As of May 14, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) began "blocking access 'worldwide' to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks." General B.B. Bell said the ban would limit "recreational traffic" that had impacted "our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge." While members of the military "can still access the sites on their own computers and networks," many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan only have access to DoD computers. The ban covers sites used by soldiers to keep in touch with family and friends, and comes shortly after an order requiring soldiers to pre-clear blog posts and public emails. Editor & Publisher reports that the Iraqi government "will soon routinely ban journalists from the sites of bombings and other violent incidents." Iraq's Interior Ministry Operations Director said the ban was not "a curtailment of press freedom," and is needed "to protect journalists," to safeguard evidence, to deny terrorists "information that they achieved their goals," and to respect human rights, "by not photographing dead bodies."

GM's Bob Lutz, in one of the company's VNRs

General Motors is no stranger to fake news, having funded eight of the video news releases tracked in the Center for Media and Democracy's two reports on fake TV news. Now, the automaker is setting its sights on print media. "One area where we're beginning to do more, and will want to work with newspapers to explore new options in, is advertorials," said GM CEO Rick Wagoner, at the Newspaper Association of America conference. Advertorials are ads written as though they are independent op/ed columns. GM is also interested in overseas promotion. "Some of you own foreign-language newspapers that may have links to papers in other countries," explained Wagoner. "Hispanic papers with links to South America or the Caribbean, for example. Others, I'm sure, have business or editorial connections with foreign newspapers that we at GM probably have no idea about." Wagoner said that GM was putting less money towards traditional print ads in part because the company no longer offers a "deal of the month."

As part of its crisis management strategy, in response to public anger over high gas prices and record-breaking profits for the oil industry, Shell Oil president John Hofmeister recently spoke to a small invite-only group in Richmond, Virginia. The audience, ranging "from supportive state politicians to deeply skeptical environmentalists," was "selected by Shell's public relations agency, Burson-Marsteller," reports USA Today. After debating "spending millions on a new ad campaign or offering consumers special discounts," Shell opted for a more targeted and personal PR approach, "a strategy that the United Kingdom unit of multinational Royal Dutch Shell had used with some success." During the Virginia event, Hofmeister "deftly field[ed] even the most pointed questions," commending but then passing on one environmentalist's challenge to support higher automobile fuel economy standards. Hofmeister frequently alluded to "the need to tap into offshore oil reservoirs." Shell wants to drill off Virginia's southern coast, but the idea "remains controversial and requires congressional approval."