Dr. Ignacio Chapela, whose research revealed contamination of native Mexican corn with genetically engineered DNA, taught his last class at University of California, Berkeley. Chapela was denied tenure at Berkeley, despite "overwhelming support from his own department and from his academic peers," GM Watch founder Jonathan Matthews writes. Chapela had also been a critic of a $25 million research deal between UC Berkeley and the Swiss biotechnology company Novartis (now Syngenta). Chapela supporters believe he is being retaliated against for his criticism of the biotech industry. SpinWatch's Andy Rowell and Matthews exposed how Monsanto's Internet PR company, Bivings Group, was at the very heart of the campaign to vilify Chapela and his research.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, co-authors of the Center's 2003 book Weapons of Mass Deception, appear in filmmaker Danny Schechter's latest movie of the same title, but the movie is completely the creation of Schechter. A review on the Portland Independent Media website asks "what do you get when you cross relaxed media ownership laws, the military industrial complex, and public opinion? Weapons of Mass Deception. Insider turned outsider Danny Schechter makes his case in this expose of the mainstream media's 'fuzzy' coverage of the run-up to war. He shows us how with a little marketing, there's a sucker born every minute. If I only had a brain. The market makers, the PR firms, the embedded journalists, the 'fuzzy' coverage, the spin, and yes, even the lies...it's all in there. ... Schechter shows you how pseudo-patriotism, lack of 'guts', and trying to 'sell it', got in the way of delivering an important message...the entire truth." You can hear an interview with Schechter on Democracy Now.

"In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s," Robert Parry of Consortium News writes. Webb paid a high price for his "Dark Alliance" stories written for the San Jose Mercury News. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues and demoted by his paper, causing him to quit. Despite CIA internal investigations that later validated much of Webb's reporting, his career never recovered, and on Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide. "Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s," Parry writes. "Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA’s confession from the American people."

A new campaign charges Sinclair Broadcast Group, the "largest single owner/operator of television stations in the United States," with "misusing public airwaves with partisan news programming." The campaign, by Media Matters for America, MoveOn, Free Press, AlterNet, and others, is focusing on the nightly commentary "The Point," by Sinclair spokesperson and lobbyist Mark Hyman. An analysis of "The Point" by Media Matters "found that the commentaries repeatedly attacked ... Democratic politicians," "referred to Democrats as the 'Angry Left,'" and "expressed support for Bush administration policies." The goal is getting Sinclair "to allow rebuttals to 'The Point' or even add another commentary with a more liberal point of view."