Many of the of the tobacco industry's underhanded strategies and tactics have been exposed, thanks to landmark legal cases and the hard work of public health advocates. But we are still uncovering the shocking lengths to which the industry has gone to protect itself from public health measures like smoking bans. Now we can thank the city of Pueblo, Colorado for an opportunity to look a little bit deeper into how the industry managed the deadly deceptions around secondhand smoke.

A new study, now the ninth of its type and the most comprehensive one yet, has shown a major reduction in hospital admissions for heart attacks after a smoke-free law was put into effect.

On July 1, 2003 the relatively isolated city of Pueblo, Colorado enacted an ordinance that prohibited smoking in workplaces and indoor public areas, including bars and restaurants. For the study, researchers reviewed hospital admissions for heart attacks among area residents for one year prior to, and three years after the ban, and compared the data to two other nearby areas that didn't have bans (the part of Pueblo County outside city limits, and El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs). Researchers found that during the three years after the ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped 41 percent inside the city of Pueblo, but found no significant change in admissions for heart attacks in the other two control areas.

Eight studies done prior to this one in other locales used similar techniques and yielded similar results, but covered shorter periods of time -- usually about one year after the smoking ban went into effect. The results of this longer, more comprehensive study support the view that not only does secondhand smoke have a significant short-term impact on heart function, but that lives, and money, are probably being saved by new laws proliferating around the world in recent years that minimize public exposure to secondhand smoke.

The Chicago-based ad firm Leo Burnett "has agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle charges that it over-billed the U.S. Army for work on its 'Army of One' campaign," while still claiming that it "believes the government's claims are without merit." Leo Burnett is charged with inflating its expenses on the Army account, by billing for work done by its Internet division as if the division were an independent subcontractor, and by excluding "lower cost smaller subcontractors [when] proposing, negotiating and billing its hourly rate in 2000 and 2001." Details of the over-billing were provided by two former Leo Burnett employees who became whistleblowers and filed suit against the firm in 2004. Leo Burnett worked on the "lucrative account" for five years, attempting "to craft a campaign that would help stop shortfalls in the Army's recruiting and retention targets, which were being hampered by the Iraq war." Leo Burnett is part of the Publicis Groupe communications giant; Interpublic Group's McCann-Erickson now has the Army contract. "This isn't the first time a Madison avenue firm has become embroiled in an over-billing scandal," notes the Wall Street Journal. In 2002, WPP's Ogilvy & Mather paid $1.8 million to settle charges that it had over-billed the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Reporter Dave Maza looks at Arthur B. Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a man long "in the vanguard of a small but vocal and persistent collection of scientists, industry advocates and commentators who dismiss human culpability for climate change. ... Robinson's critics say his analysis is simplistic, but it remains persuasive a decade later with powerful policymakers like U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a visible and effective player in blocking a bill to limit greenhouse-gas emissions last fall. 'The influence Robinson and the others have is to muddy the waters and delay action on global warming,' says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that promotes media literacy. 'I thought he was thoroughly discredited years ago,' Rampton says. 'But the global-warming skeptics certainly haven’t given up. And they seem willing to promote anyone who can be half-plausibly sold as an expert.' Robinson's views have been cited on Fox News, MSNBC and other national newscasts, such as Exposed: The Climate of Fear, an hourlong special report in 2007 by CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck. The report relied heavily on Robinson's findings to attack former Vice President Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth."

The industry-funded former civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) continues to bash environmentalists, to the benefit of the energy industry. In July 2008, CORE, the conservative High Impact Leadership Coalition (HILC) and the pro-drilling front group Americans for American Energy pushed for increased domestic oil and gas production, under the banner "stop the war on the poor." Now, CORE and HILC have a campaign called "don't freeze us out," which supports "a Bush administration auction in Utah of oil and gas leases, some near national parks." Environmentalists, including Robert Redford, are urging President-elect Barack Obama to overturn the already-completed auction. CORE's Niger Innis vowed, "We are not going to stand by as Robert Redford tries to slow the flow of home heating fuel from the Rockies and drive up home heating prices to millions of Americans in his lust for environmental headlines." Innis "also recently appeared at a press conference in Washington ... in support of the Americans for American Energy Act sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah." CORE has received funding from ExxonMobil.

"To gain greater international support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Foreign Minister (and candidate for Prime Minister) Tzipi Livni directed the Foreign Ministry to lead "an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign." In addition to meetings with foreign officials and interviews with international media, Israeli officials are posting videos to YouTube and conducting "press conferences" via the microblogging site Twitter. The Israeli military described one of its YouTube videos as a bomb attack on "a Hamas truck carrying dozens of Grad rockets." Yet human rights groups say the truck belonged to a local resident, who was moving equipment out of his workshop, after the house next to it was bombed. Ahmed Samur, the person who says the bombed vehicle was his, told Haaretz, "These were not Hamas [who were killed], they were our children." BBC News writes that "the incident shows how an apparently definitive piece of video can turn into something much more doubtful." Doubts have also been raised about the Israeli Foreign Ministry's changing graph of the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. Still, according to the BBC, "Israel appears to think its [PR] efforts are working," to "justify the air attacks" and "show that there is no humanitarian calamity in Gaza."

When television stations take the "'quick and dirty' route to health news coverage" by airing sponsored videos produced by public relations firms or other companies, it's a real problem, writes journalism professor Gary Schwitzer. For example, Ivanhoe Broadcast News (which was mentioned in the Center for Media and Democracy's "Fake TV News" report) puts out "single source stories with one spokesman from one institution touting one idea," complete with PR contacts. Yet, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) -- which is supposed to set "standards of newsgathering" -- recently partnered with Ivanhoe. RTNDA's foundation is offering "two new training opportunities for journalists": a three-month internship providing "professional training in health reporting at Ivanhoe headquarters," and a two-week fellowship "to travel to the Ivanhoe headquarters to focus on health and medical reporting." Schwitzer asks, "Why doesn't RTNDA partner with the NIH Medicine in the Media workshop or the MIT Science Journalism Fellowships or with the Association of Health Care Journalists or with [the University of Minnesota's] HealthNewsReview.org project?" RTNDA has sided with the Public Relations Society of America, in opposing attempts to ensure that video news releases are disclosed to news viewers.

Mark PennUntil March 2008, the major public relations firm Burson-Marsteller counted among its clients the Pakistan People's Party, as the Center for Media and Democracy previously reported. Burson-Marsteller promised to influence U.S. policy and public opinion, via contacts with "100 American political journalists and business elites," by favorable "white papers" by academics and op/ed columns in newspapers. The firm also pledged to "promote credible 'third-party' supporters of Pakistan," including "former U.S. government officials," "think tank experts" and influential Pakistani-Americans. The Pakistan lobbying contract, which also involved the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, specifically mentioned New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria as outreach targets. Luckily for Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton -- whose former campaign strategist, Mark Penn, heads Burson-Marsteller and Penn, Schoen -- the firms' work for Pakistan ended "well before [November's] terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India." Otherwise the Penn-Pakistan connection could have been used by "opposition researchers dredging up tough questions" for Clinton's confirmation hearing.

Energy Secretary-designate Steven Chu "seems about as climate friendly as they come," writes Josh Harkinson, but "more industry friendly than his rhetoric suggests." As the director of the Energy Department-funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Chu helped broker "the largest university-industry alliance in U.S. history, the $500 million Energy Biosciences Institute." The biofuels research institute involves the Berkeley lab, two public universities and oil giant BP. Chu pitched BP's deal to the UC-Berkeley Academic Senate, one-third of whose members voted against it. Chu also promoted the institute on campus, saying "money" was the only reason more biofuels research wasn't already underway. The university's compromise agreement gave BP half of the seats on the board governing the institute. As Energy Secretary, Chu will likely "face pressure to partner with corporations in pursuing technological solutions to climate change," notes Harkinson. "As the incoming Obama administration prepares to spend liberally to develop cleaner sources of energy, the structure of corporate-government partnerships will determine how the profits of that research return to taxpayers, and how rigorously scientists evaluate the downsides of controversial technologies such as biofuels."

This "Air Force Blog Assessment" chart specifies "rules of engagement" for dealing with bloggers.Viral marketing strategist David Meerman Scott says he was surprised recently to discover that the U.S. Air Force has its own Twitter feed, staffed by Captain David Faggard, who holds the title of Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon.

Scott interviewed Faggard and reports that his team's "mission is to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public." Faggard says the focus is on "Direct Action within Social Media (blogging, counter-blogging, posting products to YouTube, etc.); Monitoring and Analysis of the Social Media landscape (relating to Air Force and Airmen); and policy and education (educating all Public Affairs practitioners and the bigger Air Force on Social Media)."

In addition to a Twitter feed, Scott reports that

Capt. Faggard writes The Official Blog of the U.S. Air Force; has pages on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook; helps publicize a Second Life area called Huffman Prairie; contributes to iReport (user name USAFPA); and is on Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, Newsvine, Reddit. There's Air Force widgets. And there's even a video mashup contest for high schools to show school spirit sponsored by the Air Force.

Other branches of the military are also getting into the social networking game, along with other branches of government. The Army also has its own Twitter feed, as does the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush White House, and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, the U.S. Department of State, and the Israeli Consulate in New York.

Just a few months ago, U.S. military analysts raised concerns that Twitter and other online social networking technologies could become terrorist tools. It appears they've decided that they can be useful for their own purposes as well.

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at an off-key gift, education that doesn't teach and SLAPPed reporters. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," Chip Saltsman. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!