For the second time, the Government Accountability Office "scolded the Bush administration for distributing phony prepackaged news reports," or video news releases. The VNRs were produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, featured former reporter Mike Morris, and were aired, at least in part, on 300 news shows. The GAO's Susan Poling said, "What is objectionable ... is the fact the viewer has no idea their tax dollars are being used to write and produce this video." A spokesperson for the Drug Control office, which paid $155,000 for the VNRs, said, "Our lawyers disagree with the GAO," but the office would avoid the "appearance of a problem" by ending the practice. The GAO earlier faulted the administration for VNRs promoting the new Medicare law.

The Bush administration paid $240,000 to prominent African-American pundit Armstrong Williams, to "build support among black families for its education reform law," No Child Left Behind, reports USA Today, citing documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The contract required Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige. The Ketchum PR firm, on behalf of the Education Department, also "arranged with Williams to use contacts with America's Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists, 'to encourage the producers to periodically address' NCLB." The arrangement was part of a $1 million contract with Ketchum, which also produced video news releases touting NCLB. Williams, who also runs the Graham Williams Group PR firm, said he agreed to the contract because NCLB is "something I believe in." The Public Relations Society of America said Williams' failure to disclose the payment "does not describe the true practice of 'public relations.'"

"President Bush's political allies are raising millions of dollars for an election-style campaign to promote private Social Security accounts, as Democrats and Republicans prepare for what they predict will be the most expensive and extensive public policy debate since the 1993 fight over the Clinton administration's failed health care plan," reports Jim VandeHei. According to Stephen Moore, head of the conservative Club for Growth, "It could easily be a $50 million to $100 million cost to convince people this is legislation that needs to be enacted. It's going to be expensive" because "it's the most important public policy fight in 25 years." Blogger-journalist Joshua Micah Marshall has been dissecting a leaked memo detailing the White House strategy for selling the plan, which the memo describes as a way to "transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country." And the Columbia Journalism Review's CampaignDesk has been fact-checking ways that journalists have been screwing up the Social Security story.

"In April 2004," writes Mariah Blake, "a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. ... By late June, he claimed to have captured the plotters, and started trying to clinch a deal with television networks by offering them 'direct access' to one of the terrorists who, he said, had agreed to tell all." His story unraveled after the Afghan police "raided his headquarters and discovered eight prisoners, some of them tethered to chairs in a back room, which was littered with bloody cloth. The men later told reporters that they had been starved, beaten, doused with scalding water, and forced to languish for days in their own feces. Afghan authorities determined that none of the detainees had links to terrorism and set them free." It turns out that this isn't the first time that Idema has sold colorful and deceptive stories about terrorism to the mass media. In January 2002, CBS broadcast sensational footage, quite likely staged by Idema, which purported to show an Al Qaeda training camp in action. "Idema also served as an expert military commentator on Fox News ... And he fielded hundreds of interviews with major newspapers, television networks, and radio stations. ... He claimed to have uncovered a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton; that bin Laden was dead, and that the Taliban was poisoning the food that the United States was air-dropping to feed hungry Afghans. ... Idema’s career as a media personality reached its peak during the final breathless weeks of the run-up to the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided during that period echoed the Bush administration’s hotly contested rationale for war. ... Few in the media questioned Idema’s claims, much to the alarm of some who knew him."

PR Watch has reported in the past on the story of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two former investigative reporters at Fox TV's affiliate station in Tampa Bay, Florida who say the network ordered them to broadcast false and distorted news reports regarding the Monsanto company's genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone. Now Akre and Wilson are petitioning the Federal Communications Commision to reject the station's request for license renewal on grounds that it is not operating in the public interest.