Jacko’s wacko PR rep

This is an entertaining piece about Michael Jackson’s spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain, who sent out a press release stating that Jackson is not dead.

A prominent Hollywood publicist regards Bain’s prolific output with shock and awe.

“When you have a client who is clearly three sandwiches short of a picnic, you need to protect him with grace and dignity,” this publicist told me. “And a press release that announces to the world that your client is not dead certainly reinforces the notion that he’s a total nutbar.”

Link via PR Fuel.

Swedish media quiet over torture scandal

As a result of investigative journalism, a story broke last week that US agents operated on Swedish soil, when they assisted in the extradition of two Egyptian citizens, sending them into possible torture in Egypt.

“The two prisoners have their clothes cut from their bodies by scissors, without their hand- and footcuffs being loosened. The naked and chained prisoners have a suppository of unknown kind inserted into their anus, and diapers are put on them. They are forcibly dressed in dark overalls. Their hands and feet are chained to a specially designed harness. On the plane, both men are blindfolded and hooded. The plane takes off at 21.49 and sets course towards Egypt”

The thought in itself that foreign agents are operating in our country, and on top of that they are allegedly torturing people who in fact have not been convicted for any crime, is revolting. But the story has not taken off. Media have so far mostly reported on news agency material, stating comments from the Swedish Minister for Justice, Tomas Bodström who says that “the law does not need to be changed as a result of the extradition. To the contrary, we have to get used to having foreign agents operating in Sweden”. So why are media letting the responsible people get away with this? Are we happy with the fact that US agents can come flying in to our country in a Gulfstream, handcuffing people, stripping them naked and inserting suppositories in their rear ends? I know that the neutrality of this country has been a joke for decades, but I still believe in that illusion.

Journalist Ulf Nilsson of Expressen summarizes it like this (in Swedish).

“If Sweden had been USA, you would have seen [Prime Minister Göran] Persson on tv today or at least [Foreign Minister] Laila Freivalds or Tomas Bodström. They would NOT have it easy. To the contrary, smart and sharp journalists would have grilled them mercilessly about the biggest scandal in Sweden since the assasination of Anna Lindh…If Sweden had been USA, all serious TV channels would have had discussions this Sunday…Who knew what about the torture? Who is responsible? Who should be fired? … Swedish governments and other official bodies have lied to the people for decades and always got away with it. Compared to USA or England or even France, Sweden is a closed society, quiet and compliant. Journalists make deals with people in power and don’t give a damn about the fact that they are paid to serve viewers, readers and listeners.”

It seems that Anders Kempe and Anders Lindberg of JKL were right on target with their post about the Swedish media needing to be challenged. We want to know if this operation has been sanctioned by the Prime Minister and if it was a trade off for having the Swede in Guantanamo relased. What was discussed when Göran Persson recently met George W. Bush?

The story has had some international circulation, for example here and here.

But sadly, the internationally most distributed story including Sweden the last few days has been this story about an elk that stole a bicycle.

Swedish politicians lagging in the blogosphere

Every American politician that hasn’t been asleep for the last 12 months has a blog. Former Danish Prime Minister Paul Nyrup Rasmussen has two, one of his own and a Euroblog for the Euro Election Campaign. The Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi has a blog.

So what happened to the once great IT nation Sweden? Did the dotcom bust hit us so bad we’re still unable to get up and try new stuff? It is really surprising that no Swedish politicians has found the blog medium yet (at least to my knowledge, I might add). The Swedish Trade Union Confederation has just started off a blog project with 7 young people having one blog each (typical but understandable that they choose to experiment with a younger audience), but in the first four weeks they have not been able to come up with more than 20 posts in total, so it’s not that impressing. Sure there have been blogs about politics, like the election blog in 2002, but that was initiated by a consulting company called Oops AB and not run by any party or organisation.

Jan Emanuel Johansson supposedly used blogs in 2002 to get elected, but his homepage has no blog today and it has not been updated since June 2003. Since there is an election to the European Parliament on June 13, one would have expected at least one or two blogs to pop up. If you know of one, please enlighten me with a comment.

UPDATE: Fredrik Wackå informed me about Anna-Maria Linqvist Arrue who is a social democratic candidate for the European Parliament, with her own blog.

First corporate blog post to find its way into mainstream media

Today might be a small landmark in the short history of Swedish corporate blogging. This has to be the first example in Sweden, where a post in a corporate blog finds its way into mainstream media (both entries in Swedish only, but see my comment in a recent post). Anders Kempe and Anders Lindberg at PR agency JKL comments on the state of Swedish media, and it got picked up by the political chief editor of Svenska Dagbladet (large Swedish daily).

Congrats to Billy McCormac (who I will have the pleasure of meeting on Wednesday, in real life…) of JKL who is one of the driving forces behind their pioneering corporate blog.