trailer, along with negative reviews of Greenwald's previous work. Wal-Mart is also promoting a competing documentary about the company, directed by Ron Galloway, titled 'Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Drives Some People Crazy.'" |
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Can't Sleep? You're Not Alone. Take a Pill.
Posted by Pile
(10622 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Polls] |
 This spring, a poll that found half of adult Americans have frequent sleeping problems was reported on "by virtually all of the country's major newspapers and television networks," as well as international media. "Lost in the somber warnings and survey results, however, was that the poll, the proclamations and the press kits that spread the information were paid for by sleeping pill manufacturers," reports the Sacramento Bee. Although the group that released the poll, the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), receives more than half of its income from drug companies, only 17 of 84 newspaper stories "mentioned the foundation's pharmaceutical sponsors." And while the New York public relations firm Zeno Group was touting the NSF poll, it was also hyping the launch of a new sleeping pill, Lunesta. Zeno Group included "a pitch for coverage of the release of the Lunesta sleeping pill" in the NSF press packets announcing the poll results. |
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PETA Exposes Cruelty at Drug Company
Posted by Pile
(9881 views) [E-Mail link]
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[Mean People]
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While most Americans' view of PETA seems to involve bored supermodels whining about mink coats, the organization has continued to address far more important issues than the mainstream media wants to call attention to.
Recently, an undercover PETA investigator worked as a technician inside a Vienna, Virginia laboratory, owned by Covance, a billion-dollar Princeton-based company. She videotaped workers who were striking, choking, taunting, and deliberately tormenting terrified monkeys. She documented small monkeys, choking, gagging and suffering from daily bloody noses after having large tubes forced up their nostrils and down into their stomachs. Other monkeys had developed painful protrusions of the intestines through the rectum resulting from constant stress and diarrhea, and monkeys with broken arms and other severe injuries were denied proper veterinary treatment. Sadly, many animals in desperate need of euthanasia were kept alive and in agony just to please drug companies.
PETA has filed a 272-page complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture that asks for the Vienna laboratory to be shut down until a thorough investigation can be conducted.
There's a controversial video of the mistreatment of these animals that the Covance company is deperately trying to bury. |
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Bumper Sticker Store
For all of the empty words and useless posturing that most people mean when they say they "support the troops," Fran O'Brien's Stadium Steakhouse in DC, located in the basement of the Capital Hilton, gives 
The Kansas City, Mo.-based company said it will restate results for fiscal years 2004 and 2005, plus previous 2006 quarters, mainly because of errors in calculating its state effective income tax rate. The mistakes resulted in H&R Block understating its state income tax liability by about $32 million as of the end of April, 2005, the company added.
In an amusing jab at Microsoft and their lackluster ability to promptly identify and fix vulnerabilities in their software, an IT guy has placed up for auction on eBay "One 0-day Microsoft Excel Vulnerability".
Everyone knows what went down in New Orleans with hurricane Katrina, so when the largest mall in the area, Lakeside Shopping Center, did their annual Christmas Village display, the architect created a unique town, complete with tarp-covered roofs, debris, patrolling guardsmen in Humvees and helicopters rescuing people. The majority of those that saw the little display loved it. But that didn't stop the mall management from caving in to a small group of whiners who apparently complained that the display was in poor taste. So down it went, and patrons continued to flock to see the display only to find out the politically-correct Lakeside Mall pulled the local character from the display.
There's an e-mail going around, spawned by an organization called the Catholic League which suggested a boycott of Wal-Mart due to the company's policy of substituting "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". 
Last week, Republican Congressman, and former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tom DeLay was arrested and booked on state conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
For those of you who were wondering what happened to Hootie & the Blowfish, worry no more. They recently performed at Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, Florida. Two great tastes that go great together: Hootie and Jacksonville, FL.
Among the more out-of-character things Wal-Mart Stores CEO H. Lee Scott has been talking up lately is the retailer's quest for more sales to more affluent shoppers.
American online activist David Swanson alleges that Comcast and Symantec have blocked emails drawing attention to the so-called 
I've violated their patent? Hey Microsoft, how about this emoticon: 
!
Crying like a baby (who ran a multinational corporation into the ground and defauded thousands of people and blew billions of dollars), former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
As Willie Nelson prepared to release his upcoming reggae album, "Countryman", it seems his record label has altered the album's original artwork to pander to Wal-Mart's sensibilities, replacing the hemp leaf with a palm tree, specially for Wal-Mart distribution. Obviously Mall-Wart patrons would be offended by any reference to marijuana. I suspect the record company turned down the retail chain's first request: changing the pot leaf to an image of a package of Pepsid AC.
A college student was forced to redesign a Web site satirizing a foundation run by 
