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EPA effort to polish its image drawing
criticism
(Note: Language deception -- couched in terms that make it appear
concerning, but never say ILLEGAL or a Treasonous Use and Abuse of
Taxpayer Dollars -- is used blatantly here.
"Inappropriately," "just plain stupid,"
"appalling," "sort of wary," and "doubly
troubling," are ways of making the reader think it's little more
than something a naughty kid might do. This is far, FAR worse -- and
this is the same federal government agency that is poised to take over
many Control Tactics at a global in addition to national level,
ranging from "invasive species" to current Department of
Interior agency agendas.)
July 24, 2005
By Felicity Barringer
The New York Times
New York, New York
To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@nytimes.com
(200-word limit) and opinion@startribune.com
Washington, D.C. - The Office of Research and Development at
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking outside public
relations consultants, to be paid up to $5 million over five years, to
polish its website, organize focus groups
on how to buff the office's image and ghostwrite articles "for
publication in scholarly journals and magazines."
The strategy, laid out in a May 26 proposal -- and further defined in two recently awarded public relations contracts totaling $150,000 -- includes writing and placing "good stories" about the EPA's research office in consumer and trade publications. The contracts were awarded just months after the Bush administration came under scrutiny for its public relations policies. The government-wide public relations strategies, however, continue to include the preparation of TV-ready news reports on government policies. An EPA spokeswoman said that the effort to raise the profile of the agency's research had a worthwhile goal: calling attention to the work of 1,900 scientists and staff members. Noting that the office's annual budget is $600 million, the spokeswoman, Eryn Witcher, said, "We would like to use less than 1 percent of that to make information accessible to the public." Three similar contracts -- one of which was abandoned, the agency said -- and the broader, $5 million proposal were provided to the New York Times by the environmental group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Its director, Jeff Ruch, said he had received them from an agency employee who believed that research money was being inappropriately diverted to a public relations campaign. "The idea that [the EPA] would take limited science dollars and spend them on PR is not only ill advised, it's just plain stupid," Ruch said in an interview. Witcher responded: "It's not spending money on communications at the expense of research, but rather in support of it. This allows the results of EPA research to be shared with the general public." The more extensive -- and expensive -- plan seeks help from public relations agencies to, among other things, "provide research, writing and editing of Office of Research and Development articles for publication in scholarly journals and magazines." Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science magazine and a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said that he found the idea of public relations firms ghostwriting for government scientists "appalling." "If we knew that it had been written by someone who was not a scientist and submitted as though it were the work of a scientist, we wouldn't take it," Kennedy said. "But it's conceivable that we wouldn't know, if it was carefully constructed." He added that the practice of putting public relations polish on scientific work has already been practiced by industry. "We had seen it coming in the pharmaceutical industry and were sort of wary about it," he said. "The idea that a government agency would feel the necessity to do this is doubly troubling."
Copyright 2005, The Star Tribune.
EPA
effort to polish its image drawing criticism
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription) - Washington, D.C. - The Office of Research and Development at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking outside public relations consultants, to be paid up to $5 million over five years, to polish its website, organize focus groups on how to buff the ... Short Cuts When Just Putting It Out on the Curb Isn't Enough Cleanup of toxic-waste dump in Minerva topic of meeting |