Media
Orwellian Olympiad (II): Ministry of Truth Revises Gymnast’s Past and Gets Caught… THIS TIME
Thursday, August 14th, 2008Following up on last week’s post on George Orwell’s 1984…
The latest Olympic development is not just that the Chinese government falsified a gymnast’s birth date on her passport, but that they went back and altered PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED NEWSPAPER REPORTS about her age!!
Columnist/Blogger David Flumenbaum has posted copies of an article from the China Daily that […]
Fox Business Proves Street Cred and Hypocrisy: White Cody Willard a Gang Member?
Sunday, April 27th, 2008At a recent media party hosted by the UK’s heavyweight newspaper The Financial Times, Fox Business host (and Financial Times columnist and successful capital markets investor) Cody Willard flashed a gang sign for the cameras.
Willard is described by Huffington Post columnist Rachel Sklar as friendly, chatty, affable, jocular, and a good sport… all in the […]
Passive Voices, Passive Minds, PR Failures, and the Teacher Who’s Actually Taking Credit for “Heidi Cee”
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Wandering the blog-o-sphere, you find so much bad sh…shtuff, sometimes it’s hard to hold down your lunch. But there’s a ton of good shtuff too.
I found a delicious post at the Sandwich Chronicles that sparked a few thoughts about PR and the “Heidi Cee” fiasco. So as suggested by Bill Sledzik over at Tough Sledding […]
PR Council’s Weekly BuzzKill: Lame 2.0 Strategy, a Page Out of PRSA’s Non-News Playbook?
Sunday, January 20th, 2008For non-PR people, this story offers an example of how NOT to do PR, and why our profession is in the trouble it’s in….
The Council of PR Firms recently announced that they are bankrolling a new electronic newsletter with Bulldog Reporter, called The Weekly Buzz.
The goal is to “create visibility for the Council,” but also […]
Ghost Writing Ethics 2.0: PR Firm Caught with Pants Down, Public Outraged, Politics as Usual?
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007Why do people need ghost writers? (It must not be obvious, or people would not be so shocked over the practice.) The answer is:
Ghost writers are necessary because most people suck at writing.
That’s a no-brainer. The bigger issue is this: sophisticated PR programs deliver their messages through surrogates, whose affiliations are deliberately disguised in order […]
Toll Bros. CEO Wins Our “B.S. of the Month” Award (and it sure don’t mean “Best Spin!”)
Thursday, November 29th, 2007It was a hard call. Right at the end of the month, Karl Rove swooped in with a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, stupendously enormous load of B.S. – letting loose with veritable torrent of lumpy smelly booboo, all over poor Charlie Rose. (Newsweek readers beware, you’re next!)
Rove, the poster boy for a rhetorical disease we can only […]
The Kite Runner: Colossally Dishonest, But Well Written
Saturday, September 29th, 2007IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK, THIS POST MIGHT BE A “SPOILER.” IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW A KEY PLOT ELEMENT, THEN STOP HERE.
Much will be made of the new film The Kite Runner, as much was made of the book. And it deserves praise, from the perspective of pure prose and sense […]
The Case of the “Intifada” T-shirt: Don’t Be Niggardly with That Gay Swastika!
Monday, August 13th, 2007When I was a kid, in Boston in the early 1970s, bumper stickers of the “England Get Out of Ireland” variety were not uncommon. And my mother, an Irish ex-pat, while never overtly militant, very much enjoyed playing the spirited and nationalistic records of groups like the Wolftones. We sang with pride about the IRA […]
Rudy & The Race Card: NY Times Punts the Story, Lands in the Lap of “Sources”
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007I know that “piling on” is generally a cheap shot, and piling on the NY Times is seldom necessary as there are so many other more worthy targets out there. But there can be no better example of what’s wrong with journalism today than two recent articles on Rudy Giuliani – a NY Times piece […]
A White Guy’s View of the “Hot Ghetto Mess” Mess
Sunday, July 29th, 2007(I refuse to give credentials in order to speak, though I got plenty. And to those of you who discount anything any white person says, no credential will ever be enough. So you really just ought to click the “back” button and read something else.)
I’ll start off by paraphrasing a sermon I heard at Watch […]