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).