human rights

"To gain greater international support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Foreign Minister (and candidate for Prime Minister) Tzipi Livni directed the Foreign Ministry to lead "an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign." In addition to meetings with foreign officials and interviews with international media, Israeli officials are posting videos to YouTube and conducting "press conferences" via the microblogging site Twitter. The Israeli military described one of its YouTube videos as a bomb attack on "a Hamas truck carrying dozens of Grad rockets." Yet human rights groups say the truck belonged to a local resident, who was moving equipment out of his workshop, after the house next to it was bombed. Ahmed Samur, the person who says the bombed vehicle was his, told Haaretz, "These were not Hamas [who were killed], they were our children." BBC News writes that "the incident shows how an apparently definitive piece of video can turn into something much more doubtful." Doubts have also been raised about the Israeli Foreign Ministry's changing graph of the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. Still, according to the BBC, "Israel appears to think its [PR] efforts are working," to "justify the air attacks" and "show that there is no humanitarian calamity in Gaza."

"In the usual process," writes Greg Mitchell, "the U.S. government -- and media here -- are playing down questions about whether Israel overreacted in its massive air strikes on Gaza, while the foreign press, and even Haaretz in Israel, carries more balanced accounts. The early reports on Sunday already reveal the bombing of a TV station and mosque and preparations for an invasion." Mitchell cites eyewitness accounts that describe morgues full of civilians, along with editorial stating that Israel's bombing of Gaza "within the span of a few hours ... sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years."

As part of its bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China pledged to expand press freedom. (To see how that went, read our 2008 Falsies Awards, in which China won dishonorable mention.) Now that the Games are over, "China has resumed blocking access to the Internet sites of some foreign media," including the BBC, Voice of America, Hong Kong's Ming Pao and Asiaweek. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the sites have been blocked because they broke Chinese laws, such as "recognizing Taiwan as an independent nation." He added that if the foreign sites "exercise self-discipline," they would enjoy "better Internet cooperation." An Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch observed that with the Olympics over, "The spotlight has moved out of China. ... It's easier to suppress dissent when you don't have 10,000 journalists in town." Perhaps concerned that its weakening economy will embolden dissidents, China is cracking down. Authorities have arrested and harassed signatories of an online appeal, "Charter 08," which calls for multiparty democracy and greater freedoms in China.

"Journalists and many others (rightly) lionizing the late W. Mark Felt, the former FBI official, for his contribution as 'Deep Throat' in helping to bring down Richard Nixon, should not overlook the fact that Felt was one of the architects of the bureau's notorious COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign," writes Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher. Mitchell notes that some of the people spied on included journalists and personal friends of his, including Stew Albert and Judy Gumbo. FBI agents illegally spied on them (even though they had committed no crime) by hiding in the woods near their cabin, breaking in at least half a dozen times, opening their mail, inspecting their bank records, bugging their bedroom, and planting a homing device in their car.

The Bush administration has approved a new "conscience protection" rule that allows health care workers to opt out of administering any form of medical care they feel is objectionable on moral or religious grounds. The new rule will permit emergency room workers to withhold information from rape victims about access to emergency contraception, and will allow doctors in federally-funded clinics to refuse to tell a pregnant woman that her fetus has a severe abnormality. A press release on the Department of Health and Human Services Web site says the law will "protect health care providers from discrimination." DHHS secretary Michael Leavitt said that doctors have a duty only "to provide care that they are comfortable providing." The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops praised the new rules, saying medical workers "should not be required to take the very human life they are dedicated to protecting." The rule is scheduled to take effect the day before President Bush leaves office. Democratic House Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Louise Slaughter of New York plan to introduce a Congressional resolution rejecting the Bush administration's last-minute rules.

"There is a fierce battle going on over what kind of a CIA director Barack Obama should appoint, when he should close the prison camp at Guantanamo, and whether there should be a full scale investigation (and possible prosecution) of the torture advocates in the Bush administration," notes Charles Kaiser in the Columbia Journalism Review. Unfortunately, reporting on this issue in the New York Times and elsewhere has been flagrantly one-sided, from a position that falsifies the facts and defends torture.

"Most of the Times's sources don't think that anyone who formulated or acquiesced in the current administration's torture policies should be excluded as a candidate for CIA director, or prosecuted for possible violations of criminal law," Kaiser writes. A recent story by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, for example, falsely repeated John O. Brennan's description of himself as a "strong opponent" of torture, even though "most experts on this subject agree that Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there."

Maryland officials now concede that its informants "wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency." The so-called terrorists included pacifists, environmentalists, nuns, a novelist, an IT contractor and a legal secretary. Using the pseudonym "Lucy Shoup," an undercover Maryland State Police trooper infiltrated more than two dozen rallies and meetings of nonviolent groups. The scary activies listed in the police reports included making paper-mache puppets, songs, poetry readings, prayer meetings, and hanging out at a community center popular with punk rockers and slam poets.

With help from British public relations guru Lord Timothy Bell and his firm, Bell Pottinger, the country of Belarus -- where "opposition protests are regularly crushed with overwhelming force by riot police" and the domestic spy agency is still called the KGB -- is getting an image make-over. Belarus' government "now has a new English-language website for prospective investors, Western journalists are being jetted to Belarus," and the government spent a million dollars on tourism advertising in 2008, with plans to double that next year. Belarus also plans "to set up information centres in Paris and Berlin, as well as Lithuania and Poland," according to a tourism official. Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, even released some political prisoners this year, in a bid "to improve relations with the European Union." Last year, the United Nations rejected Belarus' bid to join its Human Rights Council.

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 second-largest U.S. oil company sees itself as a victim, and it's going on a PR offensive to explain why. In an "unusual move," Chevron "has approached the media to offer a briefing" on an upcoming civil trial, "in which it faces charges of wrongful death, civil conspiracy, torture and negligence." The case, Bowoto versus Chevron, was brought by Nigerian villagers and stems from a 1998 incident where the Nigerian military shot at protesters on one of Chevron's offshore platforms. The soldiers were paid by Chevron and flown to the platform in Chevron helicopters, according to EarthRights International. A U.S. district court judge recently concluded that Chevron personnel "were directly involved" in and approved of the attack. Chevron denies the charges, saying the protesters "took Chevron workers hostage and attacked law enforcement when it arrived." Chevron has hired Singer Associates, the San Francisco PR firm that defended the city zoo after one of its tigers escaped its enclosure and killed one person. Chevron's PR push is part of a trend of companies doing more media work around legal cases. The traditional "'no comment' approach" yields "the entire dialog to the other side," explained PR executive Erin Powers.