2006 was a year full of deception, manipulation, prevarication, and bald faced lies. But now it's payback time! Every day, we at the Center for Media and Democracy are up to our ankles (and sometimes higher) in the corporate spin and government propaganda that PR firms keep churning out. We have our "favorites," to be sure -- but now we want to hear what YOU think!

At the end of each year, CMD issues the "Falsies Awards," to recognize the people and players responsible for polluting our information environment. This year, we are asking you to help identify the worst spinners and propagandists of 2006. We have put together a juicy selection of nominees -- but we need you to vote and tell us who deserves the Falsies this year.

Go to our survey to fill out your ballot! The Deadline for entries is 5:00 p.m. CST on Friday, December 1, 2006.

Investigative reporting is expensive. If you appreciate CMD's muckracking ways, please donate to support our work.

Thank you!

The leader of the New Zealand National Party, Don Brash, has resigned in the wake of a party backlash over his attempt to ban a book by investigative journalist Nicky Hager. Last week Brash gained an injunction from the High Court of New Zealand banning anyone in the country from publishing the content of his emails. Hager's book, The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception, was set to be released last Tuesday but was blocked by the injunction. Based on internal National Party material, including Brash's emails, the book investigates the party's links with the Exclusive Brethren and U.S. neoconservatives. Brash has indicated that he will allow Hager's book to be published within days but claimed his resignation was totally unrelated to the book. "My own opinion is that it was partly Don Brash leaving and it was partly other people pushing him," Hager said.

On November 17 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved silicone breast implants manufactured by Mentor Corporation and Allergan. PR Week reports that the PR firm MS&L "began working with Inamed Corp. in the lead-up to the April 2005 FDA hearing on their product and continued to work on the effort following Allergan's acquisition of Inamed last March." Ame Wadler, the chief strategist and chairman of global healthcare for the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (B-M), said that the firm had been representing Mentor for about two years. In the mid-1990's BM engineered Dow Corning's PR strategy in an attempt to bounce back from major lawsuits over the health impacts from implants.

Neoconservative war hawk Ken Adelman has gone public with an attack on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, saying that "the President is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls a "debacle." The Washington Post notes that criticisms now coming from neocons such as Adelman and Richard Perle are the "most striking" examples of trend in which "embittered insiders turn against Bush." Does this mean the neocons have wised up, or is this just a case of rats deserting a sinking ship? Ken Silverstein thinks they're still rats. "Adelman's hypocrisy is stunning," he writes. "In 2002 it was he who famously predicted that American forces would enjoy 'a cakewalk' in Iraq, and during the run-up to the invasion he derided war critics for their stupidity and naiveté. ... But what's most astonishing about Adelman's current criticism of the Bush Administration is that he argued for a 'stay the course' approach long after it became clear that the war was a burgeoning disaster. ... Now, after all this, Adelman would have us believe that he has absolutely no responsibility for the Iraq disaster?"

Negotiators representing Big Pharma and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are close to a deal on raising fees paid by industry to speed up reviews of direct-to-consumer advertising. A spokesperson for the trade group BioCentury said that the FDA is seeking to raise about $6.2 million per year, putting individual application review fees at about $41,000. "Industry consultants...welcome this new arrangement," one former FDA official now working for industry told Marketplace. Under the agreement, the FDA will set up a pilot project to assess the benefits and risks of direct advertising--or at least how consumers interpret the risks. University of Minnesota professor Steve Schondelmeyer describes the deal as a "provider-client relationship" in which the federal agency sees itself increasingly as working for industry rather than the public. Meanwhile, a public comment period to the FDA is expected to begin...after the agreement. Although direct advertising of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. dates back to 1983, Advertising Age reports that such advertising budgets have boomed in the past ten years, from $12 million to $4.1 billion.

The Leader of the New Zealand National Party, Don Bracks, has indicated that he may clear the way for the publication of a book by investigative journalist Nicky Hager, despite having obtained an injunction last Friday banning anyone from publishing the contents of leaked internal party emails. Hager's book, The Hollow Men, investigates the National Party's campaign ahead of the September 2005 election and explores the role of the shadowy conservative Christian group the Exclusive Brethren and Australian political consultants Crosby/Textor. Brash initially rejected the request but now says he wants the book published "so that the claims can be exposed to daylight." But Brash says he will only lift the injunction after his lawyer has seen the book. "It feels like we've gone from trying to suppress the book to just wanting to delay it while they get their attacks and their damage control ready," says Hager.

The drug industry is bracing itself for major legislative changes once the new Congress sits. Forbes journalist Matthew Herper notes that, following the mid-term elections, major drug company shares have dropped by over 5%. Herper cites an analysts report from the Prudential Equity Group which warns that "Democrats are well positioned to force action on drug prices, and contrary to conventional wisdom, a [presidential] veto is not a sure thing." One bill already under consideration, co-sponsored by Republican Mike Enz and Democrat Ted Kennedy, is aimed at reforming the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The bill is a response to the withdrawal of Merck's drug, Vioxx, after it was found to increase the risk of heart attacks. Some drug industry leaders are despondent about the industry's image. The head of Astra Zeneca in the US, Tony Zook said "I think it's been easy to beat up on the drug industry."

Simon Chapman, Ph.D., a global authority on tobacco marketing at the University of Sydney, Australia School of Public Health, has accused cigarette manufacturers of carrying on a below-the-radar advertising campaign by flooding the Internet web site You Tube with thousands of videos showing sexy, smoking teens. Chapman notes that the vast majority of clips show young women partying, talking or assuming seductive poses while smoking. You Tube's anonymity provides the perfect cover for companies wanting to access a young audience, and it's free advertising--possibly an irresistible combination for tobacco companies, which are increasingly constrained from utilizing more traditional advertising avenues. Professor Chapman has a federal grant to investigate the matter. Tobacco advertising has been banned in Australia since 1992.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is planning to launch a major "educational advocacy" program in January 2007 to influence the incoming Congress. The API represents 400 major oil and gas producers. According to PR Week, the program will include increased television advertising, speeches by economists and industry executives and tours of oil and gas operations for think tank staff and politicians. API president and chief executive officer Red Cavaney said that, with assistance from the PR firm Edelman, they had recently worked to "put earnings in perspective, to explain how we reinvest them." The campaign has also featured television and magazine advertisements.

With the Australian government supporting plans by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto for a major expansion of uranium mining, a recently released report proposes a major PR campaign to counter public concern. The Uranium Industry Framework report, written by a mining industry dominated group, notes that a majority of the Australian public oppose the establishment of additional uranium mines. One recommendation was for a "multi-faceted communications strategy to ensure the delivery of objective information" about the industry. But elsewhere the committee complains that public disclosure of the details of accidents "perhaps hinders the public's understanding of the actual level of risk." The industry's reluctance to disclose details of accidents, it goes on to claim, "has been consistently misrepresented by its opponents as secretive." Two years ago a government report described a "culture of complacency" at one mine where workers fell ill after showering in and drinking radioactive water.

"The American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq," writes Norman Solomon. As an example, he cites a recent New York Times story by Michael Gordon which claims that many of "the most vehement critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies" believe withdrawal would be irresponsible. Solomon sees parallels between the current media discourse and its earlier treatment of the war in Vietnam, when "the American press lagged way behind grassroots antiwar sentiment in seriously contemplating a U.S. pullout. ... The standard media evasions amount to kicking the bloody can down the road. Careful statements about benchmarks and getting tough with the Baghdad government—as with the Saigon government—are markers for a national media discourse that dodges instead of enlivens debate."

Source: Orangutan Foundation

The Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), a lobby group whose members dominate the global trade in oil produced from palm oil plantations, is looking to launch a PR blitz in the U.K. to overcome criticism from environmentalists. PR Week reports that MPOC "has approached a number of international PR groups for a brief understood to be worth around £500,000" (US$940,000). Friends of the Earth (FOE) in the UK has singled the palm oil industry out as "the most significant cause of rainforest loss in Malaysia and Indonesia." According to FOE, the land area dedicated to palm oil plantations has doubled in the last 10 years and the industry "threatens species with extinction, including the orang-utan and the Sumatran tiger."

California Democrat Tom Lantos is reportedly the frontrunner to chair the House International Relations Committee in the next Congress. In 1990 a Hill & Knowlton created front group, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, lobbied Congress for military action after Iraq's invasion. Lantos convened and co-chaired a hearing of the congressional Human Rights Caucus which heard tearful 'testimony' from a Kuwaiti 'nurse' known only as 'Nayirah'. She claimed that Iraqi soldiers took babies out of incubators at the al-Addan hospital in Kuwait and left them "on the cold floor to die." It was later revealed that Nayirah's story was fabricated and that she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. The director of the California-based Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Paul George, told Mother Jones that "as chair of the committee responsible for Iraq policy, "I think he [Lantos] will be in a position and be willing to block any changes that are needed."

The Philip Morris (PM) tobacco company has announced a brand new advertising campaign aimed at begging the movie industry not to use Marlboro cigarettes in movies. The campaign is a public relations move designed to blunt the effects of growing bodies of research showing that there is more smoking in the movies now than ever before, and that smoking in the movies increases adolescent smoking. The campaign is also designed to dampen the effects of internal tobacco industry documents showing exactly how hard the industry has worked over the decades to get smoking into the movies to take advantage of its extensive, under-the-radar advertising value. Critics of the ads argue that if PM was really serious about eliminating its products from the movies, it would sue moviemakers who feature PM products. After all, history shows that when PM is really serious about stopping something, it sues, like it did with the ABC Television network over a 1994 "Day One" segment discussing spiking cigarettes with nicotine.

Federal Communication Commissioners (FCC) Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein have promised an investigation into each of the 46 television stations revealed by the Center for Media and Democracy's report, Still Not the News to have used undisclosed video news releases (VNRs). Democracy Now presenter, Amy Goodman, found it difficult getting a comment from any of the stations. Fifteen declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries while San Diego CBS affiliate KFMB-TV stated a VNR they used should not have been aired without disclosure. The Radio-Television News Directors Association and the newly-minted VNR-industry lobby group, the National Association of Broadcast Communicators, both declined to be interviewed. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported Copps praised CMD for its "hard work" in producing the report. Adelstein criticized television stations for broadcasting "corporate propaganda" and flagged the need for tighter FCC regulation. "If the flock ignores the shepherd, it is time to build a fence," he said.

Jim Rogers, the Chief Executive of Duke Energy, a power company that is keen to build nuclear power plants in North and South Carolina, told reporters at an energy conference that he was "cautiously optimistic on nuclear, but public opinion turns on a dime." The nuclear industry faces considerable hurdles. Nuclear plants are prohibitively expensive, have long lead times before they deliver any power, lack support from private investors, increase the risk of nuclear proliferation and haven't yet solved the problem of long-term disposal of nuclear waste. If those hurdles aren't enough, the safety of nuclear plants remains a persistent persistent problem. "One bad event anywhere in the world could impact the future of nuclear," Rogers conceded. One more "bad event" - such as the meltdown at Chernobyl - could also cause numerous deaths and irreparably damage the environment.

US Deputy Health Secretary, Alex Azar, is lobbying the Britain's Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, to ease restrictions on the drug industry. In particular, the U.S. drug companies want the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising dropped and to increase the prices the government pays for drugs. Sarah Bosely reports that both Azar and the drug industry object to procedures used the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which evaluates the effectiveness of a new drug and whether it represents value for money compared to drugs that are already available. Azar, like the drug industry, claims that restrictions on prices limit the willingness of companies to invest in research on new drugs. "I try to remember to advise people first off that we will never balance our budget going after drug prices," Azar said. Azar has been a strong supporter of Republican politicians and was a member of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney 2004 and contributed $2,000 to Bush-Cheney '04 Inc..

Publicist Kate Brookes "reports" on medical advancements for KSFY-13 in Sioux Falls, SD

If you thought an ongoing Federal Communications Commission investigation—launched in response to the Center for Media and Democracy's April 2006 report "Fake TV News"—would get fake news off your television screen, think again. CMD just released its follow-up report on video news releases (VNRs), the sponsored public relations videos designed to mimic news reports. The six-month investigation, titled, "Still Not the News: Stations Overwhelmingly Fail to Disclose VNRs," names 46 stations in 22 states that inserted corporate VNRs into their newscasts. Nearly 90 percent of the time, absolutely no attempt to provide any disclosure to viewers—even when VNRs dealt with controversial issues like global warming. Read the report, watch the videos of the original VNRs and the newscasts that incorporated them—and take action! The media reform group Free Press is urging concerned citizens to contact the FCC and demand an end to fake news.

The Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA), a U.K.-based trade association, is lobbying against a European Union proposal to require companies to manufacture cigarettes that reduce the chances of causing a fire if not being smoked. The director of the Action on Smoking and Health UK, Deborah Arnott, told The Observer that tobacco industry documents reveal that the technology has existed for 20 years "yet the industry is still trying to argue that the time is not right and to push for yet more delay." The cigarettes were introduced into the United States two years ago. The Director of the TMA, Chris Ogden, said "we are not opposed to sensible regulation but we want to be sure that it's justified." TMA's major members are British American Tobacco, Gallaher Ltd and Imperial Tobacco.

Even though the European Medicines Agency has endorsed the use of Prozac and similar drugs in children over eight, medical researchers doubt the appropriateness of prescribing such powerful drugs in all but rare cases. John Cornwell reports that in the United Kingdom government data reveals that the number of courses of Prozac-type drugs prescribed has jumped "from 3.7m in 2000 to 4.4m last year." Professor David Healey from the University of North Wales, cautions that the prescription of Prozac could mimic the dramatic growth in Ritalin use amongst children and adolescents. “Companies have been enabled to medicalise childhood distress, and as the rapidly changing culture surrounding the management of such problems indicates, companies have the power to change cultures and to do so in astonishingly short periods of time," he said. Prozac is made by Eli Lilly.

Corporate sponsorship is all the rage, even with the New South Wales Police. In 2002 a mother of three, Diane Brimble, died on board the P&O cruise ship Pacific Sky from a combination of alcohol and the drug gamma hydroxybutyrate. Her death was investigated by officers from the NSW Water Police. Eighteen months later, P & O was one of five sponsors of the opening of a new headquarters for the water police. A P&O spokesman told the Sydney Morning Herald that "this support for the police on such an important occasion was entirely appropriate." NSW Police also defended the claim claiming that close ties with the community were "fundamental to community-based policing." A hearing into Brimble's death is currently being conducted by the NSW State Coroner.

Organizations backed by Howard Rich, a wealthy New York conservative activist and chairman of Americans for Limited Government, spent over $8.6 million in eight states promoting 'takings' initiatives. 'Takings' promoters seek to limit the role of regulation by requiring compensation to be paid to property owners if a regulation has an impact on the value of their property. The Center for Public Integrity reports that four of the eight initiatives backed by Rich-supported groups weren't "put before voters because of legal and procedural problems." Three of those that were voted on - in California, Washington state and Idaho - were defeated. One, in Arizona, passed comfortably but may yet face a legal challenge. Spokesman for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Oliver Griswold, said that "Howie Rich and his cronies came in from out of state and pretended to be grass-roots and pushed these gimmicks onto the ballot."

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), the peak PR industry body in the United Kingdom, is talking up recent changes to its self-regulatory code of conduct. The CIPR has amended its regulations to enable an ethics investigation to be commenced without having to wait for a complaint from a member. PR Week reports that CIPR President Tony Bradley claimed the changes meant that "the watchdog has finally got some teeth." In March 2000 the CIPR revised its code to move away from what it describes as the earlier "'thou shall not...'approach." Even if CIPR takes action, the public is unlikely to ever hear about it. "All complaints remain confidential. Announcement of a complaint outcome is at the discretion of the Professional Practices Committee," CIPR states. CIPR doesn't even disclose in its annual report how many ethics cases were heard in the previous year.

Adriane Fugh-Berman, an Associate Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine, recounts her experience of speaking at a recent medical conference in New Mexico on the topic of drug industry influence in medical education. "Immediately after my talk, one pharmaceutical company representative announced to a conference organiser that her company would no longer support the annual conference. Another packed up his exhibit and walked out," she writes in the British Medical Journal. "The drug industry is happy to play the generous and genial uncle until physicians want to discuss subjects that are off limits, such as the benefits of diet or exercise, or the relationship between medicine and pharmaceutical companies." Instead of depending on drug companies funding of professional training, she argues it would be better if doctors "could actually pay for our continuing education, as do lawyers, accountants, business people, and aerobics teachers, to mention a few."

The PR firm Lee Andrews Group has agreed to pay the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) $1 million over six years to resolve issues raise in an audit of its work. The company was paid $4.8 million by DWP for work the Los Angeles Times describes as being "advertising, communication, community outreach and media relations services." The firm worked as a subcontractor on the account to Fleishman-Hillard, which last year agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it had overbilling the DWP and other public agencies.

Tasmanian logging company Gunns has told shareholders that it plans to spend $A2 million pursuing SLAPPs against a group of environmentalists, known as the Gunns 20. So far the court has thrown out all three of the company's statements of claim and ordered it to pay the defendants legal costs. Shareholder activist Stephen Mayne argues the case illustrates how "bull-headed" the company is: "It's an example of poor corporate governance, that if you want to get on with your community and deal with people constructively, you don't go suing the world." Victorian Supreme Court Justice Bernard Bongiorno is considering whether to allow the company's latest statement of claim. Gunns recently sacked its legal team and instead appointed the controversial legal firm, Clayton Utz, to represent it. Gunns action is one of SLAPP's in Australia taken against Australian citizens, prompting calls for legal reform to shield community groups from similar threats.

Residents of Arizona, Nevada and Ohio will soon enjoy smokefree air in public places and most workplaces, thanks to voter-approved ballot measures. The new smokefree laws, combined with other statewide laws and hundreds of local laws already in place around the U.S., mean that smokefree workplaces will now be the norm for the majority of the U.S. population. Despite the tobacco industry pouring over $8 million into backing a weak "trojan horse" ballot initiative in Arizona, voters approved the stronger smokefree law, Proposition 201 (supported by health groups) by 54.2%. Voters in Nevada overwhelmingly approved the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act, also a stronger alternative measure backed by health groups. The law will go into effect November 17th and will bring 100% smokefree air to most Nevada workplaces and indoor public places including schools, day care centers and restaurants. Stand-alone bars and gaming areas of casinos will be exempt. The new law also restored local control to Nevada’s cities and towns, allowing communities to strengthen smokefree policies at the local level. In Ohio, a strong smokefree law passed with 58.3% voter support. During the campaign, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and other tobacco industry allies placed a competing measure on the ballot which offered no real smokefree protections. Voters rejected the tobacco-backed measure.

When KFC crowed on October 30, 2006, that it was planning to ban transfats in its U.S. fried chicken, the company had a PR machine behind it ready to score a news hit in one of the nation's fast food capitals, New York City. In a regimented plan that would have made Colonel Sanders proud, the company "lin[ed] up primary print and broadcast coverage in advance ...with assistance from Ogilvy PR's Washington Office." The announcement put the chain's name in headlines (a "major victory," declared the New York Times) alongside the city's Board of Health, which was convening a highly publicized hearing to build support for a ban on transfats, which have been linked to even higher heart disease risk than saturated fats. KFC's senior director of PR declared that the New York announcement was a chance to "strategically place our brand within the news." The restaurant chain, owned by YUM! Brands, might also have been exploiting a weakness in its competitors. McDonald's announced in 2002 that it was eliminating transfats, but that pledge soon melted like margarine on a hot pan. Among major U.S. fast food chains, Wendy's claims that it has eliminated transfats (though it continues to sell 770 calorie monster burgers, such as the "half-pound bacon cheddar double melt.")

A coalition of unions, women's and health groups have been granted intervenor status in a case in which CanWest MediaWorks is seeking to overturn the Canadian government's ban on direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). The groups argue that if CanWest is successful it would push up healthcare costs and undermine the sustainability of the Canadian healthcare system. CanWest is arguing that the ban on DTCA is a violation of their right to freedom of expression. In an analysis of the case, Colleen Flood and Michelle Zimmerman from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, warn against assuming that the court won't decide in the media giant's favour. "In order for the current legislation to be upheld, courts will need to be persuaded that nothing short of the existing limits on DTCA would allow the federal government to achieve its other pressing societal concerns, such as protecting patient safety. This will be a difficult task," they wrote.

In a survey of 29 U.S. patient groups, New Scientist found only two ruled out drug company funding. Seven of the patient groups surveyed received less than 5% of their income from drug companies, while others were reliant on them for over one-third of their budget. The Colorectal Cancer Coalition receives approximately 81% of its budget from drug companies while a PR consultant for the Neuropathy Association claimed funding sources was "proprietary" information. Joel Lexchin, from York University in Toronto, Canada said "groups should publicise how much money they've gotten from which companies and what it is used for." Even though patient groups dismiss the idea that funding influences their advocacy, Lexchin is unpersuaded: "psychologists talk about the 'gift relationship'. The patient organisations are getting something and feel the need to repay that gift. Whether they are conscious of it or not is really irrelevant."

Speaking to journalists at a conference in Tokyo, News Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rupert Murdoch, downplayed the death toll following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute," he said. "I believe it was right to go in there. I believe that certainly the execution that has followed that has included many mistakes," he said. Murdoch's global media network strongly backed the push for war. In April 2004 Murdoch said that "there is one small part where the Sunnis are, which were the people who supported Saddam Hussein, who are giving trouble." The death toll of U.S. military in Iraq is now over 2,830. A recent study published in the the U.K medical journal The Lancet estimated that 600,000 deaths Iraqis have died as a result of the war.

Arizona and Ohio have initiatives on the ballot to end smoking in public places and workplaces, including bars and restaurants. If the measures pass, these states will join Florida, California, New York and 9 other states that have enacted comprehensive laws protecting workers from unnecessary exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. Instead of fighting these measures head-on as they always have, though, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (makers of cigarette brands Camel and Winston) is using a different tactic: bringing much weaker alternative initiatives and pitching them to voters with deceptive-sounding names. The initiatives public health groups support are called Smoke-Free Arizona and SmokeFree Ohio, while the RJR-backed initiatives are called the Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act and SmokeLess Ohio. Voters will need to do their homework and pay close attention to make the right decision about which measure to back.

Vanity Fair magazine has rushed on line an article excerpt by David Rose in which leading neoconservatives condemn Bush's handling of the war on Iraq. "Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness," reports Vanity Fair, which published the excerpt on its website before the mid-term elections, thereby angering Perle and others interviewed. Is Vanity Fair trying to atone in part for its previous and now-discredited reporting by David Rose prior to the war? In 2002 and 2003 Rose was duped by the propaganda campaign that sold the war, and he wrote articles for Vanity Fair that echoed and gave credibility to false claims from phony defectors provided by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. As Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber report in their book The Best War Ever, Rose has since expressed "profound regret" for his duping. On election day 2006 he appeared on Democracy Now.

The U.K. drug industry's self regulatory body, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), has censured Janssen-Cilag after an employee from its PR firm, Burson-Marsteller (B-M), offered journalists cash if they attended a hearing of the government drug regulator. The offer related to a public hearing on Jannsen-Cilag's appeal against a decision against approving the drug Eprex before the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. "As it is possible that the hearing will take up most of the day, and we understand that your time is valuable, we are able to offer £200 (€293) if you wish to attend," the B-M employee wrote (sub req'd). The PMCPA found that Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, was responsible for B-M's actions. In June B-M told PR Week the offer was a "human error" but has declined to comment (sub req'd) on whether the employee still works for the firm.

It always pays to read the fine print. A clause buried in a military spending bill means that the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction will be closed in 2007. This office, originally part of the Coalition Provisional Authority before its dissolution, has since March 2004 referred 25 criminal cases to the U.S. Department of Justice, of which four have resulted in convictions. Fifty-five auditors and inspectors work under Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen and are the only auditing body with an on the ground presence in Iraq. "Republican Senator Susan Collins told the New York Times she was mystified about how the termination clause had found its way into the bill. Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the newspaper he would push for an extension of Mr. Bowen's charter."

The U.S.-based activist Scott Parkin has won a legal victory that requires the Australian government to provide his lawyers with access to the adverse security assessment used in September 2005 as the basis for revoking his visitors visa and deporting him. Justice Ross Sundberg granted Parkin and two Iraqi asylum seekers access to their adverse security assessments. Shortly after Parkin was detained, the Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock told ABC Radio that Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) "is responsible for protecting the Australian community from all forms of politically motivated violence, including violent protest activity, and they've made an assessment [of Parkin] in relation to those matters." The Director-General of ASIO, Michael O'Sullivan, later admitted that Parkin had not been involved in violent protest activity in Australia.

Alan Cassels notes that disease mongering advertisements for cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as for Pfizer's Lipitor, hype the risk of heart attacks for those people with 'high' cholesterol. Aside from camouflaging 'disease awareness' campaigns behind the name of a patient group, Cassels warns that when scientists have analysed the results of a number of studies on a drug "they inevitably find that the drugs show no difference in mortality, when compared against placebo." One Pfizer ad, under an image of a corpse with a toe tag, asked “what would you rather have, a cholesterol test or a final exam?” "What you don’t get in the ads scaring you to see your doc for a cholesterol test," writes Cassels, "is any sense of the dangers these kinds of drugs pose." PR Week reports (sub req'd) that Pfizer has recently awarded the global PR account for promoting Lipitor to Weber Shandwick.

The Australian Minister for Tourism, Fran Bailey, has indicated a willingness to consider covering parts of the Great Barrier Reef with shade cloth to limit damage caused to it by global warming. A trial of four five-metre square shade cloths has been undertaken over the last two years. "We're very concerned because this is a $A5.8 billion tourist industry on the reef, employing 33,000 people," Bailey said. But not so concerned as to sign up to the Kyoto treaty aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Bailey's shadecloth suggestion has been ridiculed by the Shadow Environment Minister Anthony Albanese who argues the government should have a broader climate change strategy. "There are 2,900 reefs together. They go for 2,300 kilometres down the Queensland coast and cover an area larger than the UK and Ireland combined. So that's a lot of shade-cloth," he said.

Two recent reviews of SourceWatch/Congresspedia on the Web this week:

• A very complimentary and in-depth review by Shirl Kennedy of Resource Shelf, which was founded by research librarian extraordinaire Gary Price. Kennedy calls Congresspedia "a truly unique, helpful and informative website" that provides " 'one-stop shopping'... for information about your elected representatives." Kennedy and Price are particularly fans of the oversight by our professional editors, who work to root out the bias, rhetoric and inaccuracies in the articles. (Read more.) Which brings us to...
• A story on PBS's Media Shift by Mark Glaser on wikis. Glaser discusses the "Wikipedia phenomenon" and its "controversial" model of having an unsupervised community write its articles. He contrasts this with SourceWatch/Congresspedia and its paid editors.

We're all big fans of Wikipedia but also think Kennedy and Price are on to something with the idea that wikis devoted to tackling controversial political topics can benefit from having a professional arbiter who can keep an eye on things.

New York City, with the support of Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, aggressively is moving forward to ban trans fats from restaurants--the stuff that says “hydrogenated” before the word oil in fast foods, snacks and many other processed and restaurant foods. Other cities are contemplating similar action. Where once the ingredient was thought to be a good substitute for saturated fats, more recent medical research has found that heart disease-related deaths are significantly increased by consumption of hydrogenated fat. But the restaurant industry has sent in its PR troops, local and national: the city would be violating consumers’ rights; ethnic restaurants disproportionately could be harmed by removing the harmful fats; smoking may injure others but the hydrogenating individual hurts only herself. Writing in the New York Post, the Center for Consumer Freedom offered a medieval archetype, and urged New Yorkers that "FRANS" would have been happier to eat trans fats than die of typhoid. E. Charles Hunt of the New York State Restaurant Association offered an alternative hyperbole for the city's restaurants: the ban would be "a recipe for disaster."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a government-funded public broadcaster, has axed a popular weekly satirical current affairs program after one of its co-hosts, Corinne Grant, participated in protests against draconian changes to industrial relations laws. The axing of the The Glass House, which was rating well, follows complaints earlier this week by Liberal Party of Australia Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells about Grant's opposition to the government's measures aimed at undermining the role of unions. In a statement the secretary of the Media, Entertainment Arts Alliance, Christopher Warren asked "has freedom of expression deteriorated so far in Australia that even satire is under attack, and entertainers must keep silent?" Wil Anderson, one of the other co-presenters, rejects the accusation that the program had an anti-government bias. "That's the thing about satire, you always attack those in power," he said. "You've got to attack the powerful. That's the point: they're powerful, why do they care?"

Air America Radio, the progressive talk radio network which recently filed for bankruptcy, is considering syndicating a radio show co-hosted by Armstrong Williams. Williams co-hosts a morning drive-time program with Sam Greenfield on the New York radio station WWRL. The Hill reports that Air America has negotiated to switch from its current broadcaster WLIB to WWRL and that, as part of the deal, WWRL "wants the Williams/Greenfield show syndicated on Air America radio." WWRL Program Director Rennie Bishop declined to comment but, when asked when he could comment, said "call me after the elections." Williams was at the center of controversy over a $240,000 sub-contract with the PR company Ketchum to promote the U.S. Department of Education's No Child Left Behind Act. Williams recently agreed to pay $34,000 to settle a Department of Justice investigation into possible breaches of his contract. Williams is also the CEO of the PR company, the Graham Williams Group.