"Nearly a fifth of the UK's top public companies are still failing to deliver comprehensive reports detailing the economic, environmental and social impact of their business," reports Andy Favell for The Independent. Analyses have found corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from 18 of the British companies on the FTSE 100 Index to be inadequate. Nine of the "poor performers" are also listed on FTSE-4Good, which is geared towards socially responsible investment. Favell explains, "FTSE-4Good initially set the bar relatively low and listing requirements are lifted each year." He concludes, "It is common to hear both investors and [non-governmental organizations] levelling criticism at the standard of CSR reporting as a whole. ... With a significant number of the FTSE 100 still failing to satisfy on CSR reporting, and greenwash accusations against many others, are we really getting the information we deserve?"

"In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years." Since 1999, more than 50,000 once-declassified pages have been reclassified as secret. Intelligence historian Matthew Aid said some of the decades-old documents are "mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous." The New York Times reports, "While some of the choices made by the security reviewers ... are baffling, others seem ... to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago." The program, which has cost millions, is "shrouded in secrecy -- governed by a still-classified memorandum." An anonymous source told the Times that "the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency were major participants." Though there has been "a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration," the reclassification program is reportedly driven by federal spy agencies. A coalition of historians has expressed concern about the program.

In "his most specific comments thus far about the information operations program," U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told interviewer Charlie Rose that his reaction to reports that the Lincoln Group paid Iraqi newspapers to run Pentagon-written stories was, "Gee, that's not what we ought to be doing." Rumsfeld said "he had not been initially aware of the clandestine program, and ordered it shut down" after the Los Angeles Times report. However, "Army Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said during a Dec. 16 news conference -- more than two weeks after the existence of the operation was revealed -- that it had not been shut down." An anonymous source told the LA Times that "the program in Iraq was still active as of a week ago." In a separate talk, Rumsfeld said negative media coverage of the Iraq propaganda has a "chilling effect" on U.S. troops' "innovation" to win hearts and minds.