Lab exercise on PR story writing
Assume that you are the PR person for Cairo’s Police Department. Write the first three paragraphs (three sentences) of a story based on the following comments. Select one direct quotation carefully (for the second paragraph) and paraphrase the lead and third paragraphs. Remember to attribute the comments to the source.

Cairo Police Chief Khaled Hassan Abbas, speaking to the Cairo City Council in answer to complaints about police abuse and harassment:

? I think we should not argue over that now. In the past, some
officers have stepped out of line, and I told them to obey the law or get fired.
I don’t like it any more than you do when one of the officers steps out of line. However, in their defense, I want to remind you that Cairo has a lot of criminals. When you have got your back against the wall with some tough guy coming at you with a knife, why, that’s no time to play around and being nice. I don’t blame an officer if he isn’t too polite under those circumstances. Don’t just take my word for it. I’ll gladly arrange for you to ride with an officer in a patrol car from midnight to 3 a.m. in the toughest parts of town and let you see for yourself. Then I think you will be singing to a different tune.
2)

News Release

Write a short news release (about four-paragraphs) based on the following notes.

A) Researchers at the American University of Beirut issued a report today. After three years of study, they confirmed the widely assumed link between drinking and birth defects. They warned that pregnant women who drink risk injury to their children. Because the scientists don’t know how much alcohol may be safely consumed by pregnant women, they recommend absolute and total abstention from all alcoholic beverages during a woman’s 9-month term of pregnancy. What the doctors found during their three years of study is that children born to pregnant women who drink have higher rates of mental and physical abnormalities. The most common problems among such infants are mental retardation and delays in their physical development. Pregnant women who drink also experience more miscarriages and premature births. The reason for the problems is that alcohol from a mother’s system passes directly into the bloodstream of her developing child, and that the alcohol remains in the fetal system longer because it is not metabolized and excreted as fast as it is by an adult. Scientists call the problem the fetal alcohol syndrome.
Dr. Sadiq Mahfooz (lead researcher):
The study began twelve years ago with the help of 664 women who volunteered for the study. Our findings are consistent with those of European scientists who analyzed the drinking habits of 1,200 pregnant women in three different countries and the effect of the alcohol on their unborn babies

Dr. Hamida Saleh:
Pregnant women who consume alcohol were 8 times more likely to give birth to children with some form of mental retardation than women who did not consume alcohol.