Showing posts with label The Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
Exclusive: I ‘wined and dined’ NYT and WSJ for favorable coverage, health insurance whistleblower says
Brad Jacobson
Raw Story
“It was so easy for me to get my way”
A former health insurance insider turned whistleblower says that he was not only surprised at how “easy” it was to manipulate members of the news media over the years, but also reveals that he routinely “wined and dined” reporters from major news outlets – including the New York Times and theWall Street Journal – in return for favorable coverage.
In his new book Deadly Spin, Wendell Potter describes how his chief function as a senior public relations officer at two of the largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States – Humana and Cigna – was to “perpetuate myths that had no other purpose but to sustain those companies’ extraordinary high profitability.”
But in an extended interview with Raw Story last week, Potter went further, revealing that he lunched with reporters at major media outlets for years – including journalists at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal – as well as those from local and regional media, in most cases picking up the tab, which he says directly resulted in positive coverage of the companies he represented.
In an email to Raw Story Sunday night, New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha responded, "The claims are unsubstantiated and absurd since no names of reporters, examples of stories or other pertinent facts are provided to support these claims."
Wall Street Journal spokeswoman Ashley Huston declined comment.
In a follow-up call Sunday night, Potter reiterated to Raw Story that he would not name reporters from the Times or the Journalwho embraced such relationships with him because he did not want to single them out for embarrassment. He said that he engaged in this practice with many different major media outlets for years, but cited the Timesand Journal to underscore that even the most venerable news sources took part.
Potter also said that he did not cite specific articles because it would have the same effect of outing those reporters.
He noted as well that these meetings with reporters were "a process that developed over time" and didn't just result in influencing a handful of articles, but "many articles over the years," even including ones which were generously spiked after such interactions.
“Just like lobbyists do for lawmakers”
“What you do, at least if you’re successful -- and I was at Cigna for almost 15 years -- you work to develop good relationships with reporters who are important to your company and to your industry,” he explained. “You give them special attention.”
“We would go to lunch whenever we could,” continued Potter, who, at the age of twenty-four, was covering the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court for Scripps Howard news service before going into public relations in the late 1970s.
He said that sitting across the table from someone helped to develop a better rapport than if they were always just “a voice at the end of a telephone line.”
“It was important for me I’ve always found to have a personal relationship with someone that’s based on going to lunch,” Potter said. “It was just part of what I did to try to make sure that my company’s point of view was included in their stories.”
He added, though, “I would essentially wine and dine them, just like lobbyists do for lawmakers.”
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Raw Story
“It was so easy for me to get my way”
A former health insurance insider turned whistleblower says that he was not only surprised at how “easy” it was to manipulate members of the news media over the years, but also reveals that he routinely “wined and dined” reporters from major news outlets – including the New York Times and theWall Street Journal – in return for favorable coverage.
In his new book Deadly Spin, Wendell Potter describes how his chief function as a senior public relations officer at two of the largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States – Humana and Cigna – was to “perpetuate myths that had no other purpose but to sustain those companies’ extraordinary high profitability.”
But in an extended interview with Raw Story last week, Potter went further, revealing that he lunched with reporters at major media outlets for years – including journalists at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal – as well as those from local and regional media, in most cases picking up the tab, which he says directly resulted in positive coverage of the companies he represented.
In an email to Raw Story Sunday night, New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha responded, "The claims are unsubstantiated and absurd since no names of reporters, examples of stories or other pertinent facts are provided to support these claims."
Wall Street Journal spokeswoman Ashley Huston declined comment.
In a follow-up call Sunday night, Potter reiterated to Raw Story that he would not name reporters from the Times or the Journalwho embraced such relationships with him because he did not want to single them out for embarrassment. He said that he engaged in this practice with many different major media outlets for years, but cited the Timesand Journal to underscore that even the most venerable news sources took part.
Potter also said that he did not cite specific articles because it would have the same effect of outing those reporters.
He noted as well that these meetings with reporters were "a process that developed over time" and didn't just result in influencing a handful of articles, but "many articles over the years," even including ones which were generously spiked after such interactions.
“Just like lobbyists do for lawmakers”
“What you do, at least if you’re successful -- and I was at Cigna for almost 15 years -- you work to develop good relationships with reporters who are important to your company and to your industry,” he explained. “You give them special attention.”
“We would go to lunch whenever we could,” continued Potter, who, at the age of twenty-four, was covering the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court for Scripps Howard news service before going into public relations in the late 1970s.
He said that sitting across the table from someone helped to develop a better rapport than if they were always just “a voice at the end of a telephone line.”
“It was important for me I’ve always found to have a personal relationship with someone that’s based on going to lunch,” Potter said. “It was just part of what I did to try to make sure that my company’s point of view was included in their stories.”
He added, though, “I would essentially wine and dine them, just like lobbyists do for lawmakers.”
Read Full Article
Buy 1 Get 2 Free at Botanic Choice Buy 1 Bottle and Get 2 FREE (select items), plus Free Shipping on $25+ Expires 12/31/2010
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Saturday, November 27, 2010
Thousands March In Dublin To Protest Irish Austerity Measures
DUBLIN (Dow Jones)--Thousands of people marched through central Dublin Saturday to protest the Irish government's plan to make EUR15 billion in budget cuts over the next four years and urge it to do more to generate growth and jobs in the debt-laden economy.
One of the organizers of the march, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, an umbrella group representing some 800,000 workers across the island of Ireland, said the government still has time to change course before it announces its budget on Dec. 7, where it plans to set out EUR6 billion of budget cuts.
"This is a really important opportunity for the government to be shown visually how people feel about what it is that they are doing," Sally Anne Kinahan, ICTU assistant general secretary, said ahead of the march. "The biggest failure on the part of government...is the fact that they have done nothing to stimulate jobs."
Faced with a debt crisis following the collapse of the country's banking system, Ireland's government is carrying out severe budget cuts and is negotiating a multi-billion euro support package with the International Monetary Fund, European Union, and European Central Bank which is expected is coming days.
On Wednesday it announced details of a four-year plan, including EUR10 billion in expenditure cuts and EUR5 billion in tax measures to slash the country's budget deficit to below the EU limit of 3% of gross domestic product by 2014 from an expected 32% this year.
The measures include lowering the minimum wage, cutting public sector jobs, salaries, and pensions, reducing social welfare spending, increasing sales tax to 23% by 2014 from 21%, and widening the income tax base.
Shay Cody, the general secretary of IMPACT, Ireland's largest public sector union, said the government's four-year plan is driven by an obsession to bail out "zombie banks" rather than the need to stimulate economic activity to create jobs and get the public finances back in balance.
But despite Ireland announcing some of the harshest budget consolidation measures in Europe, the ICTU appears to have little appetite for industrial action of the kind seen in countries like Spain, Portugal, and Greece that have also been subjected to tough austerity measures.
"I don't think the right focus at the moment will be on industrial action, it is on political action looking at the forthcoming general election," Kinahan said. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has said a general election will be called in the New Year.
However, some left-leaning groups would like to see Irish unions go further.
"They need to escalate and do strike action rather than just marching people around the town," said Brid Smith, a local government official in a working class suburb west of Dublin for People Before Profit, a small left-wing grass-roots political grouping. "People understand that there is such a thing as collective power, but it has never been mobilized."
She said the government should reverse its austerity measures and introduce heavier taxes on the wealthy people who profited most during the boom years that earned Ireland the name as the Celtic Tiger. She also says bond holders should bare a greater share of the losses.
Irish police said ahead of the march that they were expecting a peaceful protest, but were prepared to deal with any disturbances.
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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thank You. No, Thank You
Wall Street Journal
It turns out, giving thanks is good for your health.
A growing body of research suggests that maintaining an attitude of gratitude can improve psychological, emotional and physical well-being.
Adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not, according to studies conducted over the past decade. They're also less likely to be depressed, envious, greedy or alcoholics. They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly and have greater resistance to viral infections.
Now, researchers are finding that gratitude brings similar benefits in children and adolescents. Kids who feel and act grateful tend to be less materialistic, get better grades, set higher goals, complain of fewer headaches and stomach aches and feel more satisfied with their friends, families and schools than those who don't, studies show.
"A lot of these findings are things we learned in kindergarten or our grandmothers told us, but we now have scientific evidence to prove them," says Jeffrey J. Froh, an assistant professor of psychology at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., who has conducted much of the research with children.
"The key is not to leave it on the Thanksgiving table," says Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis and a pioneer in gratitude research. And, he notes, "with the realization that one has benefited comes the awareness of the need to reciprocate."
Philosophers as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans cited gratitude as an indispensable human virtue, but social scientists are just beginning to study how it develops and the effects it can have.
The research is part of the "positive psychology" movement, which focuses on developing strengths rather than alleviating disorders. Cultivating gratitude is also a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which holds that changing peoples' thought patterns can dramatically affect their moods.
It's possible, of course, to over-do expressions of gratitude, particularly if you try to show it with a gift. "Thanking someone in such a way that is disproportionate to the relationship—say, a student giving her teacher an iPod—will create resentment, guilt, anger and a sense of obligation," says Dr. Froh.
Gratitude can also be misused to exert control over the receiver and enforce loyalty. Dr. Froh says you can avoid this by being empathic toward the person you are thanking—and by honestly assessing your motivations.
In an upcoming paper in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Dr. Froh and colleagues surveyed 1,035 high-school students and found that the most grateful had more friends and higher GPAs, while the most materialistic had lower grades, higher levels of envy and less satisfaction with life. "One of the best cures for materialism is to make somebody grateful for what they have," says Dr. Froh.
Much of the research on gratitude has looked at associations, not cause-and-effect relationships; it's possible that people who are happy, healthy and successful simply have more to be grateful for. But in a landmark study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2003, Dr. Emmons and University of Miami psychologist Michael McCullough showed that counting blessings can actually make people feel better.
The researchers randomly divided more than 100 undergraduates into three groups. One group was asked to list five things they were grateful for during the past week for 10 consecutive weeks. The second group listed five things that annoyed them each week and the third group simply listed five events that had occurred. They also completed detailed questionnaires about their physical and mental health before, during and after.
Those who listed blessings each week had fewer health complaints, exercised more regularly and felt better about their lives in general than the other two groups.
Drs. Froh and Emmons conducted a similar study with 221 sixth- and seventh-graders from Candlewood Middle School in Dix Hills, N.Y., an affluent area on Long Island. Although the effects weren't as dramatic as with the adults, the students in the gratitude group did report a higher level of satisfaction with school and more optimism than the students who listed irritations, according to the study in the Journal of School Psychology in 2008.
As simple as it sounds, gratitude is actually a demanding, complex emotion that requires "self-reflection, the ability to admit that one is dependent upon the help of others, and the humility to realize one's own limitations," Dr. Emmons says.
Being grateful also forces people to overcome what psychologists call the "negativity bias"—the innate tendency to dwell on problems, annoyances and injustices rather than upbeat events. Focusing on blessings can help ward off depression and build resilience in times of stress, grief or disasters, according to studies of people impacted by the Sept. 11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Wall Street Pay Heads Toward New High $144 Billion
Financial Overhaul Has Affected Structure but Not Level; Revenue-to-Compensation Ratio Stays Flat
Liz Rappaport, Aaron Lucchetti, and Steven Grocer
Wall Street Journal
Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a study conducted by The Wall Street Journal.
About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms.
The data showed that revenue was expected to rise at 29 of the 35 firms surveyed, but at a slower pace than pay. Wall Street revenue is expected to rise 3%, to $448 billion from $433 billion, despite a slowdown in some high-profile activities like stock and bond
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RELATED ARTICLE:
The After-the-Fed Solutions Debate Begins: Greenbackers Vs. Goldbugs
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Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!
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Wall Street Journal
Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a study conducted by The Wall Street Journal.
About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms.
The data showed that revenue was expected to rise at 29 of the 35 firms surveyed, but at a slower pace than pay. Wall Street revenue is expected to rise 3%, to $448 billion from $433 billion, despite a slowdown in some high-profile activities like stock and bond
Read Full Article
RELATED ARTICLE:
The After-the-Fed Solutions Debate Begins: Greenbackers Vs. Goldbugs
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
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