The British government is looking to recruit a senior PR professional to help sell the controversial UK National Identity Cards Scheme. The yet-to-be appointed Director of Marketing and Communications will will help oversee the roll-out of the ID cards, which are scheduled to be introduced in 2009. PR Week reports that, since first being proposed, the scheme has attracted considerable criticism over "possible infringement of civil liberties, with the potential creation of a national identity database, and the cost."

The public relations company Edelman has confirmed that its Washington and Hong Kong offices are handling media relations for the deposed Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. A September 2006 military coup saw Thaksin, a controversial media mogul and politician, toppled from power while he was in New York. "We are supporting him as a private citizen in his efforts to return back to his home country," said Alan VanderMolen from Edelman Asia-Pacific. The Thai paper The Nation reports that Barbour, Griffith and Rogers is also working for Thaskin, to "promote democracy in Asia." While Thaksin was popular in rural areas, he was also noted for suppressing critical media and launching a brutal military response to increasing violence in the largely Muslim south of the country.

"A group of big scientific publishers has hired" aggressive public relations executive Eric Dezenhall "to take on the free-information movement," reports Jim Giles. "Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases ... threaten their livelihoods." Dezenhall "spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers." AAP subsequently hired his firm, Dezenhall Resources. In emails obtained by Nature, Dezenhall suggested the publishers claim that "public access equals government censorship" and "equate traditional publishing models with peer review." He recommended they work with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and gave his campaign fee as $300,000 to 500,000. In another email, Wiley's director of corporate communications said Dezenhall told the publishers they "had acted too defensively" and "worried too much about making precise statements."

Ten of the nation’s largest companies, including Caterpillar and former Global Climate Coalition member, Duke Power, say they now want Congressional legislation to limit climate change--including at least a 10 percent annual national decline in carbon dioxide emissions. A Sierra Club spokesman offered hope that the companies will “throw not just their messaging weight but their political weight behind [the call for legislation].” Thomas Tanton, Institute for Energy Research vice president and global warming skeptic, called the turnabout a “good defense" against more stringent regulation. "Something less bad is better than something really bad.” How will Congress respond? Reporters for the Washington Post suggest that there is a “Harry and Louise”-type political ad by industry lurking to scare away innovation-driven legislators. “If you’re a Democrat in a moderate district, this is not the kind of vote you want to take,” Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another industry-supported group, told the Post.

Julie Edelman, in a co-op tour for five companies

When one satellite media tour (SMT) -- a sponsored, canned TV "interview" -- promotes multiple products, it's called a "co-op media tour." PR Week reports that "co-op media tours are on the rise, and not just because they spread the production costs among multiple brands." Michele Wallace of the broadcast PR firm Medialink Worldwide says that "numerous products centered around a theme ... can provide a pretty strong news hook that may not be there when you focus on one product." PR Week's tips include making "sure your co-op tour doesn't appear too commercialized." News Broadcast Network's Matthew Smith says disclosure concerns haven't affected "the overall interest in co-op tours," but adds that "stations want to know if the spokesperson is being paid and by whom so they can convey that to the audience." Whether TV stations actually do provide that disclosure to viewers is another matter altogether.

The Federal Communications Commission has added junk food marketing critic Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), the Benton Foundation (an FCC watchdog), and several academic groups to a list of mostly industry advocates on an FCC task force slated to consider limits on marketing food and beverage products to children. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan), who has taken credit for creating the task force, issued a statement calling it "a bipartisan effort to provide a forum for the public and private sectors to examine the impact of media and on childhood obesity." Brownback's mantra is that any restrictions must be voluntary. He initially excluded Sen. Harkin from deliberations over creating the task force. The first meeting of the task force has been announced for Valentine's Day. The task force press release is mum on whether sweets will be available at the table.

The most recent pro-nuclear presentation by Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant, was at the annual conference of EnergySolutions. EnergySolutions is described by Salt Lake Tribune journalist Judy Fahys as a "Salt Lake City-based company trying to become the nation's - and perhaps the world's - largest nuclear waste company." In his presentation, Moore argued that there should be a massive expansion of the number of nuclear power stations beyond the current 103 nuclear power stations in operation. "We have to talk about 100 or 200 new plants in the U.S.," he said. Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah is unpersuaded. "Patrick Moore is to nuclear power what the Tobacco Institute was to Big Tobacco," she said. "Nuclear power and reprocessing are no more promising solutions for global warming than smoking is for leading a healthy lifestyle."