By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Buying Journalists: A 70-Year Tradition of Dishonor and Corruption

With all the news about Armstrong Williams and other paid lobbyists masquerading as pundits, it’s important to note that this disgusting practice has been going on for years, both in industry and in government.

All the way back to 1936 and 1937, Hill & Knowlton was paying journalists to write favorable stories for its steel-industry clients, as chronicled in the new book, The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations, by Karen S. Miller (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1999), and reported by Eveline Lubbers of Spinwatch.

She writes:

Hill and Knowlton sponsored antiunion messages appearing in the news media. George Sokolsky, a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly received $28,599 from H&K from June 1936 to February 1938, chiefly for consultation to the American Iron and Steel Institute. When writing against the steelworkers union, his articles failed to mention his connection to H&K or the Institute.

A decade later, the New York Times on a Pulitzer for its post-Hiroshima reportage–a series of articles lauding the nuclear program, written by William Laurence.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, along with her brother David, are calling for the Times to be stripped of its Pulitzer, because…

It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

(And for those who might accuse me of an anti-GOP bias, please note that this was during the Democratic administration of Harry Truman.)

Censors as Well as Spinners

Meanwhile, another disturbing trend: government policy wonks are inviting large corporate interests–or bureaucrats who came through the revolving door and used to work for the industries they’re supposed to regulate–to edit repots before they’re made public. We saw this in the widely-reported story about White House staffer Philip Cooney editing out “negative” references (i.e., those that gave credence to the idea that global warming is a serious problem).

Turns out similar things are going on at the international level, in a climate change report prepared for the G8 summit that not only removed unfavorable references but presented nuclear power (the worst energy generation system ever invented, IMHO) as the shining knight of sustainability. Eeeeew!

But wait–there’s more! Can you believe that Andrew Gallagher, the spokesperson for West Virginia’s Environmental Protection department, had to run a press release on DuPont’s toxic emissions by the company first? And that he first softened the statement and then withdrew it entirely as a result? And that it was official state policy to give DuPont a shot at all such materials before their release?

And let’s not forget the US Department of Labor’s blatant attempt to help push through the CAFTA agreement by censoring its own contractor’s report on working conditions in Central America.

Do we have a problem with foxes in the henhouse, or what?

Note: I discovered all these stories reading one of my favorite blogs, “The Weekly Spin.”
I especially like it because it’s available in e-mail form. Sign up or read on line at

https://www.prwatch.org/

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary

Happy Independence Day to all readers in the US. Happy Interdependence Day to all citizens of the world, including those in the US

Yesterday, just in time for the 4th of July, I was amazed and astounded to see this comment on a discussion list where I participate actively:

“Too bad the Libs of this list will always turn a blind eye to truth and historical perspective, glaze over facts, and continue on with their anti-Bush, anti-military and anti-American agenda.”

As one of those so-called Libs, I responded thusly:

I’m not going to let that little bit of foolish namecalling go by. I will let the other lefties on this list speak for themselves–and speaking for myself, I am very definitely motivated by patriotism. I want to make this great country the best it can be–even as every government of my conscious lifetime has been a deep disappointment. You have no business assailing the patriotism of those who disagree with you; that’s a trick out of the fascist and totalitarian-Marxist playbooks. In fact, the compulsive need to attack dissent as unpatriotic is one of the deep concerns I have about the Bush administration. This country developed the best system of government that had been tried at that time, 229 years ago.

I have made choices to spent a significant portion of my time–of my life–trying to keep this country on a mission of social justice, environmental stewardship, and peace. I act out of love for my country. I could have used that time instead to pursue endless material wealth and the hell with anyone in my way, or to tear down our entire social structure and replace it with something nastier. But I am a patriot. I am motivated by my love of this country and my sincere desire to see it live up to its potential.

I do not see the following actions as patriotic, but as destroying the very fabric of our system, and also destroying our positive perception by the rest of the world. It is Bush and his henchmen/puppeteers who have created a “rogue state,” and as a Patriotic American, I consider it my duty to do what I can to reverse the damage:

  • Violating international law in order to fight the oil-and-testosterone war in Iraq (and in the process create the terror network they claimed was there to begin with, but wasn’t
  • Lying to the American people, and the world, repeatedly
  • Blowing a CIA agent’s cover because her husband, a US Ambassador, turned in an honest report debunking the whole thing when he was asked to investigate whether Saddam was buying uranium from Niger
  • Attacking the First Amendment with a ferocity not even seen in the dark days of the Nixon administration
  • Tearing up the environmental and financial checks on big business that were carefully negotiated over a period of many years, and damn the consequences
  • Letting crooked and greedy people with vested interests like Enron’s Ken Lay create policy (he was on Cheney’s energy task force, you’ll recall)–and in turn, creating policy that directly and corruptly benefits their cronies in the private sector (one need only look at Dick Cheney’s own company, Halliburton, and its amazing ability to win no-bid and highly lucrative contracts, even after it was shown that the company was mismanaging the contracts it already had, at substantial cost to the American taxpayer
  • Refusing to accept intelligence reports if they ran counter to the hoped-for findings–not letting truth get in the way
  • Condoning torture at the highest levels

I submit that true patriots are opposing the hostile takeover and destruction of our system of government by the radical-right fringe now in power. And BTW, I still do not grant that either the 2000 or the 2004 election was actually conducted honestly. Bush’s presidency will always be under a cloud. Compare what happened in Florida in 00 and in Ohio in 04–both situations in which the senior official in charge of the election, the Secretary of State, happened to be a senior leader in that state’s Bush campaign (something that shocks my European friends) with what happened in the Ukraine this past winter, when extremely similar voting irregularities brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets and forced the government to do the election over. It is a sad commentary on the American people that we allowed our presidential election to be stolen not once but twice.

[I quoted the original poster, who claimed that the torturers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were acting alone and were already being disciplined, and that the Newsweek article “fuel the fire for anti-Americanism around the world,” and that we should not blame Bush or Rumsfeld for the bad behavior of a handful of soldiers.”]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s substantial evidence that the highest levels of this administration deliberately developed policies based on torture. I am talking about Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and by implication, Bush. Under the Nuremberg and Serbia precedents, among others, these men are war criminals.

As for the Newsweek article; they were merely reporting what had been widely known–in fact, the story of Koran abuse surfaced at least as far back as March, 2004. I don’t condone the riots in Afghanistan, but it was not Newsweek that caused it–it was the desecration of another religion’s holy books. I’ve blogged on this at some length at and

And on that note, I again wish you all a very happy 4th–one that is informed by the same principles of struggle for justice that imbued the Founding Fathers with such spirit, and left us a vital legacy of democracy. Let’s reclaim that proud heritage.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Lawrence O’Donnell claims in the Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/lawrence-odonnell/rove-blew-cia-agents-cov_3556.html (Ariana Huffington’s open blog) that Bush’s senior strategist and Chief of Staff Karl Rove was the leaker who blew CIA agent Valerie Plame’s cover–an apparent act of revenge after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was asked, in the run-up to the Iraq war, to investigate claims that Iraq was buying weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Wilson found no truth in the allegations, said so publicly, and then conservative columnist Robert Novak put Plame’s name and true occupation in his column. And that he, O’Donnell, has known this for some time.

His documentation is a bit thin, but he says it will be in the next Newsweek, now that Time magazine has turned over reporter Matthew Cooper’s sources, after the Supreme Court declined to give reporters protection.

A lot of permutations here:

1. Let’s start with the most obvious: revealing the name of a CIA agent is a federal crime, and rightly so–it puts the operative’s life in danger, and endangers others who may have had dealings with the operative. Coming from a White House Chief of Staff, it could conceivably be considered an act of treason, a very high crime indeed.

2. The Administration attitude of “don’t tell us anything unless you can tell us good news, on the party line” is suicidal and homicidal. This is part of how we got into the Iraq mess in the first place–because when the top strategists received reports that weren’t what they wanted to hear–that Saddam had nothing to know with 911, that he wasn’t buying uranium, that he no longer had WMDs, and that the war would not be winnable–they either ignored them, doctored them, or excerpted the small parts that lent themselves to “positive” spin.

3. The Supreme Court ruling was on Matthew Cooper from time and Judith Miller from the New York times–neither of whom actually used the news leak in their reportage. If you’re going to investigate anyone, why not Novak, who actually wrote the column? And it’s particularly odd that the goon squad went after Judith Miller, who was perhaps the most influential cheerleader for the war, and whose failure to verify was so embarrassing that the Times eventually–two years late–issued an apology to its readers about misleading them on the validity of the pro-war arguments.

4. Meanwhile, the war drums are beating again. Having made a complete mess of Iraq, they’re now looking at Iran. I have to wonder whether the stories about Iran’s new president and his possible membership in the terrorist group that kidnapped 20 Americans in 1979 is another disinformation campaign. I believe it was the Times that ran the allegation, but also ran interviews with two of the known hostage takers who said the guy hadn’t been involved, though he’d asked to join them.

5. And let’s not forget the departure of Sandra Day O’Connor opens a fight for the lifeblood of this country. If that seat goes to a radical-right head-in-the-sand friend of GWB such as torture apologist (and now Attorney General) Antonio Gonzales, it’ll be time to make sure your passport is in order. And time to reread Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Don’t think it can’t happen here.

If the Rove allegation is true, this is yet another reason to stop cooperating with this government. It means the President either knew or should have known. International law, and the Watergate precedent in our own country, both show clearly that the chief executive can be held responsible for the actions of subordinates. Of course, the same principle should apply with the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture, among other abuses.

It was only a few months ago that the people of the Ukraine brought down their government and demanded a new election, with far less cause than we have here.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Other

Nuclear power is a dirty and dangerous way to generate electricity, and no amount of PR-industry hype is going to change that. But they’re sure trying!

https://www.prwatch.org/node/3679

Back in 1974–31 years ago–as a student at Antioch College, I had a class assignment to do an independent research project on the plusses and minuses of nuclear power generation. I came into this with a relatively open mind–and I came away scared. Keep in mind, this was before Seabrook, before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and before there was any kind of world-wide anti-nuclear movement.

But there was plenty of research out there. The more I read, the more I became convinced that nuclear power is dangerous, unhealthful, and even uneconomical, out of all proportion to the supposed “benefits.” In 1979, I even wrote my first book on the subject (a long-out-of-print volume called Nuclear Lessons, co-authored with Richard Curtis and Elizabeth Hogan, who had written Perils of the Peaceful Atom back in 1969).

A few among many issues:

  • Accidents. We didn’t hear about them, probably because the national movement for safe energy had not yet coalesced–but there were serious accidents at the Enrico Fermi reactor in Michigan in 1966, and Browns Ferry, Alabama, in 1975–and a deeply disturbing record of thousands of minor incidents at plants all over the country, many of which could have become severe had one or two factors gone differently.
  • Insurance. The only reason there is a nuclear power industry in the US is because of a heavily subsidized limited-liability insurance program called the Price-Anderson Act. When the utilities would have been held responsible for full damage in the event of an accident, they simply refused to build, even when the government threatened to get into the power business and do it without industry cooperation.
  • Health and Environment. The radioactivity associated with nuclear power generation is known to cause cancer. Workers in the industry have had much higher incidences of problems. And it’s not even true that there are no global warming issues associated with nukes. The plants use bodies of water for cooling, and that water is re-released into the environment at a much hotter temperature, disrupting fish lifecycles and warming the water.
  • Waste Disposal. Highly toxic, carcinogenic nuclear wastes have to be kept safe and isolated from the environment–and from terrorists–for up to 250,000 years. To put that in perspective, there was essentially zero human civilization until about 30,000 years ago, and no urban culture until about 10,000 years ago.
  • Economics. Believe it or not, looking at the entire mining-milling-transportation-consumption-disposal cycle, nuclear energy consumes more power than it produces! So all this risk is for no benefit. And because it’s extremely capital-intensive, nuclear power produces relatively few jobs. How stupid can we be?

This societal stupidity is even more bizarre in light of the easy, environmentally benign alternatives: solar, small-scale wind and hydro, etc. We’ve had these technologies for years. We could be entirely energy self-sufficient without using any nuclear or fossil fuels, had we made a society-wide commitment to that goal back in 1974 when I was doing my research. And oh yes, I don’t think we’d be at war in Iraq now if oil were a non-issue.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

Weekly Spin reports that ExxonMobil has hired Philip A. Cooney, who resigned as White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff after we found he was editing government scientists’ reports to deflate warnings about global warming. Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Dana Perino told the New York Times “Phil Cooney did a great job and we appreciate his public service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private sector.”

This was widely reported; CNN’s version is at
https://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/15/cooney.exxon.ap/

Earth to ExxonMobil: this is not the way to get good PR. Coverup is not fixing the problem–as you might remember form Exxon Valdez. I predict this appointment will come back to bite you. IF anyone’s paying attention out there, anyhow.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary

On the surface, a flamboyant pop star has little to do with an accounting firm: the epitome of corporate conservatism.

But the accounting firm we’re talking about is Arthur Andersen, and the way its auditors let Enron’s top execs bring down both companies hardly fits my standard of fiscal conservatism.

Anyway, the comparison isn’t about lifestyle or philosophy. It’s about the notion that being cleared in a court of law doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually innocent.

Michael Jackson was not found guilty. He may or may not have molested children–I don’t have the knowledge to say, one way or the other. He certainly used bad judgment to share his bed with them–but the jury’s decision rested not on whether or not he committed the act, but whether the government had proven its case beyond reasonable doubt. Given the lack of credibility of one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses, the jury found that the government had not put forth an ironclad case.

And the Supreme Court, late last month, found not that Arthur Andersen wasn’t culpable for its destruction of documents, but that the judge had given faulty instructions to the jury, and thus the guilty verdict was thrown out.

Lawyers for both Michael Jackson and Arthur Andersen were quick to hail the court decisions as clearing their clients’ names, and Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s lawyer quickly made the claim that his client’s case was strengthened. But the Andersen jury foreman, Oscar Criner, called the Supreme Court’s ruling “a grave error” (as reported in Enron’s hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle:
https://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/3204884 )

But in fact, neither decision addressed the defendant’s guilt or innocence. All that has happened is that a jury in one case and a panel of judges in the other found that the government did not make a strong enough case for wrongful intent.

Arthur Andersen first allowed Enron’s highly questionable accounting practices and then, as the SEC was preparing to investigate, destroyed the documents about the case. Michael Jackson shared his bed with teenage boys. While they were not guilty in the eyes of the law, the ethical questions remain in both cases. Failing to find that an action is criminal is not the same thing as finding that a defendant acted with ethics, with honor, and with good intent. It merely shows that the standard of proof was not met.

Legality and ethics are not always the same. Let’s keep that in mind as the Enron trials proceed.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Events, Marketing Trends/News

Tsunami Publishing’s Bob Bellin is a small publisher who thinks big. “We take abandoned brands, former bestsellers that we can bring back to bestsellers through aggressive and offbeat marketing and promotion.”

New York Times bestseller Steve Alten feels Bellin is treating him “a lot better than my last two publishers.” Bellin sent out 1500 galleys of his first title, Alten’s The Loch; he spent $100,000 on PR, satellite TV and radio tours, bought ad time and a banner on a coast-to-coast radio show, and is testing a radio ad campaign involving a bookstore coop.

“Our goal is to sell books. Ideally, a book that’s likely to be made into a movie; it will sell more books.” And apparently, it’s working, so far. “We popped in the first week at number 9 on Ingram’s bestseller list. We’ve already sold more than his last publisher. We printed five figures and we’re about to go to print again,” one month after the May 1 publication date. Bellin bought the rights to another abandoned Alten book, Meg, from Bantam. New Line Cinema is making the movie.

The trend of smaller publishers picking up larger authors was evident elsewhere at the show. Two among several examples: Small publisher Quill Driver Press has picked up Dr. Ruth, and Chelsea Green, publisher of the mega-hit Don’t Think of an Elephant (see related story), is in negotiation with some successful authors (but declined to name names).

On the other side of the fence, large publishers continue to pick up titles that have proven themselves in an independently published, self-published, or even subsidy-published run. John Wiley, for instance has picked up Internet marketing gurus Joe Vitale and Mark Joyner (in separate books, although the two have often collaborated).

Several categories seem to be drying up. You’d expect some reduction in political books now that last year’s hotly contested election is in the past, but their near-total absence from the major houses and obscurity even among the smaller houses was surprising.

Also, unless I simply missed the whole section somehow, there were amazingly few glitzy new cookbooks. The cookbooks I saw were mostly of the down-home variety, rather than the big coffee-table volumes that have dominated for several years. Combined with the greatly reduced presence of large four-color art titles, the shortage made me wonder if there’s been a huge increase in the cost of printing and/or shipping in Asia–though I wouldn’t expect the impact of the weak dollar and high fuel prices to show up until next year, given the publishing industry’s long lead times.

I noted last year how bland the largest houses have become, and this year that was even more true. Cookie-cutter, formulaic books dominated the largest booths–but independent publishers continue to focus on titles that one can take pride in.

One category where the largest houses do seem to still have some verve: history. Lots of solid-looking titles on wars, presidents, and fashions over the decades and centuries.

And perhaps 2005 is the Year of the Ordinary Mortal. From both small and large publishers, I saw a number of books celebrating the achievements of average Joes and Janes. One of my favorites in the category was Damn! I Wish I’d Written That!: chronicling the publishing successes of ordinary folks who didn’t necessarily even have big credentials. (However, it was rather odd to see Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese on the cover along with several more appropriate books. Johnson, after all, was already the best-selling co-author of The One-Minute Manager.)

Faith and religion were much evident this year, and not just in the religion aisles. WJK Books, whose The Gospel According to the Simpsons I picked up a couple of years ago, has now expanded to a whole line of Gospel According to titles: Harry Potter, Tolkein, and even (forthcoming) Oprah, among others. Wonder if the Potter book will shift the discourse among those elements of the Christian Right that have attacked and tried to censor the series.

And speaking of Hogwarts’s celebrated wizard, spin-off were everywhere: not just books trying to position themselves as the Next HP, but also literary criticism and scholarship on Potter and other fantasy series–looking, for instance at the mythology that influenced JK Rowling (this is a trend at least a few years old–my 2001 show report mentions The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter: A Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Fascinating Facts, but more titles are appearing, including Fact, Fiction, and Folklore in Harry Potter’s World from midsize publisher Hampton Roads.

As I look over my notes, I do notice that a lot of what I’ve found worth mentioning is from midsize publishers who put out, say, 10 to 50 titles per year. As the big boys swallow each other up and increasingly concentrate on celebrity tell-alls and blockbuster novels from famous authors, perhaps it is these publishers who will become the Keepers of the Culture: the ones who can release books that actually advance our thinking as a society, who take a chance on a first-timer’s literary gem–and who have enough marketing muscle to actually move the books out of the warehouse, into the bookstore, and out to the consumer (unlike the vast majority of self-publishers, tiny independents with fewer than five titles a year, or authors publishing with subsidy presses).

Maybe it’s time to start reading publisher labels as we select our bookstore purchases. While an imprint like Chelsea Green, Berrett-Koehler, or New Society Publishers–and there are a couple of dozen others–doesn’t guarantee a great book, in my experience, it definitely increases the odds.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News

An interesting week in the news, for sure.

This from Jack O’Dwyer’s PR-industry newsletter, which I hadn’t seen before but picked up at a PRSA event in New York. (I’m actually writing this from New York, in fact–where Book Expo America starts tomorrow.) O’Dwyer reports that the White House press corps, tired of their role as “props,” boycotted a May 23 press conference with President Bush and Afghani President Hamid Karzai–because the events are so tightly controlled that they’re only allowed two questions. I imagine they mean two questions total, rather than two apiece.

So as usual, the Bush administration appears to be afraid of an open and free press, and for once the 5th Estate is showing a little muscle. More power to them! The charade that has passed for Washington journalism the last few years is badly in need of a shakeup.

This is a particularly nice nugget considering that after 33 years, we’ve learned the identity of Deep Throat–the most vivid case study for the idea that undisclosed sources have a place in legitimate mainstream journalism, and that journalism has a responsibility to investigate the powers-that-be. To my knowledge, no one has ever challenged the authenticity of Mark Felt’s reports back then, and for 33 years, his identity was unknown. He helped to bring down a crooked government, and it wouldn’t have happened if journalists Woodward and Bernstein had been forced to disclose their sources.

Newsweek, are you listening? (See my two previous blog entries, May 18 and 25)

The same newsletter also bore an item about the PR industry, trust, and the bill that was passed forcing media to identify government video news releases (VNRs, a/k/a/ propaganda) when they use them: A little spat between the president of PRSA and a former PRSA/NY board member, in which the latter said that the former’s contention that PR has a high level of trust (and didn’t need regulation of VNRs) was ridiculous.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Events, Media Ethics

https://www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/dtb.shtml#medialiteracy

I’ve put up six different articles at the above link, covering the National Conference on Media Reform, held in St. Louis May 13-15, 2005.

2500 people attended this event, to hear from celebrity media personalities like Al Franken, Bill Moyers, Phil Donahue, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, Jim Hightower, several members of Congress, and the two progressive FCC Commissioners. and also to hear from activists in the trenches of media reform, pursuing these twin flanks:

Opening up mainstream media to important voices that are getting shoved out of the discourse
Creating our own media

Spend some time with these articles. Print out the Twin Fires story–my main conference report–and read to absorb. Understanding these issues is key to effecting change in any marketplace of ideas.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

Turns out this story has actually been around at least 14 months, not just since August, and certainly not just since the Newsweek story.

Britain’s Observer had the story, in gruesome detail, on March 14, 2004, following the release from Guantanamo of the so-called Tipton Three: https://dissident.info/Other/Tipton%20Three.htm

This is one of over 3500 hits for “tipton three” on Google–see for yourself at https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22tipton+three%22

I submit that the ethical position following the Holocaust and other extreme human rights abuses is that neither mental nor physical torture is acceptable.

We must say loudly that these acts of terrorism are not done in our name, and demand of our governments that they desist. There is ample international precedent for a populace being found complicit if they didn’t actively oppose war crimes. From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay, we have seen our government act reprehensibly in our names. Well, I say, this is not in my name. One does not win democracy and freedom by violating them, killing them, and dragging their remains across objects sacred to those of other faiths. These actions do not represent me. they do not represent anything that is in the virtuous heart of the American people.

I’ve done two radio interviews this week on the real story here. If I can get one of them, I’ll post a link to the audio in this space.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail