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.