The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its own citizens - Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja - is a familiar part of the debate over whether to go to war. According to a controversial article by Stephen C. Pelletiere, however, the facts surrounding that claim have been selectively presented and distorted. "I am in a position to know," he writes, "because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair." Pelletiere also suggests that water, rather than oil, may be the main resource at stake in the upcoming war. "We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most extensive river system in the Middle East. ... In the 1990s there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change. Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades - not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water."

The Federal Government of Australia has given the Hill & Knowlton PR firm a $300,000 contract to to promote a controversial national nuclear waste dump planned near Woomera in South Australia. Meanwhile, a green coalition has pledged 1 per cent of that figure from its comparatively small funds to launch a "counter-offensive." Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran supports the plan, even though only "a handful" of citizens have submitted comments in support of it. This isn't H&K's first nuclear client. They also handled some of the PR for Metropolitan Edison during its near-meltdown crisis at Three Mile Island.

Responding to reports of rising vegetarianism among teenagers, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association "responded to the looming vegetarian crisis by launching a website, Cool 2B Real, in an attempt to link meat consumption with some degree of hipness. The site, which looks like a cross between a Barbie fan page and a Taco Bell ad (beef-filled tacos and gigantic hamburgers dot the screen), extols teenage girls to 'Keep it Real' - 'real' as in a person who eats beef, preferably three or four times a day. Visitors are also invited to send e-cards to their 'real friends' and to tell the world why they are 'real girls' (because they eat beef burritos, of course!)" But Time couldn't resist adding its own pro-beef spin to the story, stating that "New findings from the University of Minnesota link teen vegetarians to a less health-conscious lifestyle than that of their carnivorous peers." Actually, the latest U of M research shows exactly the opposite.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush asked Americans to imagine what would have happened if the Sept. 11 hijackers had been armed with poison gas or germs. "However, U.S. officials and private analysts said Bush's suggestion that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein might give such weapons to terrorists - and the implication that the risk of American retaliation can no longer deter him - stretches the analysis of U.S. intelligence agencies to, and perhaps beyond, the limit," reports Warren P. Strobel.

Integrity and good behavior based on "principles" are more important than rules of corporate governance, according to Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chief executive of Swiss-based foods giant Nestle (which recently demonstrated its commitment to "principles" by attempting to sue the famine-stricken nation of Ethiopia). Speaking at the same panel in Davos, Switzerland, Margery Kraus of the APCO PR firm offered similar sentiments: "I agree one can never legislate a culture of integrity and trust - it has to start on the inside of companies and build out." (For links to APCO's sordid history and Kraus's work setting up tobacco front groups, see the item below titled "Nice Work if You Can Get It." )

ReclaimDemocracy.org has created a web resource tracking the Kasky vs. Nike case, in which a California activist is suing the sportswear company for making misleading statements about its overseas labor practices.

The Holmes Report, a PR industry trade newsletter, has published the results of its survey on the "best PR firms to work for." Winners included:

• Fleishman Hillard, whose employees covertly infiltrated and tape-recorded a group that works to stop teenage tobacco addiction
• Ketchum Communications, which drafted a Clorox crisis plan that called for labeling environmentalists as terrorists, and also helped fuel the diet drug craze of the 1990s
• APCO Associates, whose sleazy work for big tobacco, WorldCom and Russian robber baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been detailed here previously.

(Note: APCO is listed in the print edition of the Holmes Report but inexplicably doesn't appear in the online version of this story.)

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 has given corporations increased power to censor speech that they don't like. It severely curtails the "fair use" doctrine which allows artists, writers and scholars to use fragments of copyrighted works without permission for the purposes of education, criticism and parody. Kembrew McLeod notes that trademark law has been used to spike a web site that parodied Dow Chemical, and Vivendi Universal studios used it to kill VivendiUniversalSucks.com on grounds that "certain members of the public ... would be likely to understand 'sucks' as a banal and obscure addition to the reasonably well-known mark Vivendi Universal." Just to prove the absurdity of the law, McLeod has taken out a trademark on the phrase "freedom of expression" itself. "Apparently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office did not find the idea of someone controlling this phrase morally, socially and politically unsettling, and it granted me ownership of the mark in 1998," he writes.

"Newspapers and political organizations are engaged in technological one-upmanship over 'AstroTurf' - letters to the editor that look like authentic grass-roots responses from readers but are not," reports Jennifer Lee. "Groups like the Republican National Committee and Planned Parenthood are using Web sites and e-mail lists to help disseminate form letters to publications across the country." However, the people who edit the letters pages are fighting back: "Armed with Internet search engines and e-mail lists of their own, they are mapping Web sites and alerting each other about the form letters appearing in their mailboxes."

As it prepares for war with Iraq, the new White House Office of Global Communications (OGC) is "revving up a global effort to defuse its image as arrogant and overbearing," reports Randall Mikkelsen. The State Department is creating an Islamic media center in London to manage U.S. communications with the al Jazeera satellite television network. The OGC is also organizing "daily telephone conference calls to coordinate foreign policy messages among U.S. government agencies and representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This is supplemented by a 'Global Messenger' e-mail of talking points sent almost daily to administration officials, U.S. embassies, Congress and others." The Bush administration's effort to overcome its arrogant image suffered a blow recently when Europeans responded negatively to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal of French and German opposition to U.S. war talk as an example of "old Europe" out of touch with the world.

The Council of American Muslims for Understanding, an organization created by the U.S. State Department, has been trying to impress Muslims abroad with glowing portrayals of religious diversity and tolerance in the United States. Unfortunately, the Bush administration's supporters in the Christian Coalition of America (CCA) have been sending a different message. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling an upcoming CCA conference an "Islamophobic hate-fest." Speakers include Daniel Pipes, who says "increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews," and WorldNetDaily.com Editor Joseph Farah, who says "Islam has been at war with the West, with Christianity, with Judaism ... ever since the days of Muhammad." Former CCA head Pat Robertson has also been a regular contributor to the rhetorical war, saying that Muslims are worse than Hitler.

When President Bush gave a speech at a St. Louis warehouse announcing his new tax plan, he stood against what appeared to be a backdrop of cardboard boxes stamped "MADE IN U.S.A." The backdrop, however, was actually a painted facade. Bush's advance team had used pieces of white paper to cover over the "Made in China" stamps on hundreds of real boxes in the warehouse.

Tim Blackstone, who left his career as a porn star to become a financial journalist before finally stooping to public relations, has been fined for insider trading. A British court found him guilty of buying and selling shares worth more than £13,000 based on insider knowledge of top secret takeover plans being hatched by a company to which he was a PR adviser.

A survey by the Edelman PR firm has found what it calls a "trust vacuum" in Europe, as the public's confidence in businesses and governments hits an all-time low. Moreover, reports Julia Day, "Public relations executives have taken over from estate agents as the professionals the public trust least, according to a survey out today."

"The latest poll results testify to growing doubts about President Bush and the policies he is pursuing. The Gallup and Princeton Research Center polls cited above both have Bush's job approval ratings at 58 percent, the first time he has dipped below 60 percent since the September 11 tragedy," writes Ruy Teixeira. Bush's handling of the economy has the approval of only 48 percent of respondents; health-care policy, 43 percent; abortion, 39 percent; and 60 percent want the administration to take time to find an alternative to war with Iraq.

A new poster depicts President Bush speaking on the floor of Congress. Or is it the stock exchange trading floor? Or is it really both? Produced by Public Campaign, which works for campaign finance reform, the poster includes thirteen charts detailing how big corporate campaign contributions from leading industries are buying America, what they are getting for their political investments and what the rest of us pay in higher taxes, dirty air and water, billions lost from our retirement funds, and the like.

During the first war in the Persian Gulf, U.S. citizens saw mostly sanitized images of smart bombs hitting non-human targets. Images of death and suffering were kept to a minimum, thanks in part to the military's pool system which controlled the movements and activities of most journalists. Photographer Peter Turnley refused to participate in the pool system and managed to get pictures that few people have seen. "Many people have asked the question 'how many people died' during the war with Iraq and the question has never been well answered," he writes. "Most of the photographs I made of this scene have never been published anywhere and this has always troubled me." Now a collection of his photographs is available on the web.

The Columbia Journalism Review's Neil Hickey ponders the impact that cable TV is having on news coverage. "The big story in cable news is the effect that supercharged competition is having on the quality of the prime time cable news schedule. All three networks are battling with the same weapons: talk, opinion, punditry, debate - not to mention the psychedelic, color-saturated graphics, a rataplan of computer-generated sound and screens so crowded with info-bits, including a traveling zipper of text across the bottom, that they look like pinball machines in a penny arcade. ... An evening of cable news watching can leave one overstimulated and underinformed n endless garbaging of opinion with little hard information except for scraps of news at the top of the hour."

'War Is Sell,' and the techniques being used by the US are familiar marketing and PR strategies. The Financial Times notes today that the Bush Administration has "published a dossier depicting Saddam Hussein's government as an 'apparatus of lies', as President George W. Bush maintained a high-pitched note of impatience with the Iraqi leader. ... However, the White House's own version of agitprop also skates over some aspects of history. ... The Bush administration has become increasingly focused on the public relations battle, as the antiwar movement has gathered momentum in the US and Europe. Mr Bush yesterday signed an executive order formally creating the Office of Global Communications , which has been working informally for the last six months trying to spread the US message in sceptical parts of the world."

"It looks like the Bush Administration is astroturfing, trying to artificially create the appearance of a grassroots movement supporting their policies," writes Jules Agee. "A Google search on the phrase 'demonstrating genuine leadership' returns a number of nearly identical letters sent to the editors of various newspapers and publications this month, each one with the name of a different individual attached." Some alert bloggers traced the letters to a Republican party website that offers gifts such as coolers, tote bags and mouse pads in exchange for sending letters to the editor. When asked about the form letters, one newspaper editor commented, "The practice of mass submitting letters is old. We have been receiving these types of letters for some time. ... I'm just shocked that it has taken so long for others to expose it. This fad begun over three years ago." But some newspapers liked the letters so much that they published them more than once, over the signatures of different local residents.

When they aren't helping clients cope with real disasters, PR professionals hone their skills by simulating fake ones and rehearsing their responses. PR Week recounts the advice of "four seasoned crisis experts" as they respond to a disease outbreak at a fictional seafood plant. Their advice:

• "Call all the families that have been affected to let them know that we care."
• "We need to devise what I call a constituent audience matrix."
• "Should we mention the previous outbreak in the statement we put out?"
• "No, absolutely not."
• "I see the CEO outside reading a statement. It's not a press conference, it's a press briefing. You're not there to answer questions. You're there to demonstrate your concern."

Howard Kurtz reports that the New York Times has spiked a "My Job" column by Jeff Barge, a Manhattan public relations executive who described planting stories in major newspapers and blasted the PR industry as "a deceptive business" in which newspapers are fed "quotes that are just plain fabricated by the PR people." According to Times editor Judith Dobrzynski, Barge's piece was "too self-promotional." (The mention of Barge appears in the bottom half of Kurtz's column, under the subhead, "Unfit to Print.")

After a recent article in the British Medical Journal detailed drug company sponsorship of medical meetings on "female sexual dysfunction," a PR firm with clients in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry has launched a global campaign to "counter" the BMJ report. Michelle Lerner of the HCC De Facto PR firm said it would "violate ethical guidelines" to disclose the identity of her client.

"It's no easy job to save market share for expensive antihypertensive drugs when headlines read 'When Cheaper Is Also Better,'" writes Jeanne Lenzer. A major new study shows that the expensive drugs used to treat hypertension "were no better than a diuretic. In some instances they were not quite as safe - even though they were substantially more expensive." To minimize the health community's awareness of this result, drug companies used sneaky tactics such as sending key doctors off on a sightseeing junket to keep them from hearing about the study at a conference of the American College of Cardiology. The same thing may be happening with other drugs, according to Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. "A lot of newer drugs may not only not be better - they may be worse," she said. "Most drug companies don't want a head to head [study]. And the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] allows trials to run that are rigged where a drug is tested against placebo or a drug of the same class that is inadequately dosed, or they look at the wrong group of people or the wrong endpoints so their drug looks good." Adds Dr. Jerome Hoffman, professor of medicine and emergency medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, "we abdicate our responsibility, as well as risk the public health, if we allow proprietary companies, whose primary interest has to be selling their wares, to guard the public hen house."

Every February the powerful Public Affairs Council (PAC) holds its annual National Grassroots Conference for Corporations and Associations in some lovely southern location. PR Watch wanted to attend and report on this year's confab in Key West. We covered the 1997 conference and uncovered a goldmine of hidden information on how corporations wage powerful campaigns at the grassroots to promote their special interest agendas. So-called "corporate grassroots" is where PR, corporate power and lobbying all come together, and other than PR Watch almost no one reports on it. Unfortunately, Doug Pinkham the president of PAC has informed us that because "you are no doubt planning to run another special issue about grassroots programs ... you won't be permitted to attend." That's a shame, especially given the 80 degree temperature difference in February between our home in Wisconsin and the PAC conference in Key West. To get a flavor of the meeting we did cover, read our reporting in the first quarter 1997 issue of PR Watch, to which Doug Pinkham refers.

"If you put the First Amendment up for a nationwide vote, we're not so sure it would pass," reports Howard Kurtz. "When war breaks out, many folks believe that the people with pens and microphones should just get out of the way and let the soldiers do their jobs." According to a recent opinion poll, two-thirds of the public believes the government should have the right to stop the media from disclosing military secrets, and 56% say news organizations are more obliged to support the government in wartime than to question the military's handling of the war.

Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY), which owns a nuclear power plant near Brattleboro, VT, has been conducting an opinion poll using leading questions designed to influence public opinion, not measure it. "They were trying to sneak in some propaganda disguised as an objective poll," said one local resident after being called. "They claimed they didn't know who was paying for the poll." ENVY has been fighting to keep the plant open as town meetings convene to discuss its fate. Last year, the company spent $250,000 on a public relations campaign that narrowly defeated an anti-nuke ballot initiative whose supporters only spent $500.

"The U.S. State Department has suspended its ad campaign extolling Muslim life in the U.S., barely a month after propaganda czar Charlotte Beers pitched 'paid media' as the best way to influence the Islamic World," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. The TV ads were controversial in the countries where they aired, and government-run channels in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan refused to run them. "Islamic opinion is influenced more by what the U.S. does than anything it can say," comments an advertising executive quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

The US Supreme Court will rule in Nike vs. Kasky whether Nike's statements on the working conditions in its Asian factories are commercial speech and subject to truth-in-advertising laws. Nike appealed a May 2002 California Supreme Court decision that says when a corporation makes "factual representations about its own products or its own operations, it must speak truthfully." Nike says that the First Amendment protects its statements. Thirty-two media companies and organizations -- including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Tribune Company, the Hearst Corporation, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and the National Association of Broadcasters -- have filed a brief on behalf of Nike. They argue that reporters would not be able to get company executives to talk freely about their industry because of a fear of lawsuits if a company is believed to be lying and that this would squelch free and open public debate. Activists at organizations like ReclaimDemocracy.org, however, see this defense as a red herring. They characterize the case as a question of corporate personhood and argue that corporations do not have a Constitutional right to free speech. Nike has assembled an "all-star legal team" to argue its case.

"As the military buildup continues in the Persian Gulf, another conflict is brewing at home, among MSNBC, CNN and the Fox News Channel. ... Recalling how CNN made its name during the gulf war, each channel is trying to distinguish itself and outdo its rivals. ... As a result, the reports are taking on a hypercharged tone as the cable networks try to persuade viewers ahead of time that they are the ones to watch should war break out. ... The networks now generally use a 'whooshing' sound to precede an on-screen headline. There is far more frequent use of the words 'Breaking News' or 'News Alert,' even for events that in the past would not have called for urgent treatment. ... At the very least, Graham T. Allison, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said the competition among the networks is adding to a public sense that war is inevitable."

"What would Americans think if they knew that their best newspaper, The New York Times, had allowed one of its national-security reporters to negotiate a book deal that needed the approval of the CIA?" writes Allan Wolper. "What would they say if they knew the CIA was editing the book while the country is days or weeks away from a war with Iraq and is counting on the Times to monitor the intelligence agency?"

The Pentagon is training civilian reporters on its military bases for war reporting. "One hundred twenty journalists trained last November at the Quantico Marine Corps Base and the Norfolk Naval Station; another wave of reporters trained last month at Fort Benning, and another session is scheduled this month at Fort Dix in New Jersey," Democracy Now reports. "The training teaches reporters battlefield survival, military policy and weapons expertise." In a lively roundtable discussion on Democracy Now with military reporters and a Pentagon spokesperson, Harper's publisher Rick MacArthur calls the Pentagon's reporter training "innovative public relations" and a "con job."

Front page attention in the New York Times is priceless publicity. Heavy-handed censorship at UC Berkeley has backfired, landing a fundraising appeal by the school's Emma Goldman Papers Project on the Times front page. "Goldman died in 1940, more than two decades after being deported to Russia with other anarchists in the United States who opposed World War I. Now her words are the source of deep consternation once again, this time at the University of California, which has housed Goldman's papers for the past 23 years. In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression, university officials have refused to allow a fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subjects of suppression of free speech and her opposition to war. The university deemed the topics too political as the country prepares for possible military action against Iraq."

"Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company, has turned to Hill and Knowlton to devise its communications strategy," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "H&K's communications counsel comes as fear spreads of a big spike in energy prices triggered by the U.S. invasion of Iraq." Hill & Knowlton is the PR firm notorious for its deceptive PR campaign in 1990 to promote the first U.S. war in the Persian Gulf.

Detroit TV stations are refusing to broadcast the Detroit Project's TV ads linking terrorism to gas-guzzing SUVs, and industry-funded think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute have jumped in to attack the ads. Actually, the marketing link between SUVs and violence may run deeper than the Detroit Project realizes. The SUV craze got its start thanks to the first war in the Persian Gulf, which inspired automakers to adapt military vehicles for the consumer market. As even Fortune magazine admits, the auto industry has been deliberately marketing rollover-prone gaz-guzzlers as vehicles of aggression that appeal to consumers' "reptilian" instincts. Small wonder that, according to the industry's own market research, "the SUV is the car of choice for the nation's most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be."

"A leading television producer and two major advertisers have joined forces to present a live variety show with no commercial interruptions. Instead, the advertising messages will be incorporated into the show. The advertisers, which so far include Pepsi and Nokia phones, are buying six hours of air time to create what the program's producer, Michael Davies, called 'a contemporary, hip Ed Sullivan show' for the youth-oriented WB Network, part of AOL Time Warner. ... Although the network commercial is far from extinct - advertising spending increased for television in the last year - many executives are concerned that a decline in the effectiveness of the 30-second commercial could rock the economic foundation of broadcast television, which depends on advertising as its main source of revenue. ... Donny Deutsch, the chairman of Deutsch Advertising, said: 'The 30-second commercial is not doomed, certainly not in our lifetimes. Somebody is going to pay for TV. But advertisers have to be more and more creative, whether with product placement or something like they're doing with this show.' "

PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton participated in December in the World Information Conference in Amsterdam, which explored both positive and negative aspects of new information technologies. An interviewer captured his thoughts on some things that grassroots movements can learn from the PR industry: "There is an interesting seepage that's always going on as they try to control the thinking of others but they are forced to adopt a lot of the language and the symbolism of the people they are opposing. That has always been a very interesting aspect of PR. In a real way, at the very moment that they are trying to control others they themselves are losing control."

"Dow Chemical and Dow's PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, tried to shut down some parody sites and ended up bringing themselves a heap of negative publicity," writes Joyce Slaton. It all began when the Yes Men, impersonating Dow, created a site detailing Dow's responsibility in the Bhopal disaster. When Dow and B-M responded with legal threats, the story "was covered by tickled journalists from the London Times, The New York Times and many other sources and organizations, including Greenpeace. ... The upshot is that thousands upon thousands more people heard about Bhopal and the shameful conduct of both Dow and Burson-Marsteller than would have had the stung corporations not chosen to respond with threats."

"Two former government scientists who spent years investigating stress in dolphin populations charged this week that superiors at their federally financed laboratory shut down their research because it clashed with policy goals of the Clinton and Bush administrations. The scientists ... said their research indicated that the practice of chasing and encircling dolphins to catch tuna exposed the dolphins to dangerous amounts of stress. The accusations, by Dr. Albert Myrick, a wildlife biologist, and Dr. Sarka Southern, a research associate, came days after the Bush administration relaxed the criteria for declaring tuna netted by Mexican and other foreign fishing boats to be 'dolphin safe.' In making that declaration last week, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans said that chasing and corralling dolphins and the tuna that often accompany them into purse nets had 'no significant adverse impact' on the dolphins. The ruling cleared the way for Mexican and other Latin American tuna producers to place a dolphin-safe label on cans for American shelves."

Theater student Natalie Alvarez takes a close look at Jonathan Ressler's "guerrilla advertising" company, Big Fat, Inc. In order to bypass consumer skepticism about advertising, Ressler hires "real people" to talk up his clients' products in bars, parks and other public places. "We plant a group of people in a bar or other public setting and instruct them to use a brand, perform a ritual, repeat a sound bite, and involve others in the activity," Ressler explains. As these "secret agents of capitalism" invade our daily routines, Alvarez ponders the blurred boundaries between illusion and reality, theater and life. "It's The Truman Show," says an advertising executive. "Did your wife marry you because she loves you, or because she wants you to buy a certain brand of soap?"

Bob Burton and Andy Rowell deconstruct the "social responsibility report" of British American Tobacco, the world's second largest tobacco company, in the latest PR Watch. Among their findings, "BAT's social report disclosed that three of its employees had been killed and 37 involved in serious accidents during 2001, but omitted any estimate of the number of people who had been killed or seriously affected by consuming its products. ... If BAT had complied with this component of the GRI guidelines, its social responsibility report would have included the approximate one million people expected to die prematurely each year for the next three decades from using its products--a figure that Action on Smoking and Health derives from World Health Organization estimates." (Our subscribing members received this issue already last month. Please consider becoming a subscriber. Donations from people like you are what make our work possible.)

As we detail in our book Trust Us, We're Experts , 'junk science' is a PR pejorative used by corporations to smear environmentalists and public interest scientists. Danish professor and author Bjorn Lomborg has been a darling of corporate lobbyists and front groups, as PR Watch has reported most recently in our article on a 2002 meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce. Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Lomborg and his book 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' have been "denounced by a panel of his country's top scientists for engaging in 'scientific dishonesty.' " The Post also noted that " The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and other publications praised the Danish professor, who dismissed many environmental concerns as 'phantom problems created and perpetuated by a self-serving environmental movement.' A Washington Post book reviewer concluded that the book was 'a magnificent achievement.' "

"This is George," a girl's voice says. "This is the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The screen then shows a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." The picture switches to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his S.U.V." The ads, modeled after the Drug Council's TV commercials alleging that drug users support terrorism, are the brainchild of author and columnist Arianna Huffington. But some TV stations are refusing to run them.

Officially, President Bush is claiming that he sees war with Iraq as an option of last resort, and many members of the American public seem to have taken him at his word. In reality, say journalists and others who have closely observed the key players in decision-making positions at the White House, they have already decided on war. In the Fourth Quarter 2002 issue of PR Watch, released on the web this week, Laura Miller examines the PR and marketing campaign currently underway to convince the public that war is necessary and inevitable. (Our subscribing members received this issue already last month. Please consider becoming a subscriber. Donations from people like you are what make our work possible.)

Enron Corp. ran a formidable lobbying machine in Washington and state capitals that gained favorable treatment from state and national governments on no fewer than 49 occasions from the late 1980s to the company's scandal-ridden bankruptcy last year. A new report from the Center for Public Integrity lists the favors Enron obtained, the former government officials who worked for Enron, and 28 separate coalitions that aided Enron's lobbying activities. The list of Enron-affiliated front groups and fundees includes the Alliance for Lower Electric Rates Today, Americans for Affordable Electricity, Americans for Fair Taxation, Citizens for a Sound Economy, International Climate Change Partnership, National Wetlands Coalition, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

PR industry analyst Paul Holmes notes that the corporate scandals of last year created a "chronic crisis, as constituents - shareholders, employees, regulators, the public at large - began to question whether the entire American corporate system was hopelessly corrupt." (As an indicator of how bad things got, Holmes was forced to combine Enron, Worldcom and Tyco into a single item in his "top 10" list of the year's worst PR disasters.) "Ordinarily," Holmes writes, "such an epidemic of ill-considered corporate behavior would have elevated the role of the senior corporate communications executive to a permanent place in the CEO's inner circle, and provided a bonanza of new business for public relations firms. But in 2002, those gains conspicuously failed to materialize." Maybe that's because the scandals run so deep that PR can't fix them. "There was no way to spin the kind of outrageous personal and institutional behavior that gave rise to these crises," Holmes writes.

The PR industry needs to mull "a shift in strategy if US goes to war," writes Sherri Deatherage Green. During the first few days of fighting, she says, PR pros should hold off on product promotions. "Few activities could be more futile than pitching stories when war reports fill every second of network time," she writes. "But if military action continues over time, companies should find tasteful and appropriate ways to revive their marketing." Also, "Understatement might be the best messaging approach during wartime. Even companies producing items for the military shouldn't brag about fatter profits."

PR Week continues the industry's preoccupation with managing activism with a variety of articles examining the strategies activists use to advance their causes, "the proactive approach to averting protests," and an article on corporate social responsibility titled "CSR: Beyond Lip Service."

The industry trade publication PR Week has a few kind words to say about Nick Naylor, the fictional PR man who figures as the protagonist in Christopher Buckley's hilarious book, Thank You for Smoking. "He can stun a Clean Lungs conference into silence with a few words about the First Amendment rights of the poor, embattled tobacco companies. He can win over an Oprah audience by turning the tables on those evil health professionals who only care about their (gasp!) budgets." PR Week gushes that PR pros "will recognize and laugh at themselves in this brilliant, morally complex portrayal of a good guy in a rough business. As one of the more savage political strategists once told PR Week, 'This is the most accurate portrayal I've ever seen of what I do all day.'"

When voters elect a Representative they also are frequently launching the education and career of a future corporate lobbyist. Don't pity the retired or (rarely) defeated incumbent because their truly lucrative political career just begins when they join the ranks of millionaire lobbyists. "Dick Armey, the departing House majority leader, summarized the situation in his usual succinct style when he was asked on Friday how much money he would be making in his new job starting this week at Piper Rudnick, a law firm with a large lobbying operation. 'I don't anticipate going hungry,' Mr. Armey replied. ... 'You go from the grovelee to the groveler, [former Representative Robert L. Livingston] said. "It takes a psychological adjustment, but there are compensations.' ... Why do companies like ChevronTexaco , Oracle and Northrop Grumman pay Mr. Livingston fees that are typically $10,000 to $30,000 a month? ... 'When he calls up, people don't say, `Bob who?' ' said Ken Johnson, the spokesman for the energy committee, of Mr. Livingston. 'He's known and respected by a lot of people. He opens a lot of doors.' "

Hoping to create another cash cow like Viagra, the pharmaceutical industry has invented a new disease "female sexual dysfunction." According to journalist Ray Moynihan, industry-funded doctors are circulating a bogus statistic claiming that 43% of women suffer from this condition so they can prescribe drugs to treat it - even though "inhibition of sexual desire is in many situations a healthy and functional response for women faced with stress, tiredness, or threatening patterns of behaviour from their partners." And just to make sure the guys can keep up, one of the doctors is also urging men to take Viagra on a daily basis to "prevent impotence."

HBO Films has finally gotten around to admitting what PR Watch readers knew all along: "allegations of Iraqi soldiers taking babies from incubators (in 1990) ... were never substantiated." This fabrication by the Hill & Knowlton PR firm resurfaced in HBO's December docudrama, "Live from Baghdad" and was subsequently repeated as fact in the Washington Post.

Last week U.N. weapons inspectors swooped in to inspect the Iraqi manufacturing plant that U.S. planes bombed in 1991. Iraq said the plant made infant milk formula; the U.S. said it made biological weapons. Mark Crispin Miller examines the evidence and concludes that Iraq's version was correct. Nevertheless, "Iraq, in trying to publicize the targeting of its civilian infrastructure, had engaged in clumsy propaganda (which backfired in the West), while the US counter-propaganda was apparently disinformation (which succeeded). As we sit and wait for another war against Iraq, we should remember this triumphant bit of spin - and all the other winning lies of Operation Desert Storm."

Propaganda. What does it mean? How does it work? How can we resist it, and live more decently with one another? Randal Marlin, a professor in the department of philosophy at Carleton University, has attempted to answer those questions in a new book that reviewer Martha Sully calls "a fascinating historical study."

Norman Solomon has issued his annual "P.U.-litzer Prizes" for "America's stinkiest media performances." Winners this year include: journalists who falsely reported that Iraq kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors four years ago; Vivendi Universal executive Barry Diller, for his claim that media consolidation is "a natural law"; and right-wing mouth Ann Coulter, for publicly wishing that Timothy McVeigh had bombed the New York Times.

"The Bush administration has put a much tighter lid than recent presidents on government proceedings and the public release of information, exhibiting a penchant for secrecy that has been striking to historians, legal experts and lawmakers of both parties," writes Adam Clymer in a detailed report on the administration's new and wide-ranging secrecy policies.

After Nike conducted a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, California activist Marc Kasky sued them under a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements. "Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same 'free speech' right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives," writes Thom Hartmann. It's true that free speech is an important right for people, but Hartmann points out that "Nike isn't a person - it's a corporation." He analyzes the history of the legal fiction that gives corporations the same rights as people, and suggests that the Kasky case might "begin the process of dismantling the flawed and unconstitutional doctrine of corporate personhood."