So MTV, of all stations, has decided not to run ads for Supersize Me, the award-winning expose on just how bad fast food is for you. The official word is that MTV found the ads “disparaging to fast food restaurants.” You have to laugh.

As a side note, I actually went to the theater to see Supersize Me a couple of weeks ago, and what I saw of it was very good. Yes, I fell asleep in the theater, but that in no way reflects on the quality of the documentary, only on my own abilities to function normally after 10 p.m.

Val on AMERICAN IDOL: “It’s showchoir run amok.”

After seeing those white jumpsuits during tonight’s medley, I am inclined to
agree.

went for a walk

via phonecam

So it turns out that the story about the Pentagon’s new ban on cameraphones in Iraq isn’t exactly accurate — a general restriction on wireless equipment was already in place at the time the prior story was written, and it’s kind of left up to the commanders in the field on how to interpret and enforce its provisions. Cameraphones appear to be in the Pentagon’s sights, I suppose, but strictly speaking, they aren’t exactly “cracking down” on their use in and around Iraq.

Can’t even trust news aggregators like Yahoo! News, these days. 🙂

Some words that made up my day:

air conditioner
copy machine
pro se
continuance
turkey sandwich
kiss me deadly
mama
stipulation
cobra
horshack
appraiser
fever
cow bell
graduation
carrott rash

How was yours?

An interesting sidebar/addendum to my earlier post about Clay Shirky’s essay re: cameraphones and cultural revolution:

Rumsfeld bans camera phones in Iraq

LONDON (AFP) – Cellphones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a business newspaper reported.

Quoting a Pentagon source, The Business newspaper said the US Defense Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.

[more]

A similar ban was already in effect, I believe, as reported on 60 MINUTES II a couple of weeks ago (the night that they ran clips from a video diary shot by one of the soldiers stationed at a military prison in Iraq, who commented several times on the tape about how she wasn’t supposed to have a video camera with her…) So this means, what, they’ll examine every soldier’s phone? Daily searches of guards and soldiers who ostensibly are trustworthy? I assume that most soldiers don’t have cameraphones and other “banned” devices, but how would you know? Is it the honor system that keeps them in line — and if that’s the case, then where’d all those pictures from Abu Ghraib come from in the first place?

Anyway, it certainly bolsters up Shirky’s original thesis. A clampdown like this is almost certainly going to generate more pictures rather than suppress them, because of their now-forbidden quality. Ain’t technology wonderful?

via phonecam

OK, maybe I’m just too entrenched in my industry, and this is actually a shock to the rest of the world. But the GAO has declared that DHHS violated anti-propaganda laws when it distributed a VNR (Video News Release for those non-PR types) for the new Medicare plan. When I first heard about this story about a month ago, I laughed it off, because VNRs are common practice for many organizations, whether public, private OR government. Basically, it’s a preproduced news story–similar to a written news release, except it’s designed for the evening news instead of the daily paper. And yes, just like a news release, it is presented as if it were a complete news story. It’s up to the media outlet to determine how to use the information. Sometimes, just as with news releases, the outlet will run the pre-produced package without edit or change. In this case, the VNR ran on 40 different stations around the country. Apparently, the GAO is not amused.

I think a lot of people would be shocked by the frequency with which news outlets of all types rely on PR materials for their stories. I’ll give you another example. A colleague of mine last week sent around the office a press release issued by the Kerry campaign that blasted President Bush’s record on education. (The release doesn’t appear in the “news” section, but in Kerry’s blog.) Bush was making a campaign stop and touting his education record; the Kerry Camp release gave examples and quotes to color the president’s record negatively. This negative tone bled its way into a story written by the Houston Chronicle’s Bennett Roth. Throughout the entire article, Roth presents many of the facts and research lifted from the Kerry release as though it was his original research–in fact, the Kerry campaign isn’t even quoted or mentioned until the bottom third of the article.

Is all PR propaganda? Should it all be banned–news releases, VNRs, other kinds of outreach? “Propaganda,” or promoting one’s own agenda or information, has been and will continue to be a way of life. The U.S. government is not immune (hello, war in Iraq and “embedded” journalism). I think the challenge really lies with journalists to work harder at sifting through the available information to put together fair, accurate, and multi-sided reports.