GOP pollster Frank Luntz warned in a memo to party leaders: "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable." The administration's recent funding boosts for its Healthy Forests Restoration Act, Pacific salmon recovery programs, the Klamath River Basin (previously targeted by the anti-environmental "Wise Use" movement), and Great Lakes clean up have been slammed by environmentalists as election year damage control targeted to swing states like Oregon, Michigan and Ohio. "God help you if you're waiting for EPA to clean up a toxic waste site outside of a swing state," remarked National Environmental Trust president Phil Clapp.

The UN is pushing for the arrest on war crimes charges of General Wiranto, Indonesia's former military leader and a strong candidate in July's presidential elections. Wiranto has "hired American campaign advisers and published an English translation of his memoirs" to "burnish his image internationally." Major U.S. law firm Alston & Bird is also lobbying to improve Indonesia's image "as a solid ally in President Bush's war on terror and one that is committed to democracy and human rights." A&B's contract is with the commissioner of P.T. Pacific Barito Timber, Indonesia's oldest and largest timber company, which itself has been criticized by environmental and rights groups.

Greg Palast writes that "the future for fake and farcical war propaganda is quite bright indeed. ... So M'Lord Hutton has killed the messenger: the BBC. Should the reporter Gilligan have used more cautious terms? Some criticism is fair. But the extraordinary import of his and Watts' story is forgotten: our two governments bent the information then hunted down the questioners. And now the second invasion of the Iraq war proceeds: the conquest of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Until now, this quasi-governmental outlet has refused to play Izvestia to any prime minister, Labour or Tory. As of today, the independence of the most independent major network on this planet is under attack. 'The bleak future for British journalism' portends darkness for journalists everywhere - the threat to the last great open platform for hard investigative reporting. And frankly, it's a worrisome day for me. I'm not a disinterested by-stander. My most important investigations, all but banned from US airwaves, were developed and broadcast by BBC Newsnight, reporter Watts' program."

For the first time yesterday, George Bush publicly "appeared to back away from his once-emphatic claim that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq." In response to questions about former chief Iraq weapons inspector David Kay's assertions that Iraq destroyed its WMDs years before the U.S. invasion, Bush said the war was justified because Saddam Hussein posed "a grave and gathering threat to America and the world." As WMD claims further lose validity, the administration is now trying "to justify the war as good for humanity." Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch reported that human rights claims could not justify the Iraq war, since "the war was not necessary to stop... atrocities."

"When Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman met a House panel last week to defend her response to mad cow disease, she cited a Harvard University study concluding the risk to public health is minimal. ... The Harvard study, released two years ago, has become a universal defense for Bush administration officials as they have responded to the first cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Canada and then in the United States. But in their rush to embrace 'sound science,' Veneman and others at times mischaracterized the study's purpose, recommendations or conclusions, according to a review by The Oregonian." The USDA paid the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis $800,000 to produce a computer modeling study designed to deny and downplay mad cow risks in the US. Far from being an academic institution, the Harvard Center is an industry-funded front group specializing in producing risk assessments that favor its Fortune 500 supporters. Director George Gray is on the board of the industry-funded right-wing Foundation for Research and the Environment (FREE), and he and the Center's David Reopik recently penned a piece for FREE ridiculing concerns over mad cow disease.

"Last year the Bush Administration encouraged American chemical companies to lobby against European efforts to strengthen the regulation of thousands of chemicals contained in household, industrial and personal products," BushGreenWash.org writes. "When the chemical industry was slow to respond, Administration officials took it upon themselves to launch 'an unusually aggressive campaign' to pressure the European Union into watering down its comprehensive reform efforts. Documents uncovered by the Environmental Health Fund, using the Freedom of Information Act, showed the U.S. State and Commerce departments, Environmental Protection Agency and office of the U.S. Trade Representative, formed an alliance with Dow Chemical Co. and others to ward off regulations they feared would raise the cost of doing business in Europe." Meanwhile, the environmental group Earthjustice recently filed suit against the Bush Administration, asserting that it had allowed a special task force from the chemical industry to lobby secretly and illegally inside the EPA. According to internal documents obtained through FOIA, the chemical industry is seeking to cut U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries biologists out of the oversight process that determines whether or not a pesticide is safe for wildlife.

Corporate-funded think tanks and food industry front groups are rushing into the debate over mad cow disease. This Wednesday, January 28th, the George C. Marshall Institute is hosting a presentation by Harvard Center for Risk Analysis director George Gray, hyping him as "the nation's foremost mad cow expert," although his expertise is in getting money from government agencies and Fortune 500 companies to produce risk studies that favor their positions. Along with the Harvard Center and the Marshall Institute, other groups receiving industry funding and fronting for them on mad cow disease include Elizabeth Whelan's American Council on Science and Health; father and son combo Dennis and Alex Avery of the Hudson Institute; self-named 'Junkman' Steve Milloy of the Cato Institute; and tobacco, booze and fat-food lobbyist Richard Berman and his latest enterprise the Center for Consumer Freedom. Late today, in a major victory for our work here at the Center for Media & Democracy, the Food and Drug Administration agreed with us and banned cattle blood as feed for US cattle. UPI quotes Mad Cow USA co-author John Stauber as saying "The steps announced today ... still fall far short of what is needed. The United States should follow the lead of the EU nations by banning all feeding of slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and testing millions of U.S. cattle for mad cow disease."

"Few could question the sentiment behind the campaign: a fight against cervical cancer. A clutch of famous women, including Liz Hurley, Caprice and Carol Vorderman, signed up to support a crusade to introduce a new NHS screening test that could save the lives of thousands of women. The campaign is due to reach the House of Commons on Wednesday, when MPs will be lobbied on the issue. But an Observer investigation has uncovered how the celebrities have been duped into supporting a sophisticated lobbying campaign secretly orchestrated from Brussels by one of the world's largest public relations firms, Burson-Marsteller. Celebrities contacted by The Observer said they had no knowledge of the lobby group. ... The company, whose headquarters are in New York, has conducted a clandestine lobbying campaign on behalf of Digene, the US biotech firm that would make hundreds of millions of pounds if the tests were introduced in the UK and elsewhere. The idea was to set up a 'grass roots' group of celebrities and other high-profile women that would appear to be an independent body and pressure Ministers to introduce the new screening tests."

"Wal-Mart's very success may be working against it," reports the Washington Post. "[T]he public tends to mistrust institutions that get too mighty." The world's largest retailer, with 4,300 stores and 1.3 million employees, Wal-Mart's woes include a lawsuit for Americans with Disabilities Act violations, federal raids netting some 200 illegal immigrant workers, and charges that employees are encouraged to rely on taxpayer-funded programs for health care. Wal-Mart's response? Run feel good TV ads and increase political donations to become the second-biggest donor in the 2004 election cycle, overwhelmingly to Republicans. "Our critics make an awful lot of noise, and we need to ensure that our side of the issues is heard as well," explained Wal-Mart spokesperson Mona Williams.

A Canadian professor of pediatrics and medicine vows to continue speaking out on the risk of a drug used to treat thalassemia, a hereditary blood disorder. Dr. Nancy Olivieri lost her attempt to get her research on the harmful side effects of deferiprone looked at by the committee for proprietary and medicinal products (CPMP) that regulates drugs in Europe. "This ruling guarantees that only a drug company attempting to sell a drug will control the content of the scientific data submitted or not submitted to the European CPMP," she said. "It no longer matters whether drug companies tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because it's unchallengeable now." PR Watch First Quarter 2003 reported on Olivieri's fight for academic freedom when the drug company that funded her research blocked her from making her findings public.

"To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, the Voice of America and other broadcast services are expanding their programs in Arabic and Persian -- and, soon a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region," George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address. In response, the Toronto Star's editorial page editor emeritus Haroon Siddiqui writes, "There's the Bush doctrine: The mess in the Middle East is to be solved by duplicating regional propaganda with American propaganda." The U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network, which is run by a defense contractor, has drawn much criticism from Iraqis and former employees for being a mouth piece of the Coalition Provisional Authority. The Boston Globe reports that Bush is asking for $80 million this year for the National Endowment for Democracy, up from $39.6 million. The new money is slated to fund groups in the Middle East that support free elections, open markets, a free press, and labor and trade unions. NED, however, has critics on both the right and the left. Terry Allen, from the Chicago-based In These Times, wrote in commentary accompanying a listing of Project Censored's under-reported stories of 2003 that "using the same conduit Reagan used to fund the contras, the National Endowment for Democracy, the George W. Bush administration had funneled money to Venezuelan Opposition.

"The United States spent $75.1 billion last year on medical expenses, such as drugs, doctor visits and hospitalizations, related to obesity, according to a study published this month in the journal Obesity Research," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The study, financed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that taxpayers paid half of the bill through Medicare and Medicaid programs. Obesity-related health problems added up to 5.7 percent of the nation's total medical expenses, according to the report. America's expanding waistline has meant more fast food and soft drink dollars being spent on PR. "New York-area McDonald's have kicked off a PR campaign designed to increase sales by telling customers how various McDonald's offering cans fit into their favorite diets," PR Week reports. The industry front group Center for Consumer Freedom, which got $200,000 from Coca-Cola in 2001, wrote in an newspaper op-ed that opposition to soda machines in schools is "fueled by junk science and media frenzy" and that it is a "wild claim that soda consumption causes childhood obesity."

As the international business elite meet behind high fences in Davos, Switzerland, an international relief organization says corporate claims of good deeds often hide companies' efforts to undermine regulations and to elude responsibility for harm already done. "The image of companies working hard to make the world a better place is too often just that -- a carefully manufactured image," Christian Aid says in its new report, "Behind the mask: the real face of corporate social responsibility." The study targets "the burgeoning industry known as corporate social responsibility -- or CSR -- which is now seen as a vital tool in promoting and improving the public image of some of the world's largest companies and corporations." The report examines campaigns carried out by Shell, British American Tobacco and Coca Cola. "Some of those shouting the loudest about their corporate virtues are also among those inflicting continuing damage on communities where they work -- particularly poor communities," said Andrew Pendleton, senior policy officer at Christian Aid and author of the report.

"Barry McCahill, a longtime transportation PR and public affairs exec, has taken over as president of the Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America, a lobbying group which claims to represent the 24 million SUV owners in the U.S.," O'Dwyer's PR Daily Reports. "Jason Vines, former managing director of Strat@comm and ex-head of PR at Ford, left the post in December to return to DaimlerChrysler, where he began his career. McCahill is a senior consultant to Strat@comm and the group's communications director is a principal and founder at the firm. McCahill was a longtime spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and was on the team that put together its talking crash-test dummies and 'Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk' campaigns."

"A strong America must also value the institution of marriage," Bush declared in his State of the Union address. PR Week's Douglas Quenqua writes that the administration may soon be "on the hunt for a PR firm to lead a controversial campaign educating the American public about the skills required to sustain a marriage. Such a campaign, which has been blasted by gay-rights advocates, lies at the heart of a $1.5 billion proposal now before Congress. The 'Healthy Marriage' initiative, already approved by the House, proposes a massive increase in funding for federally run programs, particularly in low-income communities, offering classes in conflict resolution, communication, and other skills the administration feels are essential to maintaining lifelong partnerships." The Department of Health and Human Services says it will "absolutely" seek private-sector PR help. The campaign "would carry two central messages: successful marriages require skills, not luck; and there are classes available to help people acquire those skills."

The Denver Post reports that "livestock organizations are launching a $5.5 million media campaign to promote domestic demand for beef in the face of mad-cow concerns. A $4 million series of television ads will launch Monday. They were originally scheduled to start January 12, but the beef groups decided to delay the campaign for two weeks while news coverage of mad cow disease eased up. ... 'From a marketing perspective, consumers watching (mad cow) news clips followed by 'Beef, it's what's for dinner' was not what we wanted,' said Mark Thomas, vice president of global marketing for the [National Cattlemen's Beef Association]. U.S. beef exports have been virtually shut down since the mad- cow case, causing wholesale prices to fall 25 percent. ... The new $5.5 million beef campaign includes $1.3 million from the industry's "crisis fund" to help sway public opinion. The crisis fund will help launch a radio advertising and promotional campaign that will piggyback on the new TV ads." The US government still refuses to take the only steps known to control mad cow disease, a total ban on feeding slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and the testing of millions of cows. In the past month more than 70,000 people have downloaded a free copy of Mad Cow USA, our 1997 investigation of this issue, and 25,000 people a day are getting their mad cow information from the website of the Organic Consumers Association.

Indonesia will hold its first-ever direct presidential elections in July 2004. Noting that Indonesia is "a thriving democracy where public opinion matters," a partner in the Jakarta-based PR firm Maverick writes in today's Jakarta Post that "the more forward-thinking" candidates "have already appointed their image gurus." Not every candidate will clean up well, though. General Wiranto, who is waging a well-financed and politically well-regarded campaign, stands accused of crimes against humanity by the United Nations. The charges stem from Indonesian military and militia violence in East Timor in 1999, when people in that country voted for independence from Indonesia in an UN-organized referendum.

"The Army has abandoned plans to outsource nearly one in six of its jobs to the private sector, a move that could have resulted in the loss of thousands of public affairs positions worldwide and a windfall of contracts for private PR firms," PR Week reports. "The outsourcing plan, first announced in late 2002, was part of President Bush's directive to trim the government by farming out all work not 'inherently governmental.' The Army also cited an interest in directing more of its resources to national security and the war on terrorism. The public affairs office had submitted a request that most of its positions be spared on the grounds that 'telling [the Army's] story' is something only an Army officer could do, said a spokesman last year. ... The initiative was pronounced all but dead last month when Army spokeswoman Jennifer Gunn said, 'It has been put on hold, and nothing has been done or sent up to the Army leadership about it.'"

Today's New York Times quotes an unnamed Republican "close to the Bush campaign" who says the timing of the State of the Union speech -- one day after the Iowa caucuses -- is no accident. The goal is "to get people to focus on the president's positive agenda after two weeks of people beating his brains in and criticizing every aspect of his policies." Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York counters: "There's more excitement now in the Democratic primaries than there is in the State of the Union." Meanwhile, the online public interest journal TomPaine.com is encouraging readers to download a State of the Union Scorecard to rate the accuracy of this year's speech.

The World Health Oragnization's leading scientists are accusing the Bush administration of putting the sugar industry's interests ahead of the global fight against obesity. The Observer reports, "Professor Kaare Norum, leader of the World Health Organisation's fight to prevent millions developing diet-related diseases, has sparked an international war of words with a highly critical letter to US Health Secretary Tommy Thompson. In it he tells of his grave concern over American opposition to the WHO's blueprint to combat obesity. He accuses the US of making the health of millions of young Americans 'a hostage to fortune' because it has failed to take action over the fat epidemic as a result of its business interests, particularly the sugar lobby." The Bush administration says weight control is a matter for the individual, not the state, and has criticized the WHO strategy for its lack of sound science. Bush and fellow senators have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from "Big Sugar." According to the Observer, sugar baron Jose 'Pepe' Fanjul, head of Florida Crystals, has raised at least $100,000 for Bush's re-election campaign.

The Israeli government refers to the controversial barrier it's building in the West Bank as a "security fence," but that may soon change. The Associated Press reports that a new name, the "terror prevention fence," was discussed at a recent meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and high-ranking officials. According to AP, the name change is part of an effort "to improve its international image" prior to a case on the barrier's legality before the International Court of Justice in The Hague next month. Israel says the barrier is needed to keep out suicide bombers, while Palestinian groups (who refer to it as the "Berlin Wall" or "apartheid wall") call it a land grab.

The Columbia Journalism Review has started up a new web site, the CampaignDesk, devoted to analyzing their coverage of reporters covering the election campaign. According to Steve Lovelady, the site's managing editor, journalists are the site's primary audience. "Most blogs are 99.9 percent opinion," he said. "This is a Web site run by and staffed by responsible journalists whose job is to monitor, critique and praise the campaign press, on a daily basis."

In our book Trust Us, We're Experts! we describe the "third party technique" that PR experts use. Reassuring words come from the mouths of supposed objective scientific experts to convince the public that a crisis is really no problem at all. A current example would be the industry front group called the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. This organization has an impressive sounding name, but it is funded by and fronts for industry. Under Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman it received $800,000 to produce an elaborate risk analysis study concluding that mad cow disease would be no problem in the US. Now that the disease is here, the US Department of Agriculture is refusing to take the necessary steps to stop it. Instead, the Harvard Center is all over the news media assuring the public that mad cow disease in the US is no big deal. Unfortunately, most news media so far are falling for this trick, treating the Harvard Center with a respect that it does not deserve instead of exposing its paid role in the government and industry PR campaign on mad cow disease.

"The rise of Tony Feather from congressional intern to successful lobbyist is a story of loyalty, of good deeds rewarded -- and of Republicans taking care of their own," the Washington Post writes. Feather is a partner at FLS-DCI, which provides direct-mail, telephone and grassroots lobbying for political parties, corporations, trade associations and others, and the up and coming DCI Group, a Washington lobbying shop with "a long list of clients paying $20,000 to $200,000 every six months." Feather is a registered lobbyist for Intel, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), and Qualcomm. Feather counts as friends White House advisor Karl Rove, Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, and Joe Allbaugh, who heads New Bridge Strategies, a lobby firm focusing on Iraq reconstruction contracts. "In his role as a national political strategist, Feather has been on the cutting edge of a major shift in GOP tactics, moving away from placing the overwhelming emphasis on television, and shifting toward voter mobilization, local organization development -- the political terrain known as 'the ground war,' which is fast becoming the central thrust of the Republican Party and the Bush 2004 campaign," the Post writes.

Since the announcement that mad cow disease has been found in the US, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have conducted hundreds of interviews based on their 1997 book Mad Cow USA. The US government and the livestock industry have launched a massive PR campaign to hide the fact that they are not taking the necessary steps to stop mad cow disease in the US. However, some excellent reporting is piercing their PR smokescreen. For instance, the Rocky Mountain News writes that "below the drumbeat of reassurances from government and the cattle industry that mad cow disease poses no threat to public health, a small universe of scientists working on a family of related illnesses are finding disturbing evidence to the contrary. ... Little of this research, nor the wary comments of researchers toiling in relative obscurity, reaches a broad public audience, leaving most people to hear the oft-repeated promises of well-funded interest groups or high-profile public officials. Just last week, for example, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association described mad cow disease solely as an animal and economic problem - not a human health problem."

Columbia Journalism Review editor Trudy Lieberman, after examining transcripts from some 50 major news shows, concludes that "journalism has morphed into a cog in a great public relations machine." Lieberman blames the prevalence of PR-driven media training: "At a time when the audience makes decisions based on perceptions rather than facts, the goal is to create positive perceptions of companies and their products, politicians and their policies." Recent interview excerpts illustrate how "trained" guests can easily gain control, especially when the "unwritten rules" discourage journalists from insisting on real answers.

"Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. "The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment. The OMB also wants to manage scientific and technical evaluations ... of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements." But former top agency officials and public interest groups oppose OMB's proposal, saying it "could damage the federal system for protecting public health and the environment." John Graham heads the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In December 2001, the Washington Post reported that Graham had asked top trade group lobbyists to compile a list of the regulations that they found overly burdensome. "This was a secret campaign to circumvent the process," an unnamed lobbyists told the Post. "With Graham in that job, we figured we could get whatever we want." Before joining the White House, Graham ran the industry-funded Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

Almost as soon as George W. Bush took office in January 2001, he and his top advisors were plotting a regime change in Iraq, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS' "60 Minutes." At Bush's first National Security Council meeting 10 days after the inauguration, O'Neill said going after Saddam Hussein was topic "A." "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" said ONeill, who serves as the primary source for a new book about the Bush White House entitled "The Price of Loyalty." O'Neill told the book's author, former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, that he was surprised that during the first National Security Council meeting questions like "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked. Suskind based his book on interviews with O'Neill and several other high level officials as well as 19,000 internal documents provided by O'Neill. Meanwhile a Washington Post editorial warned that U.S. intelligence reports are losing credibility internationally "because of the mounting evidence that U.S. intelligence about Iraq was mistaken -- and because of the Bush administration's refusal to acknowledge it. ... [T]he latest Post report strongly supports a conclusion that much of the case against Iraq made by President Bush and his top aides before the war was wrong." The Post calls for an investigation into why intelligence estimates on Iraq were so flawed.

According to Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark's pollster Geoff Garin, Clark appeals less to women than men voters. Part of the campaign's effort to decrease this "gender gap" is to change Clark's wardrobe. "Gone are his navy blue suit, red tie and loafers, replaced by argyle sweaters, corduroys and duck books," reports the New York Times. Last weekend, at a "Women for Clark" forum, the candidate also stressed his support for reproductive rights and affirmative action. Aides speculate that Clark's gender gap is because "women have not had major experience with military people," but the Women for Clark site offers various campaign goodies under the heading "collateral."

The Republican National Committee is complaining about advertisements comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler that were posted briefly on on MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" web site, which invites people to submit their own creative TV spots criticizing the Bush administration's performance. MoveOn has responded that the ads were submissions to their contest and that it is "deliberately and maliciously misleading" to accuse MoveOn of "sponsoring" them. "None of these was our ad, nor did their appearance constitute endorsement or sponsorship by MoveOn.org Voter Fund," states MoveOn founder Wes Boyd. "They will not appear on TV. We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions. They were voted down by our members." The finalists in the contest include some clever submissions. If nothing else, the contest is an interesting way to break down the barrier between advertiser and audience. (Is comparing Bush to Hitler worse than leading Republican strategist Grover Norquist's recent comparison of the estate tax to the Nazi Holocaust?)

Just in time for the elections, there's a new web site out called FactCheck.org. Headed by Brooks Jackson and sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, it is a "nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding."

Ken Mehlman, former Bush political advisor and current Bush-Cheney campaign chair, is working "to boost the political impact of business" in 2004, according to The Hill. Among these efforts is the formation of an "association CEOs for Bush" group. "The campaign finance laws require the group to maintain at least a semblance of nonpartisan independence, but there is no question that it favors Bush's re-election," reports Alexander Bolton. The campaign laws are encouraging businesses to organize along "a labor union model that entails direct advocacy among employees." The get-out-the-business-vote effort complements big GOP fundraisers, including a Phoenix event today where "industry executives can play golf and have dinner with key congressional Republicans ... then 'help Congress write its to-do list' on air pollution and energy policy."

Paul Holmes, long time journalist covering the PR industry for his own trade press publications, blasts the arrogance and stupidity of the US beef industry and its protectors in the government, over the emergence of mad cow disease in the US. Holmes writest that "more than a decade has passed since an epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease, ravaged British beef and dairy herds, so it's fair to say American cattlemen have had every opportunity to study that outbreak and learn from it. Yet to say the industry failed to learn would be an understatement. It's almost as if American cattlemen looked at the catastrophic events in the U.K. and decided to ignore every lesson while duplicating-and if possible exacerbating-every mistake."

The U.S. funded Iraqi Media Network was supposed to bring "independent" journalism to a "liberated" Iraq. The reality, however, is that IMN's Al Iraqiya radio and television station are failing, according to CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee. The stations, run by top CIA contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), seem almost irrelevant given the more popular satellite news channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya and the common criticism that "Al Iraqiya has no news. Just yesterday's information." Working under Coalition Provisional Authority guidelines, Al Iraqiya reporters are barred from reporting anything that might incited violence. Many who worked for SAIC on the IMN project blame the CPA for the network's failure. Veteran network news foreign correspondent Don North called Al Iraqiya 'Project Frustration' when he quit in July. "IMN has become an irrelevant mouthpiece for CPA propaganda, managed news and mediocre programs. I have trained journalists after the fall of tyrannies in Bosnia, Romania and Afghanistan. I don't blame the Iraqi journalists for the failure of IMN. Through a combination of incompetence and indifference, CPA has destroyed the fragile credibility of IMN," North wrote recently.

The U.S. has indicted executives from Ogilvy and Mather, a PR and advertising agency, for participating in an "extensive scheme to defraud the U.S. Government by falsely and fraudulently inflating the labor costs that Ogilvy incurred" for its work on a media campaign for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, O&M's anti-drug media campaign work was part of a five-year $684 million dollar project. The government claims it was overcharged by O&M from May 1999 to April 2000. "The White House, last month, decided not to renew O&M's anti-drug contract. It will put the business up for review in a bid to improve 'transparency.' O&M can re-bid," O'Dwyer's writes.

"Weeks before a federal judge is set to open Martha Stewart's trial on charges of obstructing justice and securities fraud, the case already is being tried in the court of public opinion," writes James T. Madore. According to Roberg G. Heim, a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney, "A very extraordinary aspect of the Martha Stewart case is the amount of public relations efforts that she and her team are making in an attempt to clear her name."

"Meat-industry trade groups were scurrying during the recent holiday season to coordinate key messages and media lists as they responded to reports of mad cow disease rearing its head in the Western US," PR Week's John Frank writes. PR staffers at the American Meat Institute and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, working with PR giant Burson-Marsteller, handled a flood of media calls over the Christmas holiday. AMI's top spokeswoman Janet Riley invited NBC News into her kitchen on Christmas day to tape "her preparing beef for dinner in an effort to demonstrate her faith in the safety of the beef supply," PR Week reports. The US Department of Agriculture held daily press briefings, which were followed by "technical briefings" for the press held by NBCA. "Key message points the industry was stressing revolved around the safety of the US beef supply and the extent of efforts underway to track down how the disease reached US shores," PR Week reports.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has denied a petition from 73 labor, environment and farm groups calling for an immediate moratorium on land-based uses of sewage sludge - a practice that we exposed in our 1994 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. "The rejection of the petition followed an announcement by the agency in October, after five years of analysis and study, that it would not regulate dioxins in land-applied sludge," reports the Associated Press. "Dioxins are a class of organic chemicals that EPA studies show pose a possible cancer risk in humans, but the agency said in its October statement that the danger was minimal. The latest announcements by the EPA come a year and a half after a panel of the National Research Council, in a review the agency had asked for, criticized what the council described as outdated science in the agency's assessment of health risks from treated sludge used as fertilizer." Just to show it isn't completely irresponsible, though, the EPA promises to study the problem further and someday may regulate 15 other toxic chemicals in sludge that currently aren't on its watch list. Meanwhile the sludge wars continue at the local level, with communities in Texas and Louisiana fighting unbearable odors, groundwater contamination, and toxic pathogens from sludge, while in Georgia, sludge critics are dismissed as "a lot of kooks."

"The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for peace," the Guardian reports. The British paper writes that recent signs indicate a shift from military action to diplomatic engagement as seen in recent interactions between the U.S. and North Korea, Libya and Iran. Washington analysts see this as an election year strategy, acknowledging the White House finds itself in a delicate situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, given continuing violence and the glacial transition to democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. "With elections 11 months away, Mr Bush does not want to be vulnerable to claims that he has presided over a warmongering strategy that has left Americans little safer than September 11 2001. His shift follows an established pattern in Washington of politicians moving to the centre during an election year," the Guardian writes.

Eric Schlosser, author of the hugely popular bestseller Fast Food Nation, notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's PR point person on mad cow disease, Alisa Harrison, flacked for the beef industry. "Before joining the department, Ms. Harrison was director of public relations for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the beef industry's largest trade group, where she battled government food safety efforts, criticized Oprah Winfrey for raising health questions about American hamburgers, and sent out press releases with titles like 'Mad Cow Disease Not a Problem in the U.S.' ... Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal agency more completely dominated by the industry it was created to regulate. Dale Moore, Ms. Veneman's chief of staff, was previously the chief lobbyist for the cattlemen's association." Meanwhile, the federal government is failing to take the only steps that will solve the mad cow crisis in America: a total ban on feeding slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and testing tens of millions of cattle. John Stauber says 'it's the cow feed, stupid!'

Bill O'Reilly, who famously falsely claimed to be the winner of two Peabody Awards, has finally won something for real -- top spot on Pandagon.net's list of "the 20 most annoying conservatives of 2003." According to Pandagon webmasters Ezra Klein and Jesse Taylor, O'Reilly "had a hard time getting on this list. I mean, if you take away the 'wetback' commentary, and the 'joke' that a black boys choir was out in the parking lot stealing hubcaps, and the lawsuit against Al Franken, and the embarassing performance at the C-SPAN Book News conference, and the threatening to beat up the son of a 9/11 victim, and the lying about where he grew up, and the whole Peabody Awards thing, and the false 'Fair and Balanced' promise, and the fact that he's a grade-A asshole that most conservatives don't like, and the insistence that anyone who doesn't appear on his show is afraid of him, and the faux-everyman demeanor, and the continuing jihads against Jesse Jackson, rap music, George Clooney, Al Franken, the United Way, Europe, Hollywood, Bill Moyers, the entire American left, Canada and PepsiCola, AND that he lies constantly about being a conservative...well, he still belongs on the list, actually."

Jay Rosen thinks coverage of the 2004 presidential election is shaping up as an exercise in "Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!" In this time-dishonored tradition of political journalism, reporters use sports as a metaphor for reporting on politics, relying for insights on political insiders who have learned how to spin the "race" as a game of "inside baseball." The result: "An army of sentries encircles the game, guarding every situation from which a glimmer of fresh truth might be allowed to escape."