In August 2004, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company told Wal-Mart, "The public believes [Wal-Mart] treats its employees poorly and is a negative force in communities." The report suggests steps for "managing change," including to "spread messages that it cares for employees, build local relationships, increase local philanthropy." McKinsey also helped prepare a memo, leaked to the New York Times last week, that proposed "numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits," in part by "discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart." With the new Robert Greenwald documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" about to be released, Wal-Mart's PR firm, Edelman, "sent reporters a press kit last week attacking claims made in the film's trailer, along with negative reviews of Greenwald's previous work. Wal-Mart is also promoting a competing documentary about the company, directed by Ron Galloway, titled 'Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Drives Some People Crazy.'"

John Gay, the Managing Director of the Australian logging company Gunns, told shareholders that the A$6.3 million SLAPP suit it launched against 20 environmentalists "was taken following careful consideration." At the meeting, Leonie Pullinger, the wife of one of the defendants, told of the stress on her family as a result of the lawsuit. "I'm very sorry that she is in there, but they should have thought about what they did before they did it," Gay said. Since last November, Gunns' share price has slumped from A$4.80 to A$2.71. Stephen Mayne, an activist shareholder and journalist with Crikey.com.au, said the publicity from the SLAPP suit and doubts about the company's ability to build a pulp mill proposed for northern Tasmania have hit the share price. "He [Gay] said that adverse publicity is driving down the share price and a lot of that has come from the frivolous and unnecessary lawsuit," Mayne said.

Mike Paul, the president of the New York-based MGP & Associates PR, counts amongst his clients the conservative Black evangelical Bishop Harry Jackson's High-Impact Leadership Coalition. Paul's company states on its website that its "philosophy is grounded in both business and biblical principles" and boasts that "our ethical and moral standards are the highest in the industry." Bill Berkowitz called Paul and, after introducing himself as working as a journalist for WorkingForChange.com, asked about his work for the coalition. After stating "national public relations," Paul asked Berkowitz to restate who he was working for. After Berkowitz told him once more, Paul said, "Look, I'm in a car trying to help out a liberal rag. I deal with big media outlets, and your rag is probably seen by only a handful of people. This phone call is done. I gave you my answer. Have a good day."

Following up on a story that first surfaced in the gossip pages of the New York Daily News, Michael Hiltzik examines the details of a bizarre scheme aimed at scaring U.S. citizens away from importing cheap drugs from Canada. Marketing executives at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) agreed to pay a couple of writers to craft a fictional thriller in which a group of terrorists "uses Canadian Web sites to murder millions of unwitting Americans looking for cut-rate pharmaceuticals." Kenin Spivak, one of the novelists, says a PhRMA marketing executive was "intimately involved" in shaping details of the story's plot, characterization and tone. "They said they wanted it somewhat dumbed down for women, with a lot more fluff in it, and more about the wife of the head Croatian terrorist, who is a former Miss Mexico," Spivak said.

Reporters Without Borders has published a "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents," with technical instructions and advice for people who want to use the internet as a means of expression in repressive societies. "Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," they state. "Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest." The handbook provides tips on how to remain anonymous while blogging, explains how to publicize a weblog, and offers basic advice on ethical and journalistic principles.

As the Associated Press and other sources reported that "Karl Rove escaped indictment in the (Valerie Plame) CIA leak case Friday but remained under investigation," Rove "began assembling a public relations team in the event he is eventually indicted." That team includes Mark Corallo, a "former spokesman for the Justice Department" under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Corallo is "no stranger to high-profile defenses," wrote the Washington Post, having been "spokesman for former representative Bob Livingston (R-La.), who was forced to step aside as the incoming speaker of the House in 1998 after admitting an extramarital affair." O'Dwyer's PR Daily added that Corallo, the head of the Virginia-based firm Corallo Media Strategies, "was communications director of the House Government Reform Committee from 1999 - 2002." In February 2005, the Washington Post reported that Corallo's new firm had "already bested some of the PR 'big boys' in securing some fine work on film and recording industry issues."

In Britain, where the pub industry has successfully lobbied for a relaxation of licensing laws, "The drinks industry is planning a ruthless campaign of economic incentives and psychological tricks to get customers to drink as much as possible when licensing laws are relaxed," report Gaby Hinsliff and Anushka Asthana. "Managers of massive 'vertical drinking' pubs are being offered bonuses worth up to £20,000 a year if they beat targets as the industry moves to exploit Britain's binge drinking culture." Dave Daley, head of the National Association of Licensed House Managers, which represents Britain's thousands of pub managers, has broken ranks with the industry by issuing a blunt criticism. "How we make our money is to make people binge drink: the more people drink, the more I get as a bonus," he said.

A Forbes magazine article by Daniel Lyons, titled "Attack of the Blogs," characterizes weblogs as "the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. ... Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns." Lyons urges companies that come under blog criticism to fight back by hiring consultants to monitor the blogosphere, suing bloggers and their web hosts - and by building their own "blog swarm." But PR industry blogger Steve Rubel says he is "very disappointed" in the Forbes piece. "With all respect to Lyons and the magazine's editors, bloggers are not Corporate America's Boogeyman. They can be a company's greatest allies and evangelists if AND only IF we take the time to take them seriously and engage them in dialogue. Instead of telling us about both opportunities and threats, you paint the blogosphere as the Wicked Witch of the West."

The recently appointed head of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), Fleishman-Hillard Executive Vice President John Saunders, believes the PR industry needs to toughen up its ethics rules. ICCO is a global umbrella group for PR consultancies and their trade associations. Following the recent ICCO summit in Prague, Saunders told PR Week, "We need to devote more energy to ethics. If we are to advise on reputation management, we must be above reproach." Saunders believes that existing PR industry codes of ethics are inadequate. "We need to impose more rigorous standards on ourselves, before they are imposed on us by others," he said.

After the recent BlogOn 2005 conference in New York City, Burson-Marsteller's Lisa Poulson bemoaned the suspicion that bloggers have for corporations. "My overall impression is that the gap between where the blogosphere veterans are and where corporations are not only vast but also actually harmful," she told PR Week. "The blogosphere says it wants corporations to come to the party, but they have so little understanding of the responsibilities and legitimate concerns that corporations have that they wind up alienating them instead," she complained. Poulson believes that bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast Fortune 500 companies can embrace the new medium. "I think bloggers are all yelling 'to the barricades' and looking for a glorious and dramatic revolution. It isn't going to happen," she said.

The mayor and city council of Newark, New Jersey "hired a fledging newspaper called Newark Weekly News to publish 'positive news' about the city - and will pay $100,000 over the next year for it." The no-bid contract specifies that the paper will "generate stories based on leads" from the mayor's spokesperson and city communications staff. A senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies said, "If you are publishing government propaganda in the guise of neutral, detached reporting, that's about as unethical as you can get." Rutgers University journalism department chair John Pavlik told the New York Times that the arrangement was "fake news." In New York, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg "picked up the endorsement of an influential black minister at a Harlem restaurant last month," some of the diners who "were quoted in news stories" as "regular people" were actually campaign volunteers. At least three people whose glowing quotes about Bloomberg were printed didn't identify themselves "as being affiliated with the campaign," reported the Boston Globe.

As the indictments stemming from Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation are revealed, several columnists and bloggers have been keeping the larger context of the Plame leak in view. Laura Rozen writes at War and Piece, "the Vice President's office was leading an all-out propaganda war - every bit as choreographed as the pre-war propaganda campaign by the same officials - to blame the CIA for the fact that there weren't any WMD to be found in Iraq after all, and the chief stated reason for the war was collapsing. And it enlisted not just leaks to reporters about Valerie Plame to conduct that war against the CIA. It also enlisted key Republican officials in Congress, to buck up its narrative, and literally divert attention from the role of the White House and executive branch offices in citing truly dubious Iraq intelligence - some, including the Niger yellowcake claims, not supported by the intelligence community at all. And Congress so far has gone along."

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff at the State Department until early this year, publicly blasted the Bush Administration, including accusing George W. Bush of "cowboyism." The Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes, "He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a 'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal' that hijacked U.S. foreign policy." Speaking at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson said, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore," referring to U.S. public diplomacy. "And how about Karen Hughes' efforts to boost the country's image abroad? 'It's hard to sell [manure],' Wilkerson said, quoting an Egyptian friend," Milbank writes. As part of an oral history project, another State Deparment veteran said Bush's rush to invade Iraq was driven by "clear political pressure." Robin Raphel, who was coordinator for Iraq assistance, said after the invasion it became clear that U.S. officials "could not run a country we did not understand... . It was very much amateur hour," the Los Angeles Times reports.

"One large and important producer of genetically modified (GM) crops - Monsanto - has engineered public opinion to reduce critical scrutiny," writes a group of South African, Mexican and American academic researchers. Monsanto has followed "a tried-and-true set of PR tactics designed to tie GM crops to the question of hunger, to silence debate on the topic, and to challenge critics as technophobic. This PR strategy removes debate that is vital for public and environmental health." In portraying GM crops as a "solution" to hunger worldwide and promoting company defenders from developing countries, Monsanto has positioned itself "as a development partner, as a benevolent philanthropist who has technology to 'share.'" This PR strategy is "seductive," the researchers explain, in that it suggests easy answers to complex problems. It also "attempts to depoliticize; the public relations machinery, through active co-optation, becomes an 'anti-politics machine.'"

"Questions about the security and accuracy of electronic voting systems are likely to continue into the 2006 national elections, because the U.S. government has not yet completed work on electronic voting guidelines," according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report concluded, "Important changes to the voting standards have not yet been completed, the system certification and laboratory accreditation programs are still in development, and a system software library has not been updated or improved since the 2004 election." The Election Assistance Commission, a federal body established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, responded, "We have already made significant progress on GAO's recommendations."

While human rights groups denounce the Sudanese government's "condoning of the action of a violent militia which is raping and killing innocent women, men and children and pillaging villages in Darfur," a U.S. firm is lobbying for Sudan. Representative Frank Wolf said he was "shocked" that the State Department granted C/R International a waiver "from an order barring U.S. companies from doing business with Sudan." Rep. Wolf wrote Secretary of State Rice that the waiver "conflicted with the administration's push ... to tighten sanctions" on Sudan. Sudan hired C/R, at $530,000 per year, "to promote the country's north/south peace agreement, and highlight Sudan's role in fighting terror," reported O'Dwyer's PR Daily. C/R head Robert Cabelly is "a former Fleishman-Hillard and State Dept. official who has repped Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia and the South Africa Foundation." Rep. Wolf also criticized Patton Boggs for "trying to polish the image of Saudi Arabia" and Akin, Gump for "trying to assist China in buying a U.S. oil company."

"With indictments" in the Plame leak case possibly looming, "Republicans are preparing a public relations blitz aimed at shoring up public support for the Bush administration," writes the Boston Globe. "The outlines ... emerged on the Sunday talk shows," when guests like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said perjury charges would be technicalities, "just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste." Other Republican angles, the Wall Street Journal reports, include "complaining about prosecutorial overreach" and questioning the credibility of retired diplomat Joseph Wilson. The Republican National Committee circulated a document titled, "Joe Wilson's Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements." A top Democratic talking point is that the case "is about how the Bush administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for war in Iraq." Democrats are also urging "a thorough housecleaning" and throwing "Mr. Bush's oft-repeated claims of integrity back at him."

Two new conservative campaigns are urging Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to withdraw her name from consideration, or have President Bush withdraw it. WithdrawMiers.org is headed by direct-mail titan Richard Viguerie and supported by the American Conservative Union, National Review, Republican National Coalition For Life, Patrick Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly, among others. A similar group, Americans for Better Justice, was created by David Frum and Linda Chavez to collect "signatures and money to campaign against Ms. Miers's confirmation." PR Week notes that the "discord among conservatives ... has resulted in lower spending in advertising and grassroots campaigns" in support of Miers. Progress for America "was the only group to purchase TV airtime in the first week after she was nominated." And the group spent less than 40 percent of what they spent "on TV ads in support of John Roberts in the first week following his nomination."

The nonprofit advocacy group Commercial Alert is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether buzz marketers are violating federal law prohibiting deceptive advertising. In a six-page letter, Consumer Alert director Gary Ruskin details numerous instances of corrupt practices. "Buzz marketing is also known as 'guerrilla' or 'stealth' marketing," Ruskin notes. "The terms are significant because they suggest the subterfuge that corporations are working on the buying public." The letter asks the FTC to review evidence that “companies are perpetrating large-scale deception upon consumers by deploying buzz marketers who fail to disclose that they have been enlisted to promote products. This failure to disclose is fundamentally fraudulent and misleading.” In particular, Ruskin urges the FTC to investigate Proctor & Gamble’s Tremor, which has enlisted about 250,000 teenagers in its buzz marketing sales force, “by issuing subpoenas to executives ... to determine whether their endorsers are disclosing that they are paid marketers.”

The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal continues to unravel. In a page one story, the Washington Post shows how Abramoff helped eLottery, a company that sells lottery tickets online, defeat the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 2000 by paying a coalition of Christian and other conservative groups to oppose the bill on the grounds that it would promote gambling. Dirty tricksters include Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, anti-tax conservative Grover Norquist, Robin Vanderwall of the Faith and Family Alliance (currently serving a seven-year prison term for internet solicitation of sex with minors). The Post report also notes the role of Matthew Blair, a freelance lobbyist working for the Shandwick Worldwide PR firm, who tried to get Florida governor Jeb Bush to sign a public letter opposing the anti-gambling bill. (When Bush refused, Blair forged Bush's signature and sent out the letter anyway.)

While embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan, Australian journalist Stephen Dupont filmed "U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of the suspected Taliban fighters" near Kandahar. Afterwards, members of a U.S. Army psychological operations unit "read taunting messages about the act over a loudspeaker to the nearby village," which "was believed to be harboring Taliban soldiers," Dupont reported. One message called the Taliban "cowardly dogs," adding, "you allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned." The goal was "to incite that much anger from the Taliban so the Taliban could attack them. ... That's the only way they can find them," said Dupont. U.S. embassies have been instructed "to make clear that what people might see on the videotape is not reflective of the actions of the vast majority of our U.S. military. ... They are not reflective of our values," reports O'Dwyer's. U.S. PR czar Karen Hughes, who is visiting Indonesia, is "fully prepared to deal with this issue," said a State Department spokesperson.

"When American corporations come up against inconvenient science," writes Bill Hogan, "they call in the American Council on Science and Health." The group's medical / executive director, Dr. Gilbert Ross, has "defended the Wood Preservative Science Council, saying ... the arsenic in pressure-treated wood poses 'no risk to human health,'" and has written "on behalf of the farmed-salmon industry that the PCBs in fish 'are not a cause of any health risk, including cancer.'" And Ross' background is as spotty as his junk science-for-hire. For "his participation in a scheme that ultimately defrauded New York's Medicaid program of approximately $8 million," Ross had his medical license revoked, spent a year at a federal prison camp, and was barred from the Medicare and Medicaid programs for 10 years, after a judge found him to be "a highly untrustworthy individual." Ross regained his medical license last year.

Guidelines issued by the Australian government's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet advise public servants on how to avoid personal notebook comments being disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. "As some comments included in notebooks may have the potential to cause embarrassment or could be misinterpreted if taken out of context, you should transcribe the information that needs to be recorded into a file note, record of conversation or minute, and ensure it is placed on the appropriate departmental file. You can then destroy the original notes," the guideline says. In 2002 a Senate Committee of Inquiry investigating fabricated claims against a group of refugees perpetuated by a government taskforce complained that a failure to keep proper records rendered "the activities of the Taskforce largely inaccessible to subsequent scrutiny."

George W. Bush nominated his campaign media strategist Mark McKinnon to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees U.S.-funded international media outlets including Radio Sawa, Al Hurra and Voice of America. Half of the top 50 Bush reelection campaign expenditures went to McKinnon's firm Maverick Media, totaling $170 million. (While the majority of the money went towards campaign ads, the standard commission for media consulting firms is 15 percent, according to Campaigns & Elections.) "I think the most important thing to recognize is that in all the campaigns with President Bush, it always begins with the president saying: 'Here are the things I care about. These are the things I want to talk about. Now, you guys can go and execute the plan however you want to, but this is what I'm talking about; this is what I believe in,'" McKinnon told Frontline for their 2005 piece on Karl Rove called "The Architect."

After a survey found that only 10 percent of respondents rated PepsiCo as a company that was "concerned with my health," the soft drink company is launching "a new advertising campaign for its 'Smart Spot' products." Pepsi rates more than 200 of its products as healthier, "Smart Spot" foods, including diet soda and baked potato chips. Pepsi will also launch a pilot project, called "Perfect Storm," later this year, "in a major U.S. city with a significant population of both African-Americans and Latinos." It's targeting "urban youth and 'ethnic gatekeepers'" because "Smart Spot" marketing doesn't "always resonate with minorities." Similarly, Advertising Age reports that Anheuser-Busch is considering a new marketing campaign, that "beer is good for you." Busch's Bob Lachky said, "We will work hard to give the platform to independent third-party experts who confirm that moderate drinking of any alcohol can be better than abstinence for most adults."

The New York Times has published three stories about testimony by its reporter, Judith Miller, to a grand jury investigating the question of whether Bush administration officials tried to discredit White House critic Joseph C. Wilson by illegally leaking information to the press about his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame. The stories include Miller's first-person recounting of what she told the grand jury, a chronology of the Miller case, and an analysis suggesting that I. Lewis Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, may still be a focus of the criminal investigation. Miller's own account of her testimony contains some notable ambiguities, such as her inability to remember how a misspelled mention of Plame's name wound up in her notebook from an interview with Libby. And in an independent critique, Norman Solomon points out some disturbing details in Miller's account, such as her admission that she was given “clearance” by the Pentagon “to see secret information” which she “was not permitted to discuss” with her own editors. "There’s nothing wrong with this picture if Judith Miller is an intelligence operative for the U.S. government," Solomon states. "But if she’s supposed to be a journalist, this is a preposterous situation -- and the fact that The New York Times has tolerated it tells us a lot about that newspaper."

Reviewing the state of Australian conservativism, Jason Briant, a Research Fellow at the corporate funded think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, argues conservatives need to "become better organised". Briant writes that while the conservative movement is on a roll, there are "too many small, underfunded organisations that are barely capable of communicating with each other, let alone providing a coherent, credible source of advice for potentially sympathetic policy-makers." Briant believes that there is a need for a "larger, better funded and more professional conservative movement in Australia, possibly loosely modelled along similar lines to the successful movement in the US." One particular target for conservatives' attention, he argues, should be universities -- "particularly the social science and humanities faculties."

The New York Times' David E. Sanger notes a change in how George W. Bush discusses future U.S. military activities. Bush "has begun warning that the insurgency is already metastasizing into a far broader struggle to 'establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia,'" Sanger writes. TheRevealer.org's Jeff Sharlet comments, "[T]his is reductive rhetoric that equates the complexities of Indonesia, where 'radical Islamists' struggle against a dictatorship-disguised-as-a-democracy - and one directly descended from a genocidal regime just a decade past - and Spain, now a fully democratic country. Not to mention the stretch in between Spain and Indonesia. The question is, Will the media buy it?" Given "the allure of such a powerful dichotomy to a press that has so long peddled stories dependent on 'us' and 'them,'" Sharlet writes, "it's legitimate to ask, now, what's driving this latest variation on the age-old 'battle between good and evil' story - Bush's politics, or the demands of the press?"

The U.S. Agency for International Development's Haiti Field Report "provides an excellent case study for investigating the role of USAID in promoting U.S. foreign policy objectives under the friendly guise of aid," writes Sasha Kramer. "The United States is primarily concerned with Haiti's upcoming elections. ... In Haiti, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, the timeliness and appearance of legitimacy of the electoral process are of paramount importance for the Bush Administration's PR machine." USAID, she writes, has a "strategy for pacifying Haiti's largest political party, Lavalas, though selective distribution of aid." For example, USAID established a "Play for Peace" summer camp in the neighborhood of a popular priest and Lavalas activist. According to Kramer, USAID concluded, "The fruits of these efforts were seen during a recent demonstration attended by 200 people. At the same time ... 300 people were enjoying the summer camp. It is believed that the camp prevented the demonstration from being larger and giving greater legitimacy to the protesters."

"The Business Council of Australia has come out against Government plans to create legislation forcing directors to meet certain levels of corporate social responsibility (CSR)," reports The Age. "Mandating CSR through legislative intervention runs the risk of stifling the innovation and creative approaches to CSR that are being adopted by Australian companies," claims the lobby group, in a report to Parliament. The report stresses, "The greatest social contribution made by corporations is through employment, the goods and services they create and the wealth these produce." It also highlights the existing CSR efforts of Council members. The chair of Morgan Stanley Australia says government mandates would result in less meaningful CSR: "People would invent a bit of jargon, for example 'societally appropriate value maximisation,' as a way of asserting that they were doing whatever Canberra thought it was causing them to do."

"British American Tobacco, the world's second largest cigarette company, has secretly been operating a factory in North Korea for the past four years," reports the Guardian, though "BAT has never mentioned the factory in its annual accounts." When asked about North Korea's human rights record -- Amnesty International has reported on the torture and execution of detainees, and a "basic lack of political freedom" there -- a BAT spokesperson said, "It is not for us to interfere with the way governments run countries." Moreover, she said, BAT could "lead by example" by promoting international business standards and corporate social responsibility. The revelation further complicated British politician Kenneth Clarke's candidacy to head the Conservative Party. Clarke has worked for BAT since 1998, chairing their corporate social responsibility committee. BAT confirmed that Clarke knew about its North Korean factory, since he reviews "human rights reports on all countries where we operate."

Public relations firms that produce video news releases (VNRs) aren't just targeting national news, writes Craig McGuire of PR Week. Increasingly, they're working to place their videos on local and cable stations as well as websites. "Today VNRs are much more than just broadcast placement tools. They are being targeted to a variety of audiences through web syndication, strategic placements in broadcast, cable, and site-based media in retail outlets and hospitals," says Tim Bahr, managing director of MultiVu, a leading VNR producer. And some clients are opting for "guaranteed placement," a relatively new trend in which PR firms and production houses pay media channels outright to carry what they call "branded journalism."

After stonewalling for a year and a half, the U.S. Commerce Department has released a report on the issue of offshore outsourcing of service-sector jobs and high-tech industries. "But the 12-page document represented by the agency as its final report is not what was written by its analysts," writes Richard McCormack of Manufacturing and Technology News (MTN). "Rather, it was crafted by political appointees at Commerce and at the White House, according to those familiar with it. At an estimated cost of $335,000 -- or $28,000 per page -- the document MTN received from the Commerce Department's Technology Administration contains no original research and forsakes its initial intent of providing a balanced view of outsourcing. ... According to those who have tracked the report's whereabouts, it was completed well before the November 2004 presidential election but was delayed for clearance by the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress due to the controversial nature of the subject."

"Investigators at the Education Department have contacted the U.S. attorney's office regarding the Bush administration's hiring of commentator Armstrong Williams to promote its agenda," writes Nancy Benac. The Government Accountability Office recently concluded that the Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" by hiring Williams to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind Act, without disclosing that he was being paid. U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has pressed for a criminal fraud investigation focused on questions about whether Williams actually performed the work cited in his monthly reports to the Education Department. "It's bad enough the administration bribed a journalist to promote their policies, but now it looks like taxpayer dollars were handed over for work that was never done," said Lautenberg.

"It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution." The ten U.S. Army soldiers and one Iraqi soldier speaking from Tikrit were "coached" before Bush spoke to them. The Iraqi, Sergeant Major Akeel, only said, "Thank you very much for everything. I like you." Reporter Jeremy Scahill observed, "Under Saddam, Iraqis were bombarded via their TVs with video of the Iraqi leader meeting his generals in Tikrit. ... For Iraqis, Tikrit represented the mother of all locations for the regime's propaganda." Scahill contrasts the soldiers' glowing reports with "most independent assessments, to which the White House would never dare listen." After spending a week with "a crack unit of the Iraqi army," a Knight Ridder reporter wrote, "Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that's tearing their nation apart, the mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population."

On October 20, the U.S. Senate's Commerce Committee will consider the Truth in Broadcasting Act, "as part of a mark-up session with three other bills." (The meeting will be webcast, at www.commerce.senate.gov.) The Act would require government-funded video news releases (VNRs) or audio news releases to carry a clear disclaimer, such as a "conspicuous" tag reading, "Produced by the U.S. Government" visible "for the entire duration" of the VNR. PR Week assesses the industry's reaction to VNR "flaps" and the Armstrong Williams "imbroglio" and finds it to be "spotty" and "inconclusive." They write, "In April, Ketchum unveiled its first-ever guidelines for disclosure. ... Just last month, Edelman unveiled its first-ever code of conduct for employees. ... Other agencies," including Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli, "have not officially codified policies regarding disclosure." See our "No Fake News!" page for actions you can take to demand accountability for propagandists and disclosure of all materials provided to newsrooms by third parties.

As part of a $300 million, three-year U.S. government effort encouraging seniors to sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug program, the PR firm Ketchum won a $25 million contract, including $2 million in fees, to manage the advertising campaign. Ketchum "produced a controversial series of prepackaged news stories," or video news releases (VNRs), for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). VNRs that Ketchum produced for the Department of Education were also recently found to be "covert propaganda." The Washington Post reported, "HHS officials say Ketchum got the new work because it already had a multiyear contract to provide public relations services for the department. The firm promised the new ads will not cross the legal line." HHS's Kathleen Harrington said that seniors trust Medicare information more when it comes from the government, so "it's in the interest of our success ... to label everything appropriately."

"The study of people in their natural environment is, The Hartman Group believes, the future of marketing," explains a Seattle Post-Intelligencer story. So this market research firm, which has worked for Whole Foods, PepsiCo and Campbell Soup Company, has sent two sociocultural anthropologists into a private home for up to nine months, to "observe the family's eating habits." This new approach - called "reality marketing" - will fill "an enormous void in the intellectual capital of the entire industry," said The Hartman Group's Michelle Barry. Pepsi's vice-president of consumer and customer insights, Dwight Riskey, agrees. "This generates a richness that we wouldn't get from standard techniques," he said. The Hartman Group's CEO, Harvey Hartman, stressed the importance of observing one family over time: "The fluidity of life is the power behind reality marketing."

An advisory committee to the U.S. State Department has issued a new report which frankly admits that the war in Iraq, combined with prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, has deeply damaged America's image in the rest of the world. "There is deep and abiding anger toward U.S. policies and actions," states the report, titled Cultural Diplomacy: The Linchpin of Public Diplomacy. Committee members reviewed several academic studies and conducted interviews in various countries with artists, cultural activists, educators, filmmakers, writers, foreign officials and journalists. "A sense of crisis was everywhere apparent," it states, "first in the growing perception of the United States as a hostile force, then in the scale of the diplomatic problem that must be solved: bridges rebuilt and new links forged. Put simply, we have lost the goodwill of the world, without which it becomes ever more difficult to execute foreign policy."

Newly minted propaganda czar Karen Hughes' "listening tour" of the Middle East "turned into a near feeding frenzy directed at her by the western media," writes John Brown, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer. "Hughes's PR failure with her home media would be of little importance if it did not lead to a simple but troubling question: If the administration's Under Secretary in a key foreign policy post can't demonstrate to western reporters that she's a serious professional, how will she ever be able to convince the rest of the world ... that her official assignment - winning hearts and minds abroad - is worth any attention or respect?" Instead of the four "E's" of public diplomacy - "Education, Empowerment, Engagement and Exchanges" - Brown lists several different "E's" that Hughes communicated on her tour: Evangelical, Erroneous, Evasive, Eccentric, Egocentric and Escapist.

"October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and beauty companies are once again selling pink-ribbon products ... all of which earmark some of the purchase price for breast cancer charities," the New York Times reports. "While a few lose money on pink-ribbon products, they still profit, market researchers say, from the consumer good will and loyalty that their giving inspires." But not all women's health advocates are tickled with the results. Helen Lynn of the UK-based Women's Environmental Network told the London Telegraph that the pink ribbon has become a "blindfold" against the cancer risks associated with some cosmetics ingredients. Breast Cancer Action, a San Francisco-based group, has launched a "Think Before You Pink" campaign, urging consumers to ask "some critical questions before opening your wallet for these marketing campaigns: How much money goes to the cause? What is it supporting? How is it being raised? And will it truly affect the fight against breast cancer?"

Fake blogs—a form of viral marketing in which PR or advertising agencies attempt to generate interest in their client's product by creating a fictional character on the internet—are drawing criticism from real bloggers. The Cohn & Wolfe PR firm had to apologize recently after "using a fictional character to leave a series of thinly veiled advertisements on blogs and other websites. A number of websites were hit last week with messages from Barry Scott," a fictional spokesman for a British household cleaning product. British blogger Tom Coates was especially outraged and called it "a new low for marketers" after he wrote an emotional account of his relationship with his father, and then received comment spam from "Barry Scott" disguised as condolences. Coates replied: "My view was that any right-thinking person would view trying to market your product on such a post as revolting, corrupt, cynical, disgusting, sick and dishonourable." According to some PR people, however, fake blogging is a good idea.

"It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse," former U.S. Vice President Al Gore told the We Media Conference in New York. "Something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled 'marketplace of ideas' now functions." Gore cited the dominance and poor quality of television as a main cause: "Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to 'glue eyeballs to the screen' in order to build ratings and sell advertising. ... Just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings. ... More importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long lis