News Releases

  • Death Penalty

    Gary Graham is scheduled to be executed at 7 P.M. Eastern Time. The following analysts and critics of the death penalty are available for interviews: WILLIAM HARRELL Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Harrell said today: “We are outraged by the board’s failure to halt this execution. The judicial system has failed us, the Board of Pardons and Paroles has failed us and the governor has failed us. This is the greatest proof that the time for a moratorium on executions in Texas is now.” The president of the board of the ACLU of Texas, Greg…


  • “Prosperity and Progress”?

    Inequalities, Health-Care Coverage, Estate Tax CHARLES ANDREWS The author of the forthcoming From Capitalism to Equality, Andrews said today: “Before we celebrate the economy’s alleged prosperity and progress, we should tally the exhaustion it is causing. The average husband-and-wife family works six hours today for every five hours worked in 1979. The percentage of employees who work 49 hours a week or more rose from 13 percent in 1976 to 20 percent today. If there is a bit of prosperity today in our role as consumers, the deeper truth is that today’s economy consumes people’s lives.” SARA NICHOLS National spokesperson…


  • Interviews Available: Father’s Day

    WILL GLENNON Glennon is author of Fathering: Strengthening Connection with Your Children No Matter Where They Are, for which he interviewed 180 fathers, aged 15 to 87, almost all of whom cried during their interviews. He said today: “Fathers need to get deeply engaged in the upbringing of their children. Fathers don’t want to be isolated, children don’t want them to be disconnected and mothers don’t want them to be absent — physically or emotionally. But we have patterns of how we raise our children which keep fathers distant, cost them emotionally, cause pain in their relationships, making boys more…


  • Arafat’s Visit to U.S.

    The following analysts are available for interviews about the U.S. visit by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat scheduled to begin on Wednesday: NASEER ARURI Professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, former board member of Amnesty International and author of The Obstruction of Peace: The U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians, Aruri said today: “The approach of Syria’s Hafez Assad toward Israel was based on equality, land for peace, an international framework, and normalization with Israel after it fully withdraws from occupied territory. By contrast, Arafat’s approach — despite lip service to the contrary — is open-ended. It would…


  • Study Finds Conservative Think Tanks Predominant

    Brookings Leads; Left-of-Center Think Tanks Decrease WASHINGTON — A study released today found that conservative think tanks and the centrist Brookings Institution dominated much of the national media debate last year. Of the 25 leading think tanks studied, Brookings had the most citations (2,883), twice as many media mentions as the next-ranked conservative/libertarian Cato Institute (1,428 cites). The conservative Heritage Foundation, which had rivaled Brookings in prominence a few years ago, has fallen to third place (1,419 cites), while the conservative American Enterprise Institute (1,263 cites) is the fourth most cited think tank in the U.S. media. These four think…


  • Analysts Available on Microsoft Decision

    The following analysts are available to comment on the Microsoft decision: NORMAN HAWKER Hawker is a law professor at Western Michigan University specializing in antitrust issues. JUDY SLOAN Sloan is a professor at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles. ROBERT LANDE Lande is senior research scholar at the American Antitrust Institute and professor of law at the University of Baltimore. More Information For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 More Information More Information


  • Interviews Available on Germany and Russia

    MARTIN A. LEE Author of The Beast Reawakens, a book on neofascism, Lee said today: “President Clinton’s visit to Germany comes at a time when that country is mired in a major political scandal, involving secret slush funds and illegal influence-peddling by big business. The scandal has resulted in the fall from grace of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and several other leaders of the Christian Democratic Union, now the main opposition party in Germany. Thus far, U.S. officials have yet to acknowledge the role that the U.S. government played in setting the stage for this scandal. For years, Washington turned…


  • Interviews on “Missile Defense”

    WILLIAM HARTUNG Senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-author of the recent report “Tangled Web: The Marketing of Missile Defense, 1994-2000,” Hartung said today: “In its ongoing effort to ‘triangulate’ by co-opting Republican issues, the Clinton administration has met right-wing missile defense boosters more than half way. Meanwhile, Republicans have stepped up their calls for an elaborate, multi-tiered system akin to Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated Star Wars scheme. The nation’s four major missile contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and TRW — are looking to missile defense to revive them from mismanagement and technical problems that have slashed…


  • United – U.S. Airways

    United Airlines said today it intends to buy U.S. Airways. The following analysts are available for interviews: PAUL HUDSON Executive director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, Hudson said today: “If this merger is approved without major divesting of routes and other restrictions, the ‘Big Six’ will quickly become the ‘Big Three’ and U.S. airline passengers will be the major losers. No airline should control more than 25 percent to 30 percent of the nation’s airline seats or over 40 percent of seats in a particular region. This merger would give United dominant control of most routes in the Northeast…


  • Interviews Available on International Issues

    SIMONA SHARONI Author of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Sharoni is currently a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She said today: “If there is any relationship between the recent mini-intifada and the negotiations, it is that the two issues that have been central to the protests — the Palestinian refugees and the release of political prisoners — have not been seriously addressed. Those who are familiar with the Oslo Accords, its supplements and its rocky implementation should not be surprised that Palestinians have once again taken to the streets…. If Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon is designed to…


  • * Ten Commandments * Labor Day * Against School * Psychiatric Protests

    Rev. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER Senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ and national president of Ministers For Racial, Social and Economic Justice, Hagler said today: “The legal controversy around the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama highlights the misuse and abuse of religion in the United States. A monument of this kind is a…

  • Crisis with North Korea: Critical Analysis

    As representatives of six governments hold talks in Beijing regarding North Korea’s nuclear capability, the following analysts are available for interviews: BRUCE CUMINGS Author of several books including The Origins of the Korean War, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History and most recently Parallax Visions: American-East Asian Relations at the End of the…

  • Bush at American Legion: Interviews Available

    PAUL COX Cox is a Vietnam War veteran and the commander for the American Legion Post 315 in San Francisco. He said today: “Bush made assertions that the primary reason for the invasion of Iraq was weapons of mass destruction. Exactly a year ago today, Cheney said to the Veterans of Foreign Wars: ‘Simply stated,…

  • Interviews Available: The March on Washington

    The 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is August 28. Events begin today in Washington, D.C. The following analysts and activists are available for interviews: Rev. JAMES LAWSON Pastor emeritus of Holman United Methodist Church, Lawson was a longtime associate of Martin Luther King Jr. and is available for…

  • The U.N. Role in Iraq: Interviews Available

    NANCY LESSIN, CHARLIE RICHARDSON Co-founders of Military Families Speak Out, Lessin and Richardson have a son, Joe, who just returned from Iraq. They said today: “Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson and others are arguing that attacks in Iraq mean we have to send more troops. We have 58,000 names on a wall — and millions of…

  • Assessing the Blackout: Interviews Available

    GREG PALAST Palast is coauthor of Regulation and Democracy (a book that includes analysis of power markets) and author of the best-selling The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He said today: “Like some sort of mediaeval doctors bleeding their patient, the Bush administration keeps pushing for more deregulation when it’s been the problem — not…

  • *Blackout * New Nuclear Weapons

    LLOYD J. DUMAS Dumas is the author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies and is a professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. He said today: “The massive failure that knocked out power to the Northeast and Midwest U.S. and Canada looks like the disastrous blackouts of 1965 and…

  • * Schwarzenegger and Ken Lay Meeting * Perspectives on Recall

    DOUG HELLER CARMEN BALBER Consumer advocates with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Heller and Balber said today: “The California energy crisis was the culmination of a decade-long push to remove consumer protections and regulatory oversight of California’s electric power system… Leading the charge was Ken Lay, the former CEO and Chairman of Enron,…

  • Doctors Call for National Health Insurance

    Today an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (embargoed for 3 p.m. ET), backed by more than 7,000 physicians, proposes national health insurance. A news conference on the proposal, including two former Surgeon Generals, was set to take place today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., at 10 a.m. Dr.…

  • * Jobless Recovery? * Forecast * Vacation Starvation?

    ROBERT POLLIN Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of the forthcoming book Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity, Pollin said today: “Recently there has been much talk, and some signs, of a recovery out of the long stagnation that has gripped the U.S.…

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