PRSA local update: Greater Fort Worth PRSA will host Pro-Am Day on Wednesday, Feb. 8. Students from ACU, TCU, UNT and UTA will spend the morning with local PRSA professionals at their offices, then gather at the Petroleum Club for the monthly PRSA meeting. To attend Pro-Am Day or to host a student, contact student liaison chairs Kim Speairs, APR, at kim@balcomagency.com or Allyson Cross at cross@gcgadvertising.
PRSA local update III: The Education SIG's first meeting of 2006 will hear Star-Telegram managing editor Rex Seline and Dr. Amiso George, a professor in the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism, discuss blogging and its impact on journalism, at noon Friday, Feb. 17, at the Dee J. Kelly Alumni and Visitors Center on the TCU campus, 2820 Stadium Drive. Seline will expand on the Star-Telegram's strategy regarding new media tools, and George will address how blogging is affecting media and communication overall. RSVP to t.syler-jones@tcu.edu.
PRSA local update IV: Membership VP Marc Flake said, "You get out of it (chapter membershp) what you put in to it" and the guacamole was holy (OK, not holy, merely excellent) as new and reinstated members, board members and the NuPros crowd attended a luncheon Jan. 19 at Joe T. Garcia's hosted by chapter president Holly Ellman and Phil Beckman, NuPros chairman. Student liaison co-chair Allyson Cross urged participation in Pro-Am Day.
SPJ national update: Jack didn't know Dems; but Jack knew Bush. An analysis of campaign donations from Jack Abramoff's tribal clients undercuts the claim that the lobbyist directed sums to Democrats at the same rate. The research, done by the nonpartisan Dwight L. Morris & Associates, shows that when Abramoff added the clients, most ratcheted up donations to Republicans, while donations to Democrats either dropped, remained static or, in two cases, rose by a smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion charges, to corrupting government officials and defrauding his clients out of $25 million. More here. Then there's this Federal Election Commission list of Abramoff beneficiaries. ... Abramoff raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, making him a Bush "Pioneer." The campaign is giving up $6,000, which came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes he represented. The Washington Post reports that at least 24 politicians, 21 of them Republicans, pledged to relinquish $515,199 in Abramoff-tainted campaign cash. More here. ... Time magazine has seen photos of Abramoff and George W. Bush that counter assertions by White House press secretary Scott McClellan that "the president does not know him (Abramoff), nor does the president recall ever meeting him." In one shot, Bush appears with Abramoff, several unidentified people and Raul Garza Sr., a Texan Abramoff represented who was then chairman of the Kickapoo Indians, which owned a casino in South Texas. Another photo shows Bush shaking hands with Abramoff. More here and here.
SPJ national update II: Judge orders Guantanamo prisoner names released; paying for happy news may violate Rumsfeld rule; and Google and Microsoft play ball with China. The U.S. must release the names and nationalities of more than 500 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and said to be "enemy combatants," a federal judge ordered Jan. 23. The Associated Press sued for the material in April 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act. Previous rulings by the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, including rejecting the argument that releasing the prisoners' names would subject them to retaliatory action by terrorist groups, show Judge Jed Rakoff's commitment to the public's right to know, said AP attorney David Schulz. "The judge has recognized that this is an effort by the DoD (Department of Defense) to stonewall the public from knowledge and oversight -- it's part of a bigger picture." More here. ... A secret U.S. military program that pays Iraqi newspapers to publish articles favorable to the American mission appears to violate a 2003 Pentagon directive, according to a newly declassified document. The information campaign run by U.S. troops in Baghdad and a Washington-based private contractor is the subject of an investigation. More here. ... Google is censoring its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market, and Microsoft has shut down a popular Chinese-language blog that has published content potentially offensive to Chinese authorities. More here and here and here.
SPJ national update III: Whither KR?; writer says former CEO paid for news coverage; and who will reform the reformers? Job cuts, benefit reductions and reduced newspaper size are part of a plan to improve margins by as much as $150 million a year at Knight Ridder, according to people familiar with presentations management has been making to potential buyers. The vision involves increasing annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to about $825 million over the next 18 months. More here and here. ... Alabama writer Audrey Lewis says that Richard Scrushy, the former chief executive of HealthSouth, paid her to produce favorable articles for The Birmingham Times, a black-owned weekly. Scrushy was acquitted in June in a trial in Birmingham on 36 counts, despite testimony from former HealthSouth executives that he presided over a huge accounting fraud. "I sat in that courtroom for six months, and I did everything possible to advocate for his cause," Lewis said. More here. ... The three candidates running to replace Rep. Tom DeLay as majority leader in the House of Representatives have their own multiple "revolving door" connections to lobbying firms, each sending former staff members and staff members of the committees they chair to work for major K Street operations. Republican Reps. Roy Blunt, John Boehner and John Shadegg are linked to more than a dozen lobbying firms and other organizations that lobby through employees who worked in their Capitol Hill offices, making the differences between their operations and Delay's not immediately perceptible. More here.
SPJ national update IV: Republicans accuse administration on environment; no "propaganda junket" for Columbia U.; no unaired videos for the D.A.; and no support from these people for warrantless wiretaps. Six EPA former directors, five of them Republicans, on Jan. 18 accused President Bush of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems. "I don't think there's a commitment in this administration," said Bill Ruckelshaus, the EPA's administrator when the agency opened its doors in 1970 under President Nixon and again the director under President Reagan in the 1980s. More here and here. ... The faculty of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism voted not to send a professor on a Saudi Arabia trip largely paid for by the kingdom's state-owned oil company, saying it would set a poor ethical example for students. More here. ... Saying that "ever since the Constitution was issued, it's been chipped away at," state District Judge Mark Kent Ellis blocked the Harris County district attorney from making a Houston TV station turn over video footage from a news report that never aired. Ellis did, however, order KPRC to release video related to two other reports that were broadcast, including some unaired footage. More here. ... Fourteen law professors and former federal government officials sent a letter to congressional leaders critiquing the Department of Justice's legal argument in support of the lawfulness of the secret NSA surveillance program. The authors found it wanting.
SPJ national update V: IRS said to illegally restrict access; and U.S. troops seize Iraqi journalist. The Bush administration has illegally stopped making public detailed tax enforcement data that has been used to show which kinds of taxpayers get the most and toughest audits, tax researcher Susan Long, a Syracuse University professor, says in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. She asserts that since Nov. 1, 2004, the IRS has violated a 1976 court order requiring release of the data. Long, who has written about federal tax administration for more than 30 years, used the FOI Act to win the court order directing the revenue agency to provide her regularly with its data on criminal investigations, tax collections and the number and hours devoted to audits by income level and taxpayer category. More here. ... American troops in Baghdad on Jan. 8 blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the UK Guardian, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children. Ali Fadhil, who recently won the Foreign Press Association Young Journalist of the Year award, was hooded and taken for questioning; he was released hours later. Fadhil is working on an investigation into claims that tens of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused. The troops told Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the program. The tapes were not immediately returned. More here and here.
