Canada Free Press -- ARCHIVES

Because without America, there is no free world.

Return to Canada Free Press

Front Page Story

PR that kills

by Judi McLeod

august 30, 2004

Was the "River Incident" in Yugoslavia, widely reported by the media, the work of a well-paid public relations firm?

It was on March 15 when the media reported that at least two Serbs and a dog had chased four albanian boys into the river Ibar in Mitrovica. according to the heart-catching story, three of the boys drowned, and only one made it to the safety of the other side.

"Revenge followed swiftly. Reprisal attacks on Serbs claimed 30 lives and wounded 600," said Canadafreepress.com in its May 3 cover story.

When United Nations representative Derek Chappell bravely stepped forward to say the river event of March 15 was "definitely not true", he was promptly pulled by the UN and transferred to another job.

"The UN said he was too frank in telling the truth," said James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia and member of a minority trying to get the truth out on widespread lies and deception about Kosovo.

add the voice of Marjaleena Repo, a freelance writer with a special interest in justice issues. a national organizer of Citizens Concerned about Free Trade, Repo also happens to be Canadian.

"The world was shocked to find out that a PR firm, Hill and Knowlton had manufactured the `incubator babies’ incident in Kuwait, which precipitated the Gulf War; Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti babies out of incubators in a genocidal fashion. Even amnesty International was taken in by the falsehood, which was later exposed as such, but only after the military damage was done.

"Yet the shock of being duped (by Hill and Knowlton) soon wore off and gullibility returned (to the american public). In no time another american PR firm, Ruder-Finn Global Communications, working for the Croatian and Bosnian separatists, publicly bragged that it had been able to turn world opinion against the Serbs."

Ruder-Finn is a substantial PR firm with offices in Manhattan and Washington, D.C.

Says Repo of Ruder-Finn: "The PR firm was piling hoax upon hoax. The famous story of Serb concentration camps was built on a photo of a gaunt man surrounded by others, staring at the viewer from behind barbed wire; surely an image to chill one to the bones. It took years before a German journalist Thomas Deichman, in an article titled The Picture That Fooled The World, described how the famous photo was staged by its takers, British journalists, who were photographing the inhabitants from inside barbed wire which was protecting agricultural products and machinery from theft in a refugee and transit camp; the men stood outside of it; and at no time was there a barbed-wire fence surrounding the camp. But by that time the image had done its deed, terminally slamming the Serbs as genocidal mass murderers."

The staged concentration camp photograph eventually found albeit small limelight, but as Repo points out there are countless other stories out there masquerading as truth.

"These stories and photos of `genocide’ and `ethnic cleansing’ (a la Hitler) in a civil war, in which Serbs are as guilty as sin and others are their innocent victims, are repeated ad nauseum by western reporters without the slightest evidence, and have provided the grounds for the public’s (hopefully only temporary) acceptance of the illegal and brutal war against the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia. They continue after NaTO’s bombing began, unabated, with new absurdities such as the suggestion that the Serbs are really bombing themselves! Perhaps in the war crimes court there will soon be a place for journalists and PR firms who, with their inflammatory reporting and fraudulent actions, cause wars to begin."

The cunning of Ruder-Finn Global Public affairs in Yugoslavia knows no bounds. Ruder-Finn director James Harff was interviewed by French journalist Jaques Merlino.

"The essential tools in our work are a card file, a computer and a fax. The card file contains a few hundred names of journalists, politicians, academics, and representatives of humanitarian organizations. The computer goes through the card files according to correlated subjects, coming up with very effective targets," Harff told Merlino.

"The computer is tied into a f ax. In this way we can disseminate information in a few minutes to those we think will react (positively). Our job is to ensure that the arguments for our side will be the first to be expressed.

"Our work is not to verify information. We are not equipped for that. Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim them at carefully chosen targets. We did not claim that there were death camps in Bosnia, we just made it known that Newsday claimed it."

Journalists telling the truth don’t survive their jobs. With no explanation, new director Jean Pierre El Kabasch removed Merlino from his job as deputy editor-in-chief at France’s antenne 2 Network. at the same time, unidentified humanitarian organizations demonstrated in front of antenne 2, shouting "Merlino, the people are after your hide."

Executives of unscrupled PR firms have let it be known that they’d work for Satan if he’s paying.

Osama bin laden is not short of money.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


Pursuant to Title 17 U.S.C. 107, other copyrighted work is provided for educational purposes, research, critical comment, or debate without profit or payment. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for your own purposes beyond the 'fair use' exception, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Views are those of authors and not necessarily those of Canada Free Press. Content is Copyright 1997-2018 the individual authors. Site Copyright 1997-2018 Canada Free Press.Com Privacy Statement