Kent Bye's "Echo Chamber Project" is attempting a new type of citizen journalism: an "open source, investigative documentary about the how the television news media became an uncritical echo chamber to the Executive Branch leading up to the war in Iraq." By "open source," Bye means that he is sharing both the transcripts and footage from his documentary with anyone who wants to use it or remix it with other footage as they see fit. He is also trying to "develop more sophisticated techniques for citizen journalism," including new software tools that will enable other collaborative efforts. A preliminary video of the Echo Chamber Project is available on OurMedia.org, a non-profit initiative that provides free storage space and bandwidth to anyone with videos, audio files, text files, or software that they'd like to share with the world.

Three years from now, Beijing will host the Olympic games, giving the "Chinese superpower-in-the-making" an opportunity to "present a progressive, urbane and open face to a world increasingly nervous about its growing might," writes Catherine Armitage. However, the Beijing Olympics organizing committee (BOCOG) isn't taking phone calls from reporters, for fear that they might get a call from the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong. "The problem with telephone interviews is that we can't identify the person on the line, which media he represents and whether he is a journalist or not," explained BOCOG spokesman Jiang Xiaoyu. "For example the Falun Gong cult is illegal in China but they have their own journalists." BOCOG is planning to hire a leading international PR firm to help manage media coverage of the Olympics. "Hill and Knowlton, Weber Shandwick and Burson-Marsteller are rumoured to be those in contention," Armitage writes.

We first wrote about the PR campaign to market sewage sludge as fertilizer in our 1995 book, Toxic Sludge is Good For Your. Now Florida Power and Light, the operator of a Florida nuclear plant, "appears to have shipped radioactive waste to ordinary landfills, municipal sewage treatment plants and some unknown locations in the 1970's and early 80's," reports the New York Times. "The contaminants were then hauled away with sludge. ... A state document quoted by the plaintiffs says that some contaminated material was transported to a 'cow pasture.' Another state document refers to daily sludge being 'removed by Portolet to unknown site.' The company has concealed the shipments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the lawsuits."

"On the issue of the Iraq War, the disconnect between the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party establishment and political reality in America is growing by the day," writes David Sirota. "Case in point is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's attitude towards the tremendous special election run by Paul Hackett in the staunchly Republican Cincinnati suburbs." Hackett, an Iraq war veteran who sharply criticized Bush's decision to go to war, came close to winning in a district where Republicans traditionally win huge majorities. "Ultimately, the anti-war position defined his candidacy, and was the clear reason he was able to do so well in such a Republican district," Sirota writes. "Incredibly, however, in a memo sent to all Democratic House Members about what Democrats should learn from the Hackett race, the DCCC makes not one mention of the Iraq War and its effect on the election. Not one. It is as if the party is going out of its way to deny the importance of Democrats taking a strong position against the war." Democrats will continue to lose elections, he argues, if they "basically ignore almost every serious issue, whether it be the war or economic issues. ... Not only is the D.C. Democratic Establishment removed from the concerns of ordinary Americans, it actually goes out of its way to deny the existence of the messages that actually make campaigns successful."