It must be hard to put the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a positive light, following recent detainee suicide attempts and the United Nations Committee Against Torture's recommendation that the camp be closed, but that's what the Pentagon is trying to do. According to US News & World Report, "Officials from the Joint Chiefs of Staff Detainee Affairs Section have worked up a new briefing and made presentations in recent months to some 3,000 people, including media representatives and members of Congress, stressing the strategic value of detainees at the prison camp." The briefing touts the camp's "decent food, healthcare, and literacy training for the inmates. Notwithstanding allegations of psychological and physical torture, officials say the biggest threats faced by many detainees are ... frequent sports injuries on Gitmo basketball courts." The briefing also says many detainees "help in identifying current al Qaeda operatives and supporters and in revealing favored bomb-making techniques."

A scene from the ad

The new industry-funded front group from lobbyist Rick Berman, the Center for Union Facts, has launched its first TV ad campaign. The 30-second spot, running on Fox News and local markets, has "actors posing as workers" saying "sarcastically what they 'love' about unions," like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles," and discrimination against minorities. The ad campaign cost $3 million, which was raised "from companies, foundations and individuals that Mr. Berman won't identify." Another TV ad will be filmed in June. Labor and economics professor Harley Shaiken said the effort "to create an antiunion atmosphere" more generally, as opposed to business-funded ads against a particular union organizing drive or strike, "is a new wrinkle." Needless to say, an AFL-CIO spokesperson called the ad's accusations "unfounded and outrageous."

When does an independent labor advocacy group's work turn into corporate PR? The Connecticut-based Center for Reflection, Education and Action (CREA) finds itself right on the line. CREA recently announced partial results of a study of Florida tomato suppliers, crediting one McDonald's supplier with exceeding industry best practices, including pay sometimes higher than $18 an hour. But an analysis by Florida International University--endorsed by 30 national labor experts--says the CREA study is “so riddled with errors both large and small that it cannot be accepted as factually accurate on virtually any measure.” CREA rushed the report into print while other studies of tomato suppliers were still pending (PDF). McDonald's promptly published the report's conclusions. The report's release coincided with a campaign by the Coalition for Immokalee Workers calling on McDonald's to match Taco Bell's recent "penny-a-pound" pay increase to tomato pickers.

We appreciate News Hounds, the folks who "watch Fox so you don't have to." The website noted that "Fox News left out some crucial information in a report about the Washington premiere of Al Gore's film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth -- like the fact that think tanks critical of it were funded by oil companies and automakers, as well as the usual coterie of far-right bagmen. ... Reporter Mike Emanuel ... did not take the time to tell the viewer anything about either the Competitive Enterprise Institute or the National Center for Policy Analysis. If he really were reporting so that the viewer could decide, Emanuel might have noted these facts available from Sourcewatch," wrote News Hounds, going on to quote from the SourceWatch articles on each front group.