"With the avalanche of corporate accounting scandals that have rocked the markets recently, it's getting hard to keep track of them all--but our Corporate Scandal Sheet does the job," boasts Forbes magazine. "Here we'll follow accounting imbroglios only--avoiding insider-trading allegations like those plaguing ImClone, since chronicling every corporate transgression would simply be impractical."

The Government Printing Office, which is responsible for printing the multitude of documents produced by the federal government, may be abolished according to an order by the White House Office of Management and the Budget. The OMB describes the order as a cost-saving measure, but critics say it may cost more money than the present system. Worse, it threatens public access to information. "Patrice McDermott, an associate director of the Washington office of government relations for the American Library Association, said that if the GPO were not in charge, fewer government documents would be publicly available," reports the Washington Post. According to OMB Watch, a nonprofit watchdog organization, "It is possible that the decentralization of printing and management of federal documents will make it even more difficult to trace government documents."

"The biotechnology industry and more specifically the agrobiotechnology sector just don't get it. They and their PR and communications consultants believe that risk theory holds the key understanding and managing opposition to biotechnology," self-described corporate activist and ePublic Relations president Ross S. Irvine writes. "If industry would open its eyes and cast a wider gaze it would find a much more fruitful avenue of study to understand biotech opponents and how they work. ... The biotechnology industry can learn much from activists but it needs a dramatic change of mind. First, it must admit that it's in a conflict. Second, it must face the fact that in a conflict there are winners and losers. Third, it must acknowledge that while it's pleasant to talk about win-win scenarios and building 'relationships' with critics, activists are pursuing absolute victory."

The Bush administration has decided to create a permanent, fully staffed "Office of Global Communications" to "coordinate the administration's foreign policy message and supervise America's image abroad, according to senior officials," writes Karen DeYoung. The office will allow the White House "to exert more control over what has become one of the hottest areas of government and private-sector initiatives since Sept. 11. Known as 'public diplomacy,' it attempts to address the question President Bush posed in his speech to Congress the week after the terrorist attacks: 'Why do they hate us?'"

PR giant Golin/Harris is bragging about its new "Global Obesity Task Force." The Task Force doesn't seek to fight childhood obesity, but to protect the interests and image of the multibillion dollar Obesity Industry. Their press release states: "With consumers becoming increasingly wary of American 'big business,' many companies find themselves under scrutiny. ... The increase in childhood obesity has special interest and government groups seeking to hold someone responsible. And, corporate America is the likely target. Golin/Harris International has created its Global Obesity Task Force with proprietary tools to help companies under fire in the obesity debate... Wide ranges of industries are vulnerable and need to act to protect their brands, businesses and reputations. Quick service restaurant companies, snack makers, beverage producers, the television and video game industries... 'When managed appropriately, companies can withstand issues without public confidence and brand trust eroding,' said Kathy Weber." G/H clients include McDonald's and Tyson Foods.

Guatemala remains of the most horrifying legacies of the work of Edward Bernays, the legendary "father of public relations." On behalf of the United Fruit company, Bernays orchestrated the propaganda behind a military coup that overthrew Guatemala's elected government, ushering in decades of tyranny under regimes whose brutality rivaled the Nazis as they condemned hundreds of thousands of people (mostly members of the country's impoverished Maya Indian majority) to dislocation, torture and death. Kevin Sullivan reports that this legacy continues today, as human rights activists "face increasing death threats and other forms of intimidation aimed at preventing exposure of atrocities committed during the country's 36-year civil war."

"The United States is doing a poor job of countering growing anti-American sentiment overseas and must revamp the way it promotes its foreign policies abroad, the Council on Foreign Relations contends," the New York Times writes. "In a report to be released this week, the council asserts that many countries, in particular predominantly Islamic ones, see the United States as 'arrogant, self-indulgent, hypocritical, inattentive and unwilling or unable to engage in cross-cultural dialogue.' ... The [report's] recommendations include: expanding the use of political campaign techniques, including polling, to shape attitudes toward the United States; establishing a White House unit to coordinate efforts, headed by a senior adviser to the president; and creating an independent Corporation for Public Diplomacy, modeled after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to develop programs to communicate American messages overseas." The report also recommends an "expanded role for the private sector" in the government's propaganda effort, because "independent messengers can be more fluid in their ability to target and engage varied audiences," and "private sector participation in public diplomacy adds, to some extent, a 'heat shield' that can be useful when tackling controversial issues." (This call for increased government funding of private-sector propaganda undoubtedly brings cheer to the PR, advertising, and media executives who sat on the panel that drafted the CFR's report.)

In 1997, the wife of Phillip Bonaffini died from an infection she contracted during cardiac surgery at Bridgeport Hospital. Another patient, Eunice Babcock, was left wheelchair-bound due to a staphylococcus infection that she contracted during surgery at the same hospital. The hospital settled the cases out of court by paying Bonaffini and Babcock an undisclosed sum in exchange for signed confidentiality agreements. Recently, however, Bonaffini made the mistake of talking about his wife's death to The Chicago Tribune, noting that tens of thousands of patients die each year in the United States from infections that are largely preventable. Bridgeport Hospital responded by filing a lawsuit for breach of contract, but dropped the suit two days later. "The quick withdrawal of the suit suggested that legal action intended to relieve a public relations headache had created a public relations nightmare instead," reports the New York Times. "If the goal was to stem negative publicity, suing a man whose wife died and a woman who was left mostly wheelchair-bound, was probably ill-advised."

The White House allegedly threatened a Judicial Watch process server with arrest while he was trying to provide legal notification of a lawsuit to Vice President Dick Cheney. The conservative organization Judicial Watch has brought a lawsuit against Cheney for fraudulent accounting practices at Halliburton Corporation while Cheney was the company's chief executive. AP reports Cheney's communications counselor Mary Matalin called Judicial Watch's announcement about the process server a "PR stunt," saying that the lawsuit should have been delivered to Cheney's private attorney, Terrence O'Donnell of the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly. But Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Reuters, "You don't serve lawsuits on lawyers, you serve them on defendants." Judicial Watch says it has successfully served lawsuits on Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton while they were in the White House.

PR Watch has exposed the antics of Steven ("the Junkman") Milloy more times than we can stand to remember, as he flacks for the tobacco industry, speaks up for asbestos, and attacks environmentalists as "terrorists" and "fear profiteers." Nowadays he writes a column for Fox News, where he is helping publicize a PR stunt concocted by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), an industry front group that is threatening to sue Whole Foods for baking bread which (like all bread) contains trace amounts of acrylamide, a probable carcinogen that ACSH says is harmless. (Milloy and ACSH haven't always been this chummy. ACSH director Elizabeth Whelan, who disagrees with Milloy's defense of secondhand cigarette smoke, once accused him of "junking all science.")

The APCO PR firm, which is currently representing WorldCom in its ongoing bankruptcy scandal, has hired Tim Croasdaile as a senior vice president. Croasdaile formerly chaired the National Investor Relations Institute's ethics committee. He should fit right in at APCO, which has worked previously to set up deceptive front groups for clients such as the tobacco industry and Russian robber baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

As events build toward the UN's upcoming environmental summit in Johannesburg, the PR industry is busily promoting "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) as the solution to the world's problems. As our 3rd Quarter issue of PR Watch observes, however, current rhetoric about CSR is occurring in the wake of the worst orgy of corporate irresponsibility in decades. Stories featured in this issue include:

• Rio+10, Environment Zero
• Ketchum (the UN's PR Firm) Tackles Corporate Responsibility
• Corporate Social Responsibility and the Crisis of Globalization
• The International Chamber of Commerce and the Mechanical Bull

Ever since September 11, politicians like Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde have been wondering why "the popular press overseas, often including the government-owned media, daily depict the United States as a force for evil." Hyde thinks that "public diplomacy" (the government's term for "public relations") can turn the tide. He is sponsoring House Resolution 3969, aka the "Freedom Promotion Act of 2002," which instructs the U.S. Secretary of State to "make public diplomacy an integral component in the planning and execution of United States foreign policy" and to establish "fully capable multimedia programming and distribution capacity including satellite, Internet, and other services, and also including the capability to acquire and produce audio and video feeds and Internet streaming to foreign news organizations." In addition to sponsoring cultural exchanges and programs to train foreign journalists, the bill sets aside $135 million to launch what Hyde calls "an ambitious effort into television broadcasting."

Jeffrey Chester and Gary Larson have drafted a "plan on behalf of a more democratic media system, a collective effort to ensure that alternative, independent voices will still be heard over the growing din of conglomerate media culture. " In the Internet age, they say, "The sad irony is that never before have we had such communications power at our disposal, in the form of new digital technologies that allow any of us to be producers as well as consumers of media content. The corresponding danger, of course, is that we've never had so much to lose, in ceding that power to the cable and telecom giants eager to make the new media as monolithic and market-driven as the old."

"Even the executive from Philip Morris Companies Inc., the parent company of the largest cigarette maker in the United States, couldn't ignore the irony that he had been scheduled to speak about corporate responsibility," writes Marc Levy in an Associated Press report on a speech delivered on Monday by PM vice president David Greenberg. Levy notes that Greenberg's speech is part of an ongoing effort by Philip Morris to remold its image: "For three years, the company has rolled out its executives to speaking engagements, part of an effort to improve the company's image and offer itself up as an example of a corporate citizen that found ethics and responsibility." Greenberg's speech, delivered at a luncheon of the Pennsylvania Press Club, offered familiar platitudes. "The corporate community really needs to step up to whatever it takes to restore the public trust," he told reporters. "Business ethics must come from the top."

In a feature article "Restoring Trust," PR Week talked to PR experts about restoring confidence in the business world. "American corporations have to understand that the best thing they can do right now is to communicate: completely, honestly, transparently, and often," Notre Dame University business professor James O'Rourke told PR Week. "If more CEOs sounded like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in their briefings, we'd all be better off. If things aren't good, say so and explain what you're going to do about it. If they're fine, tell us the good news, and explain how it got that way," O'Rourke said.

Whistleblowers play a vital role in stopping government misconduct, but they often pay a heavy price. "Retaliation can include marginalization, firings, loss of promotions, and even death threats," writes Katherine Uraneck. Thomas Devine of the Government Accountability Project says whistleblowers should expect some retaliation. "Before sticking their necks out, whistleblowers should carefully plan a survival strategy," he advises. Experts advise potential whistleblowers to research their situation carefully, understand how the system works, and seek legal counsel.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is calling for bioethics institutions and journals to disclose their financial relationships with the biotech industry. So far, the request has mostly fallen on deaf ears. "The industry's increasing recruitment of bioethicists has been widely debated, as has the scope of the contributions," notes Hal Cohen. "Most bioethics institutions don't publish such statistics, leaving the public to draw its own conclusions about conflicts of interest. Industry, on the other hand, trumpets the presence of bioethicists on the corporate payroll." According to CSPI's Virginia Sharpe, ethicists on the payroll are "extremely useful to the companies," enabling them to "reassure the public that the company is consulting with ethics advisers"--even though the advisors aren't necessarily consulted regarding important decisions. "Companies can't always afford to tell the ethicists what they are doing," explains Glenn McGee, professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "One PR misstep and many small biotechs are out of business."

"For all the talk of corporate scandal, one leading proposal for change -- tightening the rules on stock options -- was brushed aside in Congress this week, thanks in part to a powerful business lobbying coalition that has long fought to protect these rich pay packages. ... [L]ast September, an umbrella group calling itself the Stock Option Coalition was formed from high-technology companies, executives of Fortune 500 companies, venture capitalists, biotechnology companies and the Nasdaq market -- all sending out platoons of lobbyists, conducting sophisticated e-mail campaigns and reminding Congress of their hefty campaign contributions. ... These companies are also enlisting rank-and-file employees in a Web-based grass-roots effort, as well. ...an employee can simply put his or her e-mail address on the TechNet Web site and a 'Dear Lawmaker' letter will automatically be sent to Congress in less than a minute. 'If my company does well, I hope one day to use my stock options to buy a home or put my children through college,' reads the form letter." Competitive Enterprise Institute and the powerful Business Roundtable are also lobbying hard to save stock options

Celebrity publicist Lizzie Grubman offered a tearful apology in front of reporters, but New York tabloids speculated that the sobs were orchestrated by her PR counsel, Dan Klores Communications, which specializes in "crisis communications" for clients embroiled in scandals. Grubman is expected to stand trial and faces up to eight years in jail for an incident last year in which she threw a tantrum and backed her Mercedes SUV into a crowd outside a Hamptons nightspot, injuring 16 people.

"Investors who have watched their nest eggs melt away would be shocked to know that former executives of companies involved in some of the USA's largest cases of corporate malfeasance -- Xerox, Waste Management and Sunbeam -- still serve as senior executives and directors at public companies," writes Matt Krantz. "Some even sit on audit committees, acting as watchdogs against accounting deceit. In one case, an ex-president's involvement with alleged fraud isn't even disclosed in his current employer's regulatory filings."

The news media have criticized the tangled finances of companies like Enron and WorldCom, but Howard Kurtz notes that many of them are engaged in similar deals themselves. For example:

• The New York Times struck a "newsprint swap agreement" with Enron -- a financial deal in which no physical assets changed hands. The deal was disclosed in the fine print of the newspaper's SEC filings but not in editorials that slammed Enron for "accounting shenanigans."
• The Chicago Tribune and Washington Post have editorialized against companies for not counting executive stock options as expenses, even though they did the same thing themselves last year, to the tune of millions of dollars. So did AOL Time Warner, the Gannett publishing chain, Knight Ridder, Dow Jones (the publisher of the Wall Street Journal), and the parent companies of ABC, NBC and CBS.

The Second Quarter 2002 issue of PR Watch is now available online. This issue features a look at corporate spies that specialize in infiltrating citizen groups, along with other PR strategies for "managing activism." Stories include:

• Big Brother Incorporated
• Dumpster Diving to Trash Activists
• Ecos Corp's 'Win-Win' Spin for Corporate Environmentalism
• Managing Activism: Book Review

If you think corporations are doing a bad job of disclosing their internal finances, what kind of job do you think they're doing of reporting on their public health, social and environmental impacts? Attorney Sanford Lewis has been stalking the corporate social responsibility front for years, and now he's made a movie about it: a 30-minute documentary that "describes the potential and limits of an enforceable, disclosure-based strategy for corporate accountability." Lewis is also working with the Corporate Sunshine Working Group, an "alliance of investors, environmental organizations, unions, and public interest groups working to enforce and expand SEC corporate social and environmental disclosure requirements."

If you're having trouble keeping up with all the corporate scandals, CNN and Money Magazine have created a special web feature called "Fraud Inc." The White House has also launched a website meant to give the impression that the Bush Administration is taking a tough stance against corporate evildoers. The site highlights Bush's executive order last week that creates a Corporate Fraud Task Force in the Justice Department, but it does not mention the fact that the person designated to head the task force, Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, has an embarrassing link himself to corporate fraud.

According to Harold Evans, the real mystery surrounding the president's shady stock dealings with Harken Energy is "why the watchdog media didn't bark during the 2000 presidential election, when new unflattering evidence emerged in the month before the vote. ... During the presidential election, a more thorough investigation was carried out by a group of journalists at a time when Bush was saying he would run the White House like a business corporation. The reporters' conclusion was that candidate Bush's own business model was uncomfortably close to today's increasingly scandalous business practices. The general public, however, was not enabled to weigh this conclusion before it went to vote for president, because the press, print and electronic, signally failed to publicize the facts. ... Why? Why was a press that for years flogged the dead horse of Whitewater so indifferent to a much bigger, fresher story?"

"PricewaterhouseCoopers is providing government relations services to Uzbekistan, the Central Asian country that is a prime ally in President Bush's 'War on Terror,'" O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "It is giving 'strategic advice and assistance' to Uzbekistan about dealing with the U.S. Congress, and Executive Branch on economic and trade relations, according to PWC's 'engagement letter.' The firm is receiving $300,000 a-year for its counsel." According to O'Dwyer's, former Republican Congressman and chair of the House Ways and Means committee Bill Archer will be "heading the work."

Richard Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, has written a letter protesting the U.S. State Department's "slipshod, deceptive, and, now, even thuggish" treatment of one of its reporters. Richard Mowbray was detained by State Department personnel in an apparent attempt to intimidate him into giving up the identity of a whistleblower who has provided Mowbray with confidential documents about "Visa Express," the controversial policy through which citizens of Saudi Arabia (including three of the 9/11 hijackers) have been able to obtain expedited U.S. visas. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mowbray's harassment "is of a piece with State's refusal to press Saudi Arabia on the plight of American women held in that country against their will. State's instinct is always to attack Americans who raise questions, instead of pressuring the Saudis on behalf of U.S. interests."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Pentagon officials also are drafting proposals to ban strikes by contract workers, eliminate federal personnel rules protecting civilian workers at the Pentagon and bypass environmentalists in Congress. Some proposals are more provocative. They include allowing the Pentagon to send its initiatives directly to Capitol Hill before other agencies could review them. Once there, the legislation would require Congress to vote quickly, with only limited debate." Cindy Williams, a former director of national security studies for the Congressional Budget Office, notes that these proposals are coming from "an administration that for a year and a half has been consistently secretive about everything, and has a record of trying to preserve their secrets even from people within the government who should know them, so this has to be seen within that context."

"British American Tobacco (BAT) has vowed to plow on with its corporate social responsibility program (CSR) -- despite criticism that its first-ever CSR report is simply a PR exercise," PR Week writes. BAT's released its CSR report last week "after a series of face-to-face forums designed to establish dialogue with its critics." But according to PR Week, more than 130 organizations targeted by BAT refused to participate in the dialogue. The UK anti-smoking group Action on Smoking called BAT's initiative "worthless" and "a PR exercise." PR Week reports no other tobacco company has published a CSR report.

WorldCom has hired APCO Worldwide to do damage control concerning the company's $3.8 billion accounting fraud reports PR Week. "The commitment initially was to being forthright, open and honest," APCO CEO Margery Kraus said referring to talks between WorldCom and APCO about a PR strategy before the crisis. "That commitment has certainly increased because that is an important way for the company to operate," Kraus said. According to PR Week, part of APCO's WorldCom strategy is "emphasizing that its current woes were the responsibility of the prior management team."

PR giant Weber Shandwick (WS) is helping the United Senior Association (USA), a 1.5 million member organization, with its PR needs. USA is backing the prescription drug bill that was passed by the House on June 28. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports, "That bill is backed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which has made 'educational grants' to USA. PhRMA supports the House measure because it bans the government from setting prices for prescription drugs. It is against a more expansive drug plan that is being introduced in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Tim Ryan, a former PhRMA staffer, is the WS executive in charge of the USA account. He said WS created ads in support of the House measure, but would not go into detail about overall strategy." O'Dwyer's also reports that the AARP, a 35 million member group, is critical of the House bill, saying it has a serious "coverage gap."

Despite a complaint by Commercial Alert and threats of legal action from the Federal Trade Commission, most of the Web's largest search engines have not yet complied with federal requirements that they inform users about deceptive "pay for placement" deals that smuggle commercial placements into search results. (One bright exception, according to USA Today, is Google.com, whose founders have "fiercely protected Google's editorial integrity.")

"Madison Avenue, facing growing legislative threats to one of the advertising industry's most lucrative categories, is stepping up the fight to protect its freedom to pitch prescription drugs directly to consumers. Drug companies, agencies and their media allies who have benefited handsomely from the flood of ads beat back one recent measure in the House of Representatives. ... The category of direct-to-consumer ads did not even exist until five years ago. Before 1997, broad curbs prevented pharmaceutical makers from mounting any significant efforts, and they aimed most of their spending directly at health care professionals. But since the Food and Drug Administration loosened its strictures against those ads, primarily by making it much easier to promote drugs with commercials, the category has boomed. ... Indeed, in a survey last month...25 percent of respondents said they had been prompted by direct-to-consumer ads to call or visit a doctor to discuss the product being advertised. ... The agencies are being joined by lobbyists for media that would lose ad revenue if Congress tightened rules for direct-to-consumer ads." A critical look at such ads is found at the Boston Women's Health Book Collective website.

Investigative journalist Dan Moldea has created a web service providing links to public-information sources for investigating members of the Bush family and their political and financial interests, including lots of information that has been under-reported in the mass media.

An Associated Press story speculates today that Wisconsin hunters, having killed deer in the area of the state known to be infected with mad cow-like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), might have spread the disease around the state by taking carcasses back to their homes and dumping them in the environment. Yes, that is a possibility, but not the most obvious possibility. Feeding rendered byproducts is a much more obvious threat to spread CWD around the state, the nation and to other livestock. Extensive supplement feeding of wild deer to grow big antlers has gone on in Wisconsin's CWD eradication zone, and in fact all over much of the US. The supplements contain protein, minerals, and binders (fat), much of it from rendered slaughterhouse waste, the same stuff that amplified and spread mad cow disease in England. In Wisconsin in 1995 alone over 26,000 road-killed deer were rendered into meat and bone meal used in animal feed. Unlike Britain and Europe, the US still feeds billions of pounds of mammalian rendered byproduct back to livestock. As we document in our book Mad Cow USA, US feed regulations are so weak that cattle blood is used in calf feed. Such policies are inviting a disaster that could dwarf Britain's mad cow crisis since the US is the biggest meat producing country in the world.

The Spinsanity.org website has on occasion published insightful commentaries on misleading uses of political rhetoric in the United States. In July 2002, however, Spinsanity itself published a deceptive attack on the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). After FAIR criticized U.S. newspapers for applauding the April 2002 attempted military coup against Venezuela's elected president, Spinsanity editor Ben Fritz rose to the defense of the newspapers. Spinsanity has published a portion of Fritz's exchange with PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton, but Rampton's final response can only be found here.

In the last decade, 26 countries have enacted formal statutes guaranteeing their citizens' right of access to government information. Now freedom of information advocates have a global internet link: freedominfo.org, a virtual network that offers summaries of existing laws governing access to information in 45 countries, along with current news and analysis.

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, coverage of hard news skyrocketed and ratings went off the charts. Since then, however, "the networks are slipping back into their bad, old habits," which authors Leonard Downie and Robert Kaiser describe as "the shallowness, the obsessive attention to celebrities, and the pandering to advertisers that has crept in to news gathering during the last decade."

"Thanks to a loophole in the federal lobbying law, some companies and individuals - especially those pursuing controversial or potentially embarrassing causes - are using coalitions to conceal their identities," writes New York Times reporter Alison Mitchell. Examples of these "stealth coalitions" include the "Section 877 Coalition," which lobbied to help wealthy Americans evade taxes by giving up U.S. citizenship.

Seven years ago our book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, broke the story of how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was disposing of toxic sewage sludge by calling it "biosolids, a natural organic fertilizer," and allowing it to be dumped on farmland across the US. Today 70% of the nation's toxic sewage sludge is spread on cropland, a major environmental scandal and a threat to public health. Reuters reports that a National Academy of Sciences panel, led by Thomas Burke of Johns Hopkins University's department of health policy, urged the EPA to assess the risks from sludge. "There is a serious lack of health-related information about populations exposed to treated sewage sludge," Burke said. Meanwhile EPA microbiologist David Lewis, who has broken ranks with the agency's official pro-sludge position, has published a study of people living near areas where sewage sludge is used as fertilizer, showing that they are often "plagued with infections" and symptoms including burning eyes, burning lungs, skin rashes and other symptoms of chemical irritation. Notwithstanding the courage of whistleblowers like Lewis, however, asking the EPA to investigate sewage sludge is like asking Enron to investigate itself. As citizen activists like Jim Bynum have proven, the EPA has been the driving force behind dumping toxic sludge on farmland and then harassing and belittling victims of sludge poisoning.

SatireWire.com has posted a couple of clever spoofs regarding the current wave of corporate fraud scandals. One story reports, "the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that corporate earnings statements should be protected as works of art, as they 'create something from nothing.'" Another states, "Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border ... Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense. 'They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues,' said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. 'Right in front of my daughters.'"

Martha Stewart has hired the Brunswick Group to massage her image in the wake of allegations that she profited from insider trading.

The latest bulletin from the Clearinghouse for Educational Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) features an elegant crique of the National Committee for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a right-wing front group that campaigns for tobacco and Republicans and against the environment. While attacking the environmental movement as an "ecoterrorist fundraising machine," NCPPR director Amy Ridenour herself rakes in a fat salary raised through deceptive fundraising appeals, including one "that targeted the elderly, leading them to believe their social security benefits would be cut off if they did not send money. ... NCPPR mailed 160 appeal letters over four months to an 86 year old woman who stayed awake nights worrying about whether she would continue to receive social security if she didn't send money.

"You get huge leverage for your dollars," Roger Hertog told fellow wealthy donors at a recent national conference for right-wing think tanks including the Heritage Foundation and the Cato, Manhattan, and American Enterprise institutes. Hertog pointed out that a mere $70 million in donations has helped conservatives reframe the national debate on topics including antitrust law, Social Security privatization, welfare and affirmative action. Robert Kuttner, who attended the event as a "token liberal," was impressed by the right's realization that ideas matter in politics. "It has been a while since a progressive idea, per se, transformed politics," Kuttner writes. "A generation ago, activists in the streets were energized by books such as Betty Friedan's The Feminist Mystique, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed, and Mike Harrington's The Other America. These in turn transformed national policy. ... It was breathtaking to see the policy strategists of the other side preen for the edification of their steadfast funders -- the culmination of a 25-year strategic alliance between organized business, ideological conservatism, advocacy research, and the Republican Party. Hertog was right: $70 million a year is chump change to the American elite, but invested strategically in the battle of ideas, it yields a bountiful political harvest."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has joined senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy in warning that the Bush Administration's proposed new cabinet-level Homeland Security Department threatens long-standing American freedoms while eliminating legal safeguards necessary to keep the agency open and accountable to the public. ACLU warns that the Bush proposal will "create an enormous agency with massive authority -- including more armed federal agents with arrest powers than any other branch of government." Bush also wants to exclude the new agency from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and whistleblower protections -- "the very law that helped expose intelligence-gathering missteps before September 11."

The University of Wales in the UK will mark the first anniversary of 9/11 by hosting an international conference about TV news and transnational audiences. According to conference organizers, "The news media are central arenas of political conflict and public debate. The proliferation of satellite news channels brings new transnational configurations of audiences into being that may have unpredictable consequences for states, governance and citizenship. This conference will bring together academics, journalists and policy-makers to analyse and evaluate the role played by television news in mediating the events of September 11 and ensuing conflicts."

"Who wears the pants on The Best Damn Sports Show Period? Why, the advertisers, literally and figuratively. In the latest example of how television programming and advertising are becoming increasingly indistinguishable, Levi Strauss & Company paid for an actor featured in a commercial for its Dockers pants brand to appear on the show on Fox Sports Net, a cable TV channel owned by the News Corporation and Cablevision Systems. ... 'Commercials are getting insinuated into every part of TV programming,' said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, an organization that seeks to curtail what its members consider the overcommercialization of the media. 'It's a profit-driven race to the bottom. ... That's why we encourage people to turn off the set.' "

The Ad Council, a non-profit advertising company funded by corporations, is launching an advertising "campaign for freedom" in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. The New York Times notes that the Ad Council was launched in 1942 to propagandize for the US war effort. A Stay Free magazine interview with professor Inger Stole notes that the Ad Council bragged then it would "out Goebbel Goebbels." The New York Times article quotes media critic Mark Crispin Miller who "called the ads unfocused and exploitative. 'The campaign is inappropriate because these ads are not thought-provoking but emotionally manipulative. They are bits of rousing propaganda. What we need now in a time of terror is more information, more truth, more clarity of mind. The Ad Council is merely giving us a kind of feel-good blather for the nation's couch potatoes.' "

Nichols/Dezenhall, a "brass-knuckled, Machiavellian" PR firm that specializes in attacking critics of its corporate clients, is profiled in the June 29 National Journal. "Corporations live in mortal terror of being seen as ungentle," says company founder Eric Dezenhall. "They live in fear of a nun with a guitar showing up at their annual meeting to protest something. But that nun isn't always innocent." Clients of Nichols/Dezenhall have included Motel 6, the Foundation for Biomedical Research, the American Chemistry Council, the Meat Industry Council, and Browning-Ferris Industries. "Fortune 500 companies in such fields as pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and food and beverages." In addition to harassing activists, N/D hires former FBI and CIA agents for assignments "including psychological profiling, following the money of our clients' adversaries, international investigations, and security issues." In a presentation to the National Pork Producers' Council, Dezenhall explained his philosophy by quoting Al Capone: "You can get more with a smile, a kind word, and a gun than with a smile and a kind word."

Behind the scenes of American politics, the powerful American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been quietly pulling the strings of state legislatures. "The organization's reach is impressive: More than one-third of state legislators are ALEC members, and about 100 hold senior leadership positions," writes Nick Penniman. "Launched in 1973 by conservative activists and politicians such as Paul Weyrich, Jesse Helms, Jack Kemp, and Henry Hyde, ALEC began as an organ of the New Right." Today it "channels most of its firepower into the anti-regulatory, anti-environmental fight," drafting model legislation such as the "Prevailing Wage Repeal Act," blocking action on global warming, and stroking the egos of politicians by giving out "Legislator of the Year" awards to elected officials who show particular valiance in serving corporate interests.