international

An opinion column by David McKnight, an associate professor at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, argues that "Rupert Murdoch's critics often make the mistake of caricaturing him as just another businessman, interested more in money than ideology. ... These claims underestimate Murdoch's powerful contribution to the shaping of political ideas in Britain, the U.S. and Australia in the past 25 years." In particular, he points out that Murdoch "maintains loss-making newspapers such as the New York Post and the London Times" and that The Australian was subsidized for 20 years. "Murdoch's preparedness to take losses year after year testifies to the fact that he often puts ideas and influence before profit," he writes.

The Livingston Group, a lobbying and PR firm, "received a healthy $300K during the third period," or third quarter of 2008, from the Council for a Democratic Iran. The website of the Virginia-based group states, "We believe there is an alternative between military confrontation with the current regime and accommodation." According to Lobbyists.info, the group previously retained the firm Cyber Security Research Consultants. Its Livingston Group lobbyists include former Congressman Robert Livingston and Lauri Fitz-Pegado. Fitz-Pegado previously worked at Hill & Knowlton, where she helped promote the first Gulf War for the government of Kuwait, using the front group "Citizens for a Free Kuwait." In a September 25, 2008 blog post, the Council for a Democratic Iran describes itself as "a newly founded non profit organization."

An analysis of tobacco industry documents published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) tells how the German cigarette industry worked to stop Lufthansa, the flagship airline of Germany, from banning smoking on its domestic flights in the early 1990s. Documents also reveal that German tobacco companies worked to keep cigarette vending machines accessible to children, stop higher taxes on cigarettes, block a ban on tobacco advertising and recruit doctors and scientists to serve as "expert witnesses" to testify against the health dangers of tobacco. One of the paper's authors, Martina Pötschke-Langer, who heads the World Health Organization's Collaboration Centre for Tobacco Control at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, said "The campaign against Lufthansa's non-smoking flights appears to be especially vicious, since pressure was applied to the government as well as to public opinion via the mass media." Lufthansa started working to ban smoking on German domestic flights in 1989, but wasn't successful until 1996.

Mark Grundy, who works for the PR firm Edelman, sees business opportunities in climate change. He writes about the December 2009 COP15 meeting in Denmark, where world governments will try to negotiate a binding new agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. Grundy describes the COP15 meeting as "the biggest global opportunity for carbon messaging of the next four years... COP15 is a major opportunity for all my U.S. clients to go well beyond their European counterparts in the 'green image wars.'" After waxing lyrical about the "$100 billion commodity carbon market," Grundy concludes that if corporate executives still aren't persuaded that they should attend, they should ponder one point: "Where do you think every respected, environmental reporter on the planet will be between 30 November and 11 December next year?" As CMD previously reported, Edelman's London office is assisting E.ON UK in its efforts to persuade the UK government to approve the coal-fired Kingsnorth Power Station. The power station would emit several hundred million tonnes of carbon dioxide in its working life.

The British "country brand capital development" firm Acanchi is crafting a "new image" for Israel. "Our research shows that Israel's brand is essentially the [Israel-Palestine] conflict," explained Israeli Foreign Ministry official Ido Aharoni. "Even those who recognize that Israel is in the right are not attracted to it, because they see it as a supplier of bad news." Israel previously worked with the ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi and U.S. political consultants James Carville and Stanley Greenberg to address its image problem. The rebranding effort began after September 2001, when government officials realized "Israel had an opportunity to escape its image as the main source of conflict with the Islamic word," because the "war on Islamic terror" had "gone global," reports Haaretz. As part of its rebranding, the Israeli government has launched an official MySpace page and invited "international journalists to tour Israel's wine industry." The Israeli government hired Acanchi in August 2008. Acanchi founder Fiona Gilmore recently toured Israel, as her firm prepares to "launch the new brand." The firm will highlight "Israel's scientific and cultural achievements." Acanchi "has helped to rebrand locales ranging from Lebanon to Northern Ireland."

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), a UK government agency charged with deciding whether drugs should be subsidized by the British government, has been criticized by some patient groups for refusing to approve new and expensive drugs. Groups including the National Kidney Federation, the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance, the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, Beating Bowel Cancer, the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Alzheimer's Society have all objected against NICE decisions. "All of these charities received sums of up to six figures from drug companies in 2007," reports Jeremy Laurance, the health editor with The Independent. "A positive decision by NICE on a drug not only guarantees sales to the NHS but can influence global markets worth billions of pounds. Yet none of the charities named has criticised the high prices charged by the pharmaceutical companies for their products in their recent campaigns," he wrote.

As part of a broader public relations and lobbying push, Kazakhstan's government paid Johns Hopkins University to author three reports about the country. The arrangement was brokered through APCO Worldwide, Kazakhstan's Washington DC lobbying firm. The Kazakh government paid $52,300 for reports titled "Kazakhstan's New Middle Class" and "Parliament and Political Parties in Kazakhstan." A third report, "Kazakhstan in its Neighborhood," was "also underwritten by the government," but lobbying reports that would disclose the amount paid for it are not yet available. The reports, issued by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins, do not disclose the Kazakhstan funding. Institute director S. Frederick Starr said their "relationship was only with the lobbying firm and not directly with the government." He added that "the entire editorial process was 100 percent in our hands." The author of the third report, Hudson Institute fellow Richard Weitz, said, "It's an important topic so I would have written about it anyway." The Kazakhstan funding also required the Johns Hopkins Institute to sponsor "think tank discussions" on each report, "sponsored by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute."

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has retained the major public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for one year, to boost the international financial institution's "global outreach." H&K's press release quotes CEO Paul Taaffe as saying, "The IMF plays a crucial role around the world working to stabilize financial markets. H&K's regional expertise and global network means the firm is ideally suited to support the IMF." The contract, for an unspecified dollar amount, will be coordinated out of H&K's Washington DC office. Dave Robinson, who heads the firm's Middle East & Africa work, "will lead an H&K team across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, while Glenn Schloss, regional director for H&K in the Asia Pacific region, will oversee activity on the IMF program in the Far East." H&K will advise the IMF on "stakeholder outreach strategy for Asia and the Middle East, and on financial sector issues." The firm will also design "customized contact programs with key opinion formers, influencers and the wider financial and economic community."

According to documents leaked to The Guardian, the British government has been actively trying to undermine the European Union's proposals to drastically reduce carbon emissions in order to combat climate change. The UK wants to be able to count more imported carbon credits in order to meet pollution reduction targets. The Guardian reports that "The government's own calculations show the proposed change would allow Europe to emit an extra billion tonnes of CO2 from 2013-2020." The British government's efforts would raise the amount of carbon emissions "paid for" with buying credits from the developing world from about a quarter of the total to nearly half. Environmentalists are furious. Caroline Lucas, MEP and leader of the Green party, said, "The British government is trying to buy its way out of climate change targets using unreliable credits from abroad. It shows how much of the political talk on climate is empty rhetoric, when you have the UK talking up the need for action on one hand, and carrying out this kind of irresponsible climate vandalism on the other."

International Nuclear Services (INS) is looking for PR support for an unpopular issue -- transportation of nuclear waste. "INS was created out of the 'spent fuel services' business of Sellafield to provide a service to more than 20 global utility firms. It manages the transportation of their nuclear waste and subsequent reprocessing at Sellafield." British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) was an international company owned by the UK government, involved in all stages of the nuclear process, from designing reactors and manufacturing fuel, to decommissioning reactors and dealing with radioactive waste. Sellafield emerged from the re-organization of BNFL as the company responsible for the delivery of contracts at the Sellafield and Capenhurst sites in England on behalf of site owners, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The contract will be worth around £550,000 ($1,017,500) over four years. Sellafield press officer Steve Barnes said: "This role can only be delivered by a specialised firm that has in-depth knowledge of international relations and the issues of transportation of nuclear materials overseas."