In their books The Best War Ever and Weapons of Mass Deception, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber examine the Pentagon's propaganda machine and how much of it has been focused on propagandizing US citizens. Now UPI reports that "the U.S. Department of Defense is creating a Public Affairs 'rapid response team' to respond to what it sees as unfair or inaccurate coverage. Many of the additional staff at the Pentagon Public Affairs Office will be dedicated to ... trying to convince reporters and newspapers to cover the stories that the Pentagon wants to see more of. Others will be dedicated to monitoring the Internet, creating podcasts and responding to reports on blogs, negative stories and terrorist propaganda. The Pentagon press office in the last few weeks has also inaugurated a new blog on its Web site defenselink.mil to respond immediately to news reports it objects to. ... Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff ... noted that Donald Rumsfeld this year gave Pentagon media operations a "D+", compared with the enemy. 'We're trying to do better than a D+,' Ruff said."

The Eli Lilly drug company used the Belsito & Company PR firm in its deceptive marketing campaign to promote Xigris, its drug for treatment of sepsis. A report in the New England Journal of Medicine accuses the company of initiating false reports of a shortage of the drug. Belsito and Company spread the word that "the drug was being rationed and physicians were being 'systematically forced' to decide who would live and who would die. As part of this effort, Lilly provided a group of physicians and bioethicists with a $1.8 million grant to form the Values, Ethics, and Rationing in Critical Care (VERICC) Task Force, purportedly to address ethical issues raised by rationing in the intensive care unit. Finally, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign was established, in theory to raise awareness of severe sepsis and generate momentum toward the development of treatment guidelines." This marketing campaign is especially troublesome because Xigris has been linked to increased risk of serious bleeding in patients who use it. (As we noted back in 2003, Carl Elliott at the University of Minnesota medical school has been raising concerns about this for years.)

The President of the American League of Lobbyists, Paul Miller, told PR Week that the controversy over Washington D.C. lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is "not necessarily hurting us doing business." Abramoff and his partner Adam Kidan were sentenced in March by Federal Court Judge Paul Huck to 70 months in federal prison, placed on three years' probation and directed to pay $21.7 million in restitution. Miller acknowledged that the reputation of lobbyists is not "stellar" but defended their role as a modern necessity. "There's a real, fundamental need for us. You think we have a bad system now? Without us, just see what kind of government we'd have then," he said.

Animals Australia advertisement

Plans by the non-profit group, Animals Australia, to run full colour advertisements in major magazines highlighting cruelty to factory-farmed pigs received a setback when several publications refused to accept the ads. One ad, titled Traumatised Suckling Piglet with Severed Tail, states "within the first week of its life, surgically mutilate piglet. Snip off tail and cut eye teeth without administering pain relief. Ignore screams. Forcibly remove from mother after 3 to 4 weeks and stuff into crowded pen. Marinate indoors for entire life. Serves 4." Some magazines, such as Australian Women's Weekly, accepted the ads. However, the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend Magazine, which is known for its strong editorial feature articles, refused to accept the ads on the grounds that they are inappropriate and denied it was in response to any advertiser influence. Last weekend's edition of the magazine featured two double-page, full-colour advertisements promoting the health benefits of red meat consumption.

The European Commission "may be the victim of a carefully planned attack by representatives of the alcohol industry" to derail the adoption of a strategy to reduce the health effects of alcohol, warns Martin McKee, professor of European public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. McKee singles out a report commissioned by The Brewers of Europe and written by The Weinberg Group, a PR firm which was "previously involved in the tobacco industry's campaign to undermine evidence on the harmful effects of passive smoking and those by the chemical industry to challenge evidence on the harmful environmental effects of substances such as Agent Orange." The PR firm's report claims that "there is not enough evidence to substantiate a link between alcohol advertising and consumption" and that "violence is a subjective term which is fairly nebulous and elastic."

The DCI Group, which is described by O'Dwyers PR Daily as a "brass-knuckled Republican PR firm", has sold the Tech Central Station (TCS) 'news' website to the editor of the site, Nick Schultz. In a feature on TCS published in Washington Monthly in December 2003, Nick Confessore wrote of TCS that "it looks less like a think-tank-cum-magazine than a kind of lobbying practice." TCS sponsors have included ExxonMobil, General Motors Corporation, McDonald's and Microsoft. Prior to joining TCS, Schultze was the Politics Editor for FOXNews.com, the website of the Fox News Channel. He has also worked as a policy analyst with Empower America, a think tank that was co-chaired by former Secretary of Education and author William Bennett and former New York Congressman Jack Kemp. (In July 2004 Empower America merged with Citizens for a Sound Economy to form FreedomWorks).

Media consolidation comes at the expense of ethnic diversity and serving the interests of women and minorities, according to several academic studies recently released by the Benton Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. A study by Dr. Carolyn Byerly of Howard University examined U.S. Federal Communications Commission data on minority and women-owned media and found that women hold a majority interest in only 3.4% of radio stations, while minorities own a majority interest in only 3.6%. Peter DiCola of the University of Michigan study found that large media groups focus almost all of their programming on "just six types of formats: news, adult contemporary, rock, classic rock, country, and top 40," making them less likely than smaller media groups to offer diverse fare including classical, jazz, folk, tejano, or gospel. Another survey, of minority audience members, found that many feel the news does not help them to understand the problems that are most important to them — safety, lack of income, and lack of affordable housing — while a significant number of African-Americans perceive widespread bias against their communities.

The U.S. Department of Defense has its own video game called "America's Army," which serves as a military recruiting tool. Not to be outdone, Islamist websites have been distributing "Night of Bush Capturing," a first-person shooter video game that allows players to assume the role of a terrorist, gun down U.S. troops and — in the game's final level — assassinate President Bush. The ultimate irony, though, is that "Night of Bush Capturing" is a modified version of an earlier video game. As gaming analyst Zach Whalen points out, "It's a straightforward re-skinning of Quest for Saddam that simply exchanges references to Saddam with references to George W. Bush. ... What I think is important and interesting about both games, however, is the way their programmatic relationship reveals an underlying logical similarity between the anti-Saddam and anti-Bush messages."

A simple Google search puts the lie to the Bush administration's effort to distance itself from its own catchphrase about "staying the course" in Iraq. According to cognitive linguist George Lakoff, this latest rhetorical dodge shows that the White House has finally been caught in its own language trap. "'Stay the course' was for years a trap for those who disagreed with the president’s policies in Iraq," he observes. "To disagree was weak and immoral. It meant abandoning the fight against evil. But now the president himself is caught in that trap. To keep staying the course, given obvious reality, is to get deeper into disaster in Iraq, while not staying the course is to abandon one’s moral authority as a conservative. Either way, the president loses." At the Huffington Post, Matt Neuman suggests some candidates for a replacement catchphrase, including "run and hide," "bob and weave," "hem and haw," ""shuck and jive," "twist and shout."

Scott Horton has been sounding the alarm regarding an orchestrated "November surprise" to assist Republican candidates just before election day: the November 5th sentencing of Saddam Hussein. The Columbia University law professor told the Nation magazine "when you look at polling figures there have been three significant spike points. One was the date on which Saddam was captured. The second was the purple fingers election. The third was Zarqawi being killed. Based on those three, it's easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this. ... This is not coincidence. Nothing in Iraq that's set up this far in advance is coincidental. ... In fact, in my experience, everything that comes out of Baghdad is very carefully prepared for American domestic consumption."

Each year Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists, issues a Worldwide Press Freedom Index ranking 168 countries according to how well they respect freedom of speech. In their just-issued new report, the United States ranking has fallen along with France and Japan. The U.S. ranked 17th in the group's first report, published in 2002, but it has now fallen to 53. North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China continue to rank at the bottom of the list, while "Northern European countries top the index, with no reported censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals, either by officials or the public, in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands. All of those countries were ranked in first place."

On the very day that Walt Disney Company announced that it would limit future food marketing deals to brands that provide healthy food products to kids, there was Kellogg's sugar-crazy Tony the Tiger (again) welcoming kids to Disney's website. Is the company, then, not "Greeeaat!" for its plan to limit calories, fat, saturated fat and added sugars to any product the Disney name promotes? Public health attorney and author Michele Simon doesn't think so. She takes both Disney and the press (e.g. Daily Mail to public: "Disney Bans All Junk Food") to task for hyping what she calls a PR-driven move to keep the kids watching Disney--and probably eating the bad stuff anyway. Simon's top criticisms: 1) Disney has created a two-to-four-year phase-in, which means not only that Disney is protecting current profit centers, but that if this voluntary plan changes, consumers may remember only the headlines and forget about the commitments; 2) Disney didn't include a ban on junk food advertising in its wider media conglomerate, such as ABC Network, Disney Channel and Toon Disney; 3) Disney omitted limits on product placement in movies and television; and 4) Disney didn't mention "advergaming"--like the enticement of its current website. "...[C]hildren don't need The Incredibles to tell them when and what to eat," Simon writes.

The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer has disclosed that the Australian government contributed $A12,023 ($US9,150) towards the costs of a five-day speaking tour by the conservative Canadian commentator Mark Steyn. In response to a question from Opposition Shadow Minister for Finance Lindsay Tanner, Downer explained that Steyn was funded under a program that "targets senior foreign journalists and editorial staff with the capacity to influence editorial content and/or generate informed international media coverage of Australia." Steyn's tour was co-sponsored by two free-market think tanks, the Institute of Public Affairs and the Center for Independent Studies. Steyn also spoke at an event for The Conservative, a quarterly magazine aimed at fostering debate within the Liberal Party of Australia.

Apparently the U.S. government is only in favor of embedded reporters when it serves its own purposes. According to the Associated Press, Congressman Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, has asked the Pentagon to remove CNN reporters embedded with U.S. combat troops because of the network's broadcast of a video showing insurgent snipers targeting U.S. soldiers. Hunter penned a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stating that "CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film featuring the killing of an American soldier." CNN producer David Doss wrote in a Web log Thursday the network televised the footage in an effort to present the "unvarnished truth" about the Iraq war. "Our responsibility is to report the news," said CNN spokesperson Laurie Goldberg. "As an organization we stand by our decision and respect the rights of others to disagree with it."

In an interview with the Toronto Star, veteran energy policy analyst Amory Lovins said that he had spoken with former Greenpeace co-founder turned nuclear power promoter Patrick Moore and concluded that "he's not well informed about energy alternatives." Earlier this year, the Nuclear Energy Institute established a front group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coaltion, with Moore as its co-chair. The group promotes nuclear power as a "solution" to global warming. Lovins referred to his recent Nuclear Energy International article, which showed that "if you spent 10 cents (U.S.) to make and deliver a new nuclear kilowatt-hour ... you can displace 1 kilowatt-hour of coal power. That's what Patrick is talking about. ... If you spend the same 10 cents (U.S.) instead on micropower or efficient use, you get two to 10 times as much coal displacement for the same money, because those options are cheaper -- you get more per dollar. They're also faster, so you get more carbon displacement, coal displacement, per year."

British war photographer Sean Smith spent nearly six weeks with the 101st Division of the U.S. army in Iraq and has produced an eloquent short film which explodes the myth around the claims that U.S.-trained Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country. In fact, Shia militias loyal to fundamentalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr seem to be ready, willing and able to seize power, while Sunni insurgents believed to belong to al-Qaida are so emboldened that they have been publicly staging military-like parades within striking distance of U.S. forces stationed in nearby bases. According to former Bush administration foreign policy official Richard N. Haass, the situation is reaching a "tipping point" both in Iraq and in U.S. politics, and the administration's current strategy "has virtually no chance of succeeding."

Cancer United, a cancer patient group created and launched by the PR firm Weber Shandwick with funding from the drug company Roche, has got off to a rocky start. On its website the group states that it aims to run an 18-month-long campaign for more uniform cancer treatments across the European Union. However, before the group was launched, it was revealed that the study it relies on was also funded by Roche. The study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm argues that survival rates increase the more a country spends on drugs. Michel Coleman from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the Guardian that the study was "woefully simplistic research." A Labor member of parliament, Ian Gibson, resigned from the group after discovering Roche's role. "I feel very silly and stupid," he said. The press conference convened in Brussels to announce the new group was "sparsely attended."

The Tasmanian logging company Gunns has been ordered to pay the legal costs of 17 environmentalists and 3 environmental groups, after the third version of its $A6.9 million ($US5.2m) damages claim was thrown out of court. The legal costs are estimated at more than $A1 million ($US760,000). Since December 2004, Gunns has filed three statements of claim and sacked two legal teams. Victorian Supreme Court Justice Bernard Bongiorno gave the company until November 2 to file a fourth claim. Gunns' legal actions have sparked calls for an overhaul of Australian laws to ensure that corporations cannot initiate legal actions aimed at stifling community participation in public policy debates, or SLAPPs. Earlier in the week, Gunns informed the court that it had dropped one part of its claim in which it sought $A500,000 ($US378,000) in damages, alleging a co-ordinated campaign involving all defendants.

New Zealand Police have terminated McDonald's sponsorship of a road safety program in schools and pre-schools because it was inconsistent with their policy banning corporate sponsorship. As part of the $NZ40,000 ($US26,700) a year deal, "Ronald McDonald" accompanied police on their school visits and children were awarded vouchers for use in the fast food company's outlets. McDonald's said they were "extremely disappointed" at the decision, but Acting Superintendent Sam Hoyle, the national manager of youth services, described their funding as "a drop in the bucket" of the road safety program. Obesity Action Coalition spokeswoman Celia Murphy welcomed the decision. "Every time the kids crossed the road at school the McDonald's brand was there on the vests of the patrol monitors. The whole deal was outrageous," she said. The New Zealand Police decision followed questions raised about the deal in Parliament by Greens health spokesperson Sue Kedgley.

Armstrong Williams

Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams will pay $34,000 as part of a settlement of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into possible breaches of his contract with the U.S. Department of Education. Williams admits no wrongdoing and will not face charges. Under a $240,000 sub-contract to the PR firm Ketchum, Williams agreed to promote the department's No Child Left Behind Act and, through his contacts in the journalists group America's Black Forum, encourage others to do likewise. The DOJ investigation was into whether Williams was paid for radio and television ads that he didn't produce. Williams' November 2003 contract was negotiated during the term of former Education Secretary Rod Paige. The contract was terminated in early 2005, after USA Today reported on it. The paper had received a copy of Williams' contract through a Freedom of Information Act request. Williams is a partner in a Washington DC PR firm, the Graham Williams Group. Last year, the Government Accountability Office ruled that several aspects of Ketchum's work for the Education Department violated federal law.

O'Dwyer's has more revelations about the multifaceted fakery engaged in by Wal-Mart and its PR firm, Edelman. Edelman staffers have been posing as "grassroots" bloggers on two Wal-Mart websites, for the Working Families for Wal-Mart front group and paidcritics.com, which -- rather ironically -- slams the "paid critics [who are] smearing Wal-Mart." The paid bloggers are Edelman's Miranda Gill, Brian McNeill and Kate Marshall. A post by Marshall praises a Wall Street Journal editorial for exposing "Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch as front groups of the union leaders." If you can take more hypocrisy, read Advertising Age's article on how Edelman "is being aligned with a newly coined word for its present crisis" over walmartingacrossamerica.com: "flog," for "fake blog." AdAge points out that Edelman helped write the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's (WOMMA's) code of ethics, which states, "Never obscure your identity." Asked why WOMMA is not sanctioning Edelman, WOMMA CEO Andy Sernovitz said, "We aren't the police. Associations don't punish. And look, PRSA didn't even say a word, and they are the PR association." Maybe that's because PRSA is too busy defending undisclosed fake news.

Richard Edelman, the CEO of the Edelman PR firm, "issued an apology for his agency's role in creating a blog for client Wal-Mart that did not properly disclose its origins or funding," notes PR Week. The walmartingacrossamerica.com website "chronicled a couple's journey across the country in an RV while stopping at various Wal-Mart parking lots." The trip was funded by Working Families for Wal-Mart, a front group funded by the giant retailer. Edelman told PR Week, "We still have a job to do about explaining to our staff their [disclosure] obligation in old media and new media." Worse, one of the fake bloggers was Washington Post photographer James Thresher, who later agreed to repay Working Families for the $2,200 cost of his and his girlfriend's airfare, RV rental, gas and food during the 10-day trip. Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., who also asked that Thresher's pictures be removed from the pro-Wal-Mart website, called Working Families "a special-interest group," reports Howard Kurtz. Even worse, filmmaker Ron Galloway recently resigned from Working Families' steering committee, reports O'Dwyer's. Galloway said he disagreed with Wal-Mart's new wage caps; Wal-Mart says the split's because Galloway's new movie is about "the so-called myth of global warming." Even worse again, Wal-Mart is being criticized for a holiday-themed website that allows kids to email gift wish lists to their parents, reports Advertising Age.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is the first international court to declare that access to government information is a human right. The recent ruling was reached in a case brought by Chilean environmentalists against the U.S.-based logging company Trillium. The court's decision is based on the American Convention on Human Rights' Article 13, which deals with "freedom of thought and expression." The ruling states, "Article 13 of the Convention, which specifically establishes the rights to 'seek' and 'receive' information, protects the right of all persons to request access to information held by the State." In other news, the nonprofit research group National Security Archive (NSA) is criticizing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' report on improving access to U.S. government information. The report "fails to acknowledge that many of the admirable goals set by [federal] agencies [to improve responses to Freedom of Information Act requests] can only be met with an increased commitment of resources," which "is not being considered by the Administration," states NSA. Among the "serious deficiencies" noted by the group are some federal agencies' "lack of basic technology such as copiers and Internet access."

Image from Lincoln Group's website

A U.S. Defense Department inspector general's report concluded, after reviewing three contracts with the PR firm Lincoln Group worth $37.3 million, that military commanders in Iraq "complied with applicable laws and regulations in their use of a contractor to conduct psychological operations and their use of newspapers as a way to disseminate information." A Los Angeles Times article revealed that the Lincoln Group was paying Iraqi newspapers to covertly run stories written by U.S. military personnel. The Defense Department report did find that, for one contract, "a military contracting office did not maintain enough documentation to verify expenditures," according to Reuters. Sen. Edward Kennedy said that meant "the Pentagon cannot account for millions paid to the Lincoln Group." Kennedy, Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Peter Pace and others have said the program undermines U.S. goals of supporting democracy in Iraq. The Lincoln group recently won another "multimillion-dollar media contract to monitor English and Arabic media outlets and produce talking points, speeches and other material for U.S. forces in Iraq."

The former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Lester Crawford, has pleaded guilty to breaching conflict of interest rules. Crawford and his wife held between $188,000 and $336,000 in shares in four companies that he was required to have sold, under FDA rules. Two of the companies he held stock in were the food companies Sysco and PepsiCo. Crawford had shares in these companies at a time that he was chair of the FDA's Obesity Working Group, which was reviewing calorie-content labelling standards for soft drinks. Crawford currently works as Senior Counsel at the Washington D.C. lobbying firm Policy Directions Inc.. In 2005, Policy Directions clients included Kraft Foods, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Nestle, Merck and the American Feed Industry Association.

The September 2006 issue of a Denver area LGBT magazine, MetroMode, carries a curious full-page ad titled "Busting the Myths of Smoke-Free Colorado" that urges readers to protest Colorado's Clean Indoor Air Act, the law that ended smoking in most workplaces (including bars and restaurants) as of July 1, 2006. The ad was paid for by a group called "The Coalition for Equal Rights," and sends readers to the web site www.stopthebans.com where visitors are told that the Coalition for Equal Rights fights for "freedom of choice." A small link on the page asks visitors to "Join CLBA," which, it turns out, stands for Colorado Licensed Beverage Association, a longtime Tobacco industry ally and member of Philip Morris' secret Colorado "Field Action Team", a group of businesses that PM mobilizes to fight restrictions on the sale or use of tobacco. LGBT groups have significantly higher smoking rates than the general population and are more concerned about civil rights than most groups, two facts that certainly were not lost on whoever put together the ad.

According to a report by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, "five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, 'appear to have perpetrated a fraud' on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff." The nonprofits are Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, Citizens Against Government Waste, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and Toward Tradition. The Senate report finds the groups probably violated their tax-exempt status, "by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff's direction; taking payments in exchange for writing newspaper columns and press releases that put Mr. Abramoff's clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients." Clients benefiting include Microsoft and Primedia's Channel One. Norquist's attorney countered that "there is no 'abuse' of ATR's tax status," as long as funds are spent in keeping with the mission of Americans for Tax Reform.

This October is the 26th annual Breast Cancer Awareness month, an event "conceived by the pharmaceutical company Zeneca, now AstraZeneca ... to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in fighting breast cancer." The increasing number of pink ribbon / breast cancer cause-related marketing campaigns has the advocacy group Breast Cancer Action referring to October as "breast cancer industry month." Companies -- like Ty, which is offering "SpongeBob PinkPants" this October -- point out that they raise money for breast cancer research. "In 2005 alone, cause-related marketing generated more than $30 million for research and community programs for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation," reports Josephine Marcotty. Pink marketing also helps companies' bottom lines. Advertising Age reports that "by turning its iconic red-and-white soup cans pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Campbell Soup Co. has doubled sales of its top varieties to its biggest grocery customer. ... [Campbell spokesman John] Faulkner said he would 'love to see the program expanded greatly next year.'"

The sport of baseball got its reputation as a "Field of Dreams," in part, because the game is played outside of time. There is a nominal starting time, but no game clock. Once endorsement deals became as fashionable as designer steroids, everything else went up for sale. Last week, reports Richard Sandomir, the Chicago White Sox literally sold their starting time for $500,000 per year, so that convenience store chain 7-Eleven could get a little more PR. For the next three seasons, the approximately 50 night games on Chicago's South Side will be scheduled to begin at exactly 7:11 p.m. "Every time the media announces the game's start time it will be a gentle reminder of our sponsorship," 7-Eleven spokesperson Margaret Chabris said of the games. In 2003, the White Sox sold stadium naming rights to U.S. Cellular for $68 million, upon which the Chicago wireless service provider's nameplate replaced iconic Comiskey Park (named for the former team owner and ballplayer). There was no word at press time whether players will also be required to "Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven" or sip on a Slurpee before they step up to the plate.

A group of producers of video news releases (VNRs) have formed the National Association of Broadcast Communicators (NABC) to campaign against the mandatory disclosure of fake news. NABC Vice-President Mike Hill, who is is President of News Broadcast Network, told PR Week that "disclosure is something that TV and radio stations should do as they feel necessary from a news standpoint." Mandatory disclosure, Hill claimed, "would be unworkable." The new group is supported by the Public Relations Society of America. "We all play an important role in the news gathering and dissemination process," said Michael Cherenson, the chair of PRSA's advocacy practice. NABC has hired the Washington D.C. law firm Keller and Heckman and the lobbying firm Bryan Cave Strategies to counter a Federal Communications Commission investigation into the use of VNRs. On October 16, Keller and Heckman filed a comment with FCC Chair Martin on behalf of NABC that claims that the Center for Media and Democracy's "Fake TV News" report "unfairly tarnishes a host of broadcasters along with the entire VNR industry."

Alaska's Future, is a front group which, according to its former president, was created by BP, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. The group may be required to disclose its funders and other financial information, following a three-hour hearing by the Alaska Public Offices Commission. Even though commission staff recommended dismissing a complaint brought against the group, the Commissioners decided they wanted to consider the matter further. The group was originally formed to promote a proposal for a pipeline that would serve the three companies. More recently, the group has run television advertisements opposing a ballot initiative that would tax the leaseholders of gas reserves $1 billion a year until a gas pipeline is built. In September, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo told the Anchorage Daily News that the company only intended to disclose what it spent on the campaign after the election.

The case of a judge granting an injunction to prevent a group of medical professionals publishing a critical review of the herbal drug Tebonin has the editor of a major drug bulletin worried. The editor of Australian Prescriber, John Dowden, notes that in two other instances where drug companies sued drug bulletins, the judgements favoured the publishers. In the Tebonin case, Justice Andrew Greenwood decided that as a copy of the draft report had been sent to the government regulator, granting of an injunction would not harm the public interest. "Unfortunately, the Department of Health and Ageing has said that any investigation by the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration] will be commercial-in-confidence and the results will not be disclosed to the public," Dowden writes. It is time, he suggests, that the health supplement industry opened itself up to greater scrutiny of its products.

A coalition of European health groups, including the International Society of Drug Bulletins and the Medicines in Europe Forum, is alarmed at a renewed campaign by the drug industry to lift the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising in Europe. While acknowledging consumer information about health is essential, the groups are concerned that backdoor direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) through "disease awareness" campaigns and the direct or indirect funding of patient groups by drug companies "have blurred the boundaries between drug promotion and health information." They argue that there "needs to be a clear distinction between information and advertising that is disguised as 'information.'" Meanwhile, the New Zealand Minister for Health, Pete Hodgson, has said that he will shortly announce a decision on a review of DTCA advertising. New Zealand and the U.S. are the only countries which currently allow DTCA ads. Public health groups are urging the government to ban the ads.

CMD executive director John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, co-authors of The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, have been barnstorming the country talking in classrooms, bookstores, homes, on radio and TV programs, and in interviews with print journalists. Here is footage of one of Stauber's early interviews given on September 18th in Seattle at radio station KEXP-FM to its "Mind Over Matters" program host Mike McCormick. (When Stauber's co-author Rampton saw this half-hour interview his response was, "Boy, can that guy blab." Stauber's response: "It must have been the coffee.") Note the number of Iraqi deaths Stauber cites: 100,000. This was a month before the horrific news that the number of Iraqis killed since the US invasion is now better estimated at more than 600,000 and climbing. Here is an interview Stauber gave to the Portland, Oregon, weekly newspaper that ran in advance of his talk in that city, and click here to view Stauber's September book talk in Berkeley at Cody's bookstore. For other book-related reviews and interviews, go to the official book page: The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq .

The University of California system is debating whether UC schools should continue to accept research funding from tobacco companies. Proponents of the funding invoke the slippery-slope argument, saying if UC refuses tobacco funds, then pharmaceutical companies might be next. Others argue that eliminating tobacco funding would infringe on academics’ freedom of speech. In August 2006, a federal court found major U.S. tobacco companies guilty of committing fraud, conspiracy and racketeering over four decades, in an effort to create doubt in the public’s mind about health harms from tobacco smoke. The court ruling focused on the fact that tobacco industry funding of research at prestigious medical schools and universities was essential to its illegal enterprise. Others found guilty of unrelated fraud charges include former Illinois governor George Ryan, former Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, and former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers. The University of California regents might ask whether it would be appropriate to accept funding from these other offenders, who committed similar crimes as the tobacco industry, but over far shorter amounts of time and resulting in far fewer deaths.

The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against a Scottish energy utility that claimed that a tree planting scheme funded by consumers volunteering to pay a higher tariff would offset their carbon emissions. The ASA told Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) to withdraw a brochure promoting the scheme. SSE had argued that the average household produced 4.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from gas usage and household waste. "But," Miles Brignall reported, "the ASA said it failed to prove that the new trees absorbed the equivalent amount of greenhouse gases." The decision may impact other companies, too. The oil giant BP recently unveiled its targetneutral scheme, Ford USA and Ford Land Rover have launched Terrapass, and British Airways has teamed up with Climate Care.

The head of the UK army has dropped a political and public relations bomb on the occupation of Iraq, blowing to bits the upbeat, stay-the-course talking points of the Blair and Bush administrations. According to an interview in The Daily Mail, "The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq 'soon' or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society. In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops 'exacerbates the security problems' in Iraq. ... Sir Richard, who took up his post earlier this year, warned that 'our presence in Iraq exacerbates' the 'difficulties we are facing around the world.' He lambasts Tony Blair's desire to forge a 'liberal democracy' in Iraq as a 'naive' failure and he warns that 'whatever consent we may have had in the first place' from the Iraqi people 'has largely turned to intolerance.' Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman Michael Moore said: 'This is the frankest assessment we have had about Iraq. It illustrates that the government has no clear strategy.' The party's defense spokesman Nick Harvey added: 'This drives a coach and horses through the government's foreign policy.'"

Dean Foods and H.P. Hood have begun demanding farmers in New England to supply milk free of Monsanto's artificial growth hormones, "the first large-scale conversion in the country," writes reporter Bruce Mohl. The dairies are making the switch--or return--due to growing consumer demand for organic and other hormone and antibiotic-free milk products. "The phenomenal success of organic milk, with growth rates of 20 percent or more, is driving our demand for milk from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones," says John Kaneb, chief executive of H.P. Hood. The St. Paul Pioneer Press recently reported on a similar consumer trend in the midwest. Monsanto, maker of growth hormone POSILAC, which is used in one third of the U.S. dairy herd, doesn't like the development. Monsanto sued a Maine dairy in 2003 when it used a label pledging not to use the hormones (which brought about the common counter-label stating that there is "no significant difference" between milk from hormone-treated and non-hormone-treated cows). The Globe paraphrases Monsanto as saying that Dean and Hood are now "depriving" farmers of an FDA-approved technology.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have a chapter in The Best War Ever titled "Not Counting the Dead," reporting on how the US government has chosen to hide the horrific impact of the US invasion and occupation. Now the authors of a major study examined in the book have a new study out. The New York Times reports, "A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 650,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here. ... It is the second study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ... The study comes at a sensitive time for the Iraqi government, which is under pressure from American officials to take action against militias driving the sectarian killings. In the last week of September, the government barred the central morgue in Baghdad and the Health Ministry — the two main sources of information for civilian deaths — from releasing figures to the news media. Now, only the government is allowed to release figures."

"Scotland's green watchdog played down the risks of radioactive contamination at a popular coastal resort in Fife following an 11th-hour intervention by government spin doctors," reports Rob Edwards. "Internal emails reveal the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) delayed and then altered a news release after it had been described as 'not entirely helpful' by a senior Scottish public relations official." The Sepa release announced a "hazard assessment," which found that radioactive waste dumped decades ago, after the closure of a naval air base, had resulted in 100 radiation hotspots. The area includes "Scotland's largest sailing club and a beach." The intervention by Scottish Executive PR official Neil Trotter resulted in major changes to the release. The original version estimated the likelihood of radioactive exposure to be "around 1 in 900 a year for the whole beach, and around 1 in 90 for the area with the greatest concentration" of waste. The published version merely stated the "likelihood of harm ... is considered to be low." Sepa denied that they had "tone[d] down" the release, saying, "The content of Sepa press releases is decided by Sepa."

"The Army spends more than $200 million annually on marketing -- the biggest ad contract in the federal government," notes Advertising Age. Ten months after winning the U.S. Army's main advertising contract, the McCann Worldgroup firm announced the theme of its first campaign: strength. "There's strong, and then there's Army strong," explained a video from the firm. "There is nothing on this green earth that is stronger than the U.S. Army." Like other recruiting efforts, the Army's "strong" campaign "was developed to specifically address not just those considering an Army career, but family members and friends of potential recruits. Since the start of the Iraq war, the U.S. military's advertising increasingly has focused on convincing parents and peers that the choice of the military career is a good one." The "strong" TV ads will start airing November 9; print ads will run in 2007.

"Kids will buy what they want. We just stop by the bodega on the way home." So says one thirteen year old, unimpressed by what the adults have just signed -- a "voluntary agreement" between five snack food makers (Kraft, M&M Mars, Campbell Soup Co., Dannon, and PepsiCo), the American Heart Association, and the Clinton Foundation in round two of the former president's voluntary intiatives to discourage bad eating habits in America's schools. The "deal" is this: where schools agree to follow "Competitive Food Guidelines," vending machines will stock only products that contain no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat, no more than 10 percent saturated fat, and no more than 35 percent of sugar content by weight. Although the guidelines have been commended, implementation raises doubts. Janey Thornton, president of the School Nutrition Association, said, "It has to have some enforcement behind it... . [S]ome states have none and that's where I think the problem comes in." The Center for Science in the Public Interest noted that local schools and vending machine companies could completely ignore the program. Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, criticized the initiative as "a sham and a public relations stunt" by junk food firms.