More bad and disturbing news about the decline and corruption of TV journalism, a term that seems almost an oxymoron. "Broadcast Newswriters Speak About News Quality," an in-depth investigation from the AFL-CIO Writers Guild of America East, buoys the findings of CMD's 2006 investigations of the widespread and undisclosed airing of fake TV news. "WGA members cited 'daily' and 'chronic' use of VNRs in some of their newsrooms." Among the report's recommendation are "support for the Center For Media and Democracy's proposals for video news releases" and "make infractions to these public interest requirements punishable by fine and require adherence to these standards for license renewal."

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has opened up the legislative process to citizen participation for a new "national broadband strategy" bill that would cover network neutrality policy, broadband Internet availability and spectrum policy. He has been blogging and asking for suggestions at the new OpenLeft.com site and his office has encouraged CMD to setup a parallel project on Congresspedia where we are collecting all the arguments, data and research needed to draft and evaluate the legislation when Sen. Durbin posts it online.

You don't need to be an expert to join this effort - Simply go to the project homepage and check it out. If you'd like to pitch in, leave a note on the project's discussion page or email the Congresspedia managing editor at CKenny [at] Congresspedia.org.

If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here. And if you'd like to work on something else, earlier citizen journalism projects are here and here.

In preparing its marketing study commissioned by the U.S. military, the RAND Corporation sought the advice of PR advisers including Burson-Marsteller, Weber Shandwick, J.D. Power, the Rendon Group, and the Lincoln Group. The report called for a review of the Smith-Mundt Act, which bans government propaganda aimed at U.S. audiences, claiming that it put the military at a "competitive disadvantage". Paige Craig, from the Lincoln Group, told PR Week that "it's almost embarrassing to sit here and realize we've got the talent and ability to counter what the adversary makes; it's simply a matter of policy."

The U.K Public Administration Committee, which has launched an investigation into the lobbying industry, will visit Washington D.C. in October to research the U.S. system for regulating lobbying. The vice-chairman of the PR company Edelman Europe, Michael Burrell, is wary of the U.K. government emulating the U.S. regulatory standards. "I think that our self-regulatory system works remarkably well," he told PR Week. The U.K. inquiry is seeking to investigate "the transparency of the lobbying industry, the effectiveness of recent attempts at self-regulation, and whether the rules for those in Parliament and government should be changed."

"For consumers of news and searchers of information, these are heady times," writes Steve Outing. "Most of us are adding new news sources to our information diet all the time." However, "there's a huge downside to this abundance: How as consumers do we know if we can trust what we read? How do we know if it's balanced, or serving someone's narrow agenda?" One new option is NewsTrust, "a social network model which uses the intellect of the masses to rate all manner of news content and news sources. ... In beta now and due out in early 2008, Newstrust will not only be a stand-alone site where consumers can come to find the best journalism as ranked by an army of volunteer media reviewers, but more importantly it will (we can hope) be deployed over all manner of online news sources so that readers will on any news-related website see an objective rating of that site's quality and of specific news content."

Based on the survey results of 300 public relations firms around the world, The Holmes Report estimates that the industry is "generating at least $7 billion in fee income annually, employing in excess of 50,000 people, and growing by at least 8.5 percent a year." The newsletter notes that 1,500 firms did not respond to the survey, which makes their estimate a "best guess." "The way in which most large communications holding companies have chosen to interpret Sarbanes-Oxley regulations makes it almost impossible to secure accurate and verifiable information about the size and performance of their individual operating units," the newsletter states. The survey did not include PR professionals employed by government agencies, trade associations, non-profit groups or corporations.

Solid Energy protest: Source: Happy Valley CoalitionThe New Zealand Government-owned coal mining company, Solid Energy, has had only a limited win with the legal action it launched over a spoof corporate social responsibility report. Initially, the company aimed to suppress the entire report, produced by the Save Happy Valley Coalition, and sought damages for defamation and injurious falsehood. It later changed tack and simply sought the removal of its trademarked logo from the report. Last week, High Court Justice Lester Chisholm ordered that the company logo and name be removed from the report cover. The coalition has subsequently re-issued the report. Solid Energy has become renowned for its hardball tactics. In 2005 the company unsuccessfully sought $NZ379,342 against two environmental groups who challenged the approval of a new mine in a planning tribunal. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Solid Energy had hired a private investigation company to infiltrate the Save Happy Valley Coalition.

The New Jersey rapper, Sudden Death, has launched a free-to-play track which mocks the drug industry's direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). The song, titled Pillagers, describes the experience of a man taking two dozen pills for various conditions being prescribed the notional drug Liquiplox that "relaxes the lining of your throat making it easier to take pills". "Liquiplox isn't for everyone. People without health insurance or who otherwise may be unable to pay should not take Liquiplox. Do not stop taking any of your other medications without consulting your doctor as this may cause an unsafe drop in our profit margins," a fictional drug company rep states in the song. A November 2006 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office report stated that drug companies spent $4.2 billion in 2005 on DTCA in the U.S.

As leading newspapers continue to face falling revenues and profits, Merrill Goozner laments the loss of paying journalism jobs. "Advertising dollars are migrating away from print to the internet, broadcasting and other sources like direct mail," he writes. "Companies like Google and Yahoo are rolling in cash. But they hire very few journalists (if any). And those they do hire have very few standards. ... It is often said that our democracy cannot survive without a free press. But when the only information the new economy's free press provides is ill- or uninformed opinion, what kind of democracy will we have?"

"For the past five years," Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, "has been the only journalist known to be held in Guantánamo Bay," reports Rachel Morris. Al-Haj was originally detained in December 2001 while trying to cross the border into Afghanistan with a team of other journalists. After examining his case, Morris can find little evidence to justify his detention. His wife and journalists who worked with al-Haj describe him as "a very kind-hearted person" who "was very particular about his work" and "just seemed like a young kid trying to get his big break" but "was detained at a moment when distrust of Al Jazeera was accumulating rapidly at the highest levels of the American government." The specific charges against him have changed over time. At one point military officials said he "had gone to Afghanistan to buy Stinger missiles to fight in Chechnya, a charge that has since been dropped." Other charges are impossible to assess because the government says its information against him is classified and cannot be reviewed even by al-Haj or his attorney, Stafford Smith. According to Smith, al-Haj "has been interrogated approximately 130 times. Roughly 125 of those sessions, he said, dealt not with the allegations but with Al Jazeera’s operations."

A year ago, Melanie Morgan of the Move America Forward front group publicly fantasized about having New York Times editor Bill Keller sent to the gas chamber or the electric chair (she couldn't decide which). In a recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Morgan repeated her claim that Keller and other journalists who reported on the government's SWIFT program for tracking terrorist bank transactions "should be tried for treason. If they were found guilty of treason, I would have no problem with them being executed."

Some of the major shareholders of the Dow Jones company, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, are agonizing over whether to accept a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, News Corporation. With steady traffic to the Murdoch-related articles in SourceWatch, it would be good to include details of the donations he and his companies have made to U.S. politicians. To do this you can go to the Opensecrets.org website and search on Rupert Murdoch, check the box "search all cycles" and add the data in date order here. The results of searches on News Corporation, News America Publishing and the Fox Broadcasting Company can be added here. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here. And if you'd like to work on something else, earlier citizen journalism projects are here and here.

Tasmanian logging: Source: The Wilderness SocietyA lobbyist for the Australian forestry company Gunns will travel with a delegation of Tasmanian politicians visiting pulp mills in Brazil, Chile and Finland. Gunns is seeking to overcome strong community opposition to its proposed $A1.7 billion pulp mill and win legislative support from the members of Tasmania's upper house. Tony Fletcher, a lobbyist for Gunns and a former member of the upper house, will accompany the delegation of seven politicians on their two-week long trip. One of the members of the delegation, Paul Harriss, told Mercury reporter Sue Neales that he "made contact with Tony Fletcher and asked him if Gunns could do the groundwork and provide entry to the pulp mills for us ... When our preliminary inquiries at the three (pulp mills) we had chosen uncovered that you couldn't just rock up and have a look around, we asked Gunns to help."

The detention and subsequent charging of an Indian-born doctor, Mohamed Haneef, under draconian anti-terrorism laws has turned into a PR nightmare for the Australian government. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) charged Haneef with providing support to a terrorist organization, claiming that he had provided a mobile phone SIM card to a relative who had it with him when he recently crashed his car into Glasgow airport terminal. The AFP subsequently conceded that the SIM card was with another relative hundreds of kilometers away at the time of the airport attack. Subsequently, Rupert Murdoch-owned News Limited publications claimed, based on anonymous government and police sources, that the AFP were investigating the possibility that Haneef's holiday photos of a beachside apartment tower were gathered as part of a "conspiracy to launch a terror attack in Australia". AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty subsequently issued a statement that "there has been significant misreporting on many aspects of this case."

The Senate Committee on Finance by a vote of 17-4 last Friday approved a hike in the federal cigarette tax to expand health insurance coverage for children from low-income families, but President Bush has vowed to veto the measure. Defending Bush's position, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a July 17 letter to Committee members that "the proposed legislation would increase taxes on low-income taxpayers as a way to fund health coverage for low-income individuals." The argument that a cigarette tax is a disproportionate tax on the poor literally comes out of Philip Morris' playbook. The argument appears on Page 14 of PM's 1992 "Great American Smoker's Manual", a publication PM created to arm pro-tobacco forces with arguments to fight public health policies it doesn't like, like cigarette taxes, clean indoor air laws and advertising restrictions. The Bush Administration's extensive ties to the tobacco industry make suspect the Administration's sudden apparent concern for the poor. Also unmentioned is the fact that paying a cigarette tax is completely optional, unlike taxes on gasoline, clothing or property.

"Al Qaeda propaganda outlets have been working at a high rate over the past year, with frequent and timely broadcasts from the group's No. 2, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri," report Dan Murphy and Jill Carroll. Evan Kohlmann, an author who tracks the propaganda efforts of Al Qaeda and other jihadi groups, says the increased media output reflects better technology, a more secure position, and competition from other jihadi groups. "When the Al Qaeda media wing, known as As Sahab, became active at the end of 2005, it might have been worried that producing too many videos would lead to capture," write Murphy and Carroll. When that didn't happen, "they were encouraged to produce more of them, in addition to outsourcing the distribution and improving their technological savvy. Sahab has released at least 63 audio and video messages so far this year, compared with 58 in 2006, according to the Associated Press. In many of those, Mr. Zawahiri has been able to respond to the news events within days, getting his group's perspective on radical Islamic websites."

A "Defense Communications Strategy" developed for the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) notes that the UK is spending millions of pounds on more than 1,000 spin doctors to improve the public image of the armed forces. However, the report states that it cannot "measure the impact of our communications effort both internally and externally" and admits, "Operations in Iraq are not supported by the majority of the public and operations in Afghanistan are supported by only a narrow majority." To improve the military's image, the report recommends "creating a steady stream of positive stories which directly promote the MoD and forces' reputation, but also helps to offset the inevitable bad stories."

A recent study by the National Security Archive of George Washington University finds that U.S. government agencies are stalling on public requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act. Five U.S. agencies — the State Department, the C.I.A., the criminal division of the Justice Department, the Air Force and the F.B.I. — are still sitting on unanswered information requests from more than 15 years ago. "It can get pretty silly," observes the New York Times: "In 2002, the National Zoo in Washington denied a request for the medical records of Ryma the giraffe because, it said, the release would violate the animal's privacy rights." The U.S. Senate has been considering legislation that would make it harder for government agencies to dodge compliance, but the bill has been blocked from further consideration through a "secret hold" imposed by Senator Jon Kyl.

A recent marketing study commissioned by the U.S. military concludes that its "show of force" brand has limited appeal to Iraqi consumers. The 211-page, $400,000 study was written by psychologist Todd C. Helmus and is titled "Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation." Instead of the "force" brand, the study argues that a more effective brand might have been "We will help you." According to Duane Schattle, whose urban operations office at the Joint Forces Command ordered the study, the purpose was to find "something we can learn from Madison Avenue or from the marketers, the best in the world, that might help us when we're trying to deliver a message about what democracy is."

Mr. ButtsMichael Siegel, a public health physician at Boston University School of Public Health, has written a strong critique of several major health groups that normally claim to oppose Big Tobacco — The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Lung Association, American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association. Siegel finds it strange that they have opposed amendments to proposed legislation giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory power over cigarettes. The amendments that the health groups oppose would allow the FDA to remove the nicotine from cigarettes, prohibit the use of menthol and clove as primary flavorings in cigarettes, and increase the size and strength of cigarette warning labels. Opposition by these health groups would greatly benefit Philip Morris, who recently introduced a clove-flavored version of Marlboro in Indonesia. The American Association of Public Health Physicians has taken a strong position against the overall FDA tobacco bill, saying that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids secretly negotiated with Philip Morris behind the scenes to devise FDA regulations that would improve PM's image without actually diminishing sales.

As this item is posted the Senate is in an all-night debate (watch it here) over the Levin-Reed amendment to the 2008 defense appropriations bill, which would require President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within four months and complete the transition to a much more limited mission by April 30, 2008. The vote at hand on Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning is to break a filibuster Senate Republicans are mounting to stop an up-or-down, majority-rules vote on the amendment. Democrats need 60 votes and that depends on the number of defections they get from within the ranks of the Senate Republicans. While several have made recent statements of support for a withdrawal timeline, pressure is intense on each Republican to stay within the fold and it is unclear how those statements will ultimately line up with their votes. Which Republicans have indicated they might flip? Once the filibuster is over, how many actually voted to end the debate and to pass the amendment? Have you seen a news story or heard about your own senators' positions? Help us keep track on Congresspedia's article on Congressional actions to end the Iraq War in a special section on Republican defections.

If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here.

Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media has written a thoughtful assessment of the current state of citizen journalism. "We've come a long way," he says. "But we have a long, long way to go. We need much more experimentation in journalism and community information projects. The business models are, at best, uncertain — and some notable failures are discouraging." He points to examples of citizen journalism in action such as the following:

• the infamous "Macaca" video that helped lose last year's election for Virginia Senator George Allen
• Placeblogger, which lists thousands of community-focused weblogs.
• Pambazuka News, an African podcasting service that calls itself a "weekly forum for social justice in Africa."

Gillmor also notes that some heavily-hyped efforts at commercial citizen journalism have failed, such as Backfence.com and Gillmor's own Bayosphere.com. However, he adds, "The cost of trying new ideas is heading toward zero. That means lots and lots of people will — already are — testing the possibilities of new media. ... So the R&D that the news industry should have done years ago is now being done in a highly distributed way. Yes, some is being done by people inside media companies, but most is not — and increasingly it won't be. It'll take place in universities, in corporate labs, in garages and at kitchen tables."

Tasmanian logging: Source: The Wilderness SocietyA six-all vote by Launceston City Council on a motion expressing opposition to a proposed pulp mill has irked Gunns, the Tasmanian logging company pushing the project. Even though the tied vote meant the motion lost, Gunns director and former Tasmanian Premier, Robin Gray, phoned all six who voted against the mill. One of the six was Albert Van Zetten, who is also the chief executive of Launceston City Mission, which provides support to the homeless. Two years ago Gunns provided the charity with six months rent-free use of an empty warehouse and has also provided other support for the group. Sue Neales reports that Gray "threatened to axe or cut back Gunns' support" for the charity after Van Zetten's vote. Gray did not respond to requests for comment but his wife told Neales that "we thought it was rather disloyal of him to come out now and criticise the pulp mill."

Martin Durkin, the director of the global warming sceptic film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, concedes that a graph he used of temperatures over the last thousand years ignores data from the last twenty years. In Durkin's film the endpoint of the graph, produced by a British academic back in the 1980's, is labelled "now". Despite being condemned by scientists when it first screened in the UK, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast an edited down version and convened a post-screening discussion panel. In an interview ahead of the panel discussion, Durkin said that it was "absolutely absurd to quibble on when it finishes". However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals a dramatic rise in temperatures in the last two decades. The rights to the film have also been bought by distributors in Germany, Canada, Spain and the United States.

Gawker.com, a New York-based website that focuses on media news and gossip, has posted the contents of an email exchange between Ronn Torossian of 5W Public Relations and Richard Rubenstein, the son of PR crisis management guru Howard J. Rubenstein. The email exchange includes some general name-calling, with Torossian threatening to go to "war" over his complaint that Rubenstein is trying to recruit from his employees. Rubenstein responds by threatening to sue, adding, "I hope you have a qualified attorney and it will be expensive." Torossian counters by promising to hire Rubenstein and his brother after he destroys their company. The exchange prompted scorn from gossip columnist Ian Spiegelman: "Lawsuit? Bosh! There isn't one among the three of those Special Olympians who could withstand even twenty minutes of discovery."

Alastair Campbell, who was the chief media adviser for British Prime Tony Blair between 1997 and 2003, recently released a book on his reign as a spin doctor. In The Blair Years, Campbell notes that in 1995 former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating offered Blair some advice on how to deal with Rupert Murdoch. "He's a big bad bastard, and the only way you can deal with him is to make sure he thinks you can be a big bad bastard too. You can do deals with him, without ever saying a deal is done. But the only thing he cares about is his business and the only language he respects is strength," Keating reportedly stated. "They overestimate the importance of their support for you, but if you can get it, have it. If you are Labour, you need all the help you can get to win elections".

Richard H. Carmona

In testimony before Congress, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona accused the Bush administration on Tuesday of muzzling him on sensitive public health issues. According to the Washington Post this makes him "the most prominent voice among several current and former federal science officials who have complained of political interference. Carmona, a Bush nominee who served from 2002 to 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that political appointees in the administration routinely scrubbed his speeches for politically sensitive content and blocked him from speaking out on public health matters such as stem cell research, abstinence-only sex education and the emergency contraceptive Plan B. 'Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried,' he said. 'The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds.'"

Veteran Iraq war correspondent Chris Albritton has begun writing a regular MediaWatch column for the recently-launched news website, IraqSlogger.com. Recent columns have examined the amount of U.S. reporting on Iraq compared to other topics, highlighted the work of an Iraqi editorial cartoonist, and discussed a recently-uncovered memorandum by U.S. Marines discussing how to spin the killing of civilians in Haditha.

If you have been reading the four-article series on The Politics and PR of Cervical Cancer, you may be wondering about what is going on in your state. We would like to have that information on our SourceWatch site, so that others can easily find it. In the section of the Gardasil article dealing with state level legislation, we have articles set up for each state and U.S. territory. Please help us fill in current information.

There are several resources that may be useful. One is the campaign page of Women in Government, Merck's lobbying partner. WIG provide a map with indications of what types of legislation are enacted or introduced in each state. There is also information at Kaiser Network's web site. The National Conference of State Legislatures also provides a list of current HPV legislation and its status.

If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here. Have fun, and thanks for joining the CMD Truth Squad!

The latest Gallup poll shows that only 29 percent of Americans approve of President Bush's job performance — the lowest rating that Gallup has measured for Bush, and one of the lowest for any president since Gallup first began conducting surveys. "Gallup has recorded 1,325 presidential job approval ratings since 1938, and only 42 -- or 3% -- have been below 30%," reports the Gallup website. Not surprisingly, the White House has stepped up its tough talk against Democrats, reflecting the arrival of White House Counselor Ed Gillespie.

Mark Penn, CEO of the PR firm Burson-Marsteller and chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, is back in the news. Two weeks ago Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB) filed a lawsuit against a former partner in the firm, Michael Berland, and a former vice-president, Mitchell E. Markel. PSB alleged that Markel's new company, Global Insights & Strategies, LLC, was soliciting their clients in breach of no-compete clauses in contracts with the two former staff. In response, Markel has filed a counter-suit alleging that emails quoted by PSB in the suit revealed that their confidential communications had been intercepted. Associated Press reports that PSB is accused of "hacking into Markel's Blackberry and rigging his e-mail accounts to send blind carbon copies of his e-mails to another account that it had set up." PSB's attorney, Howard Rubin, stated that "the e-mails came in on our own e-mail account" but declined to elaborate.

The UK Telegraph notes that "it is not just politicians and rock stars who are trying to persuade people to reduce their carbon footprint. Banks, lenders and fund managers are dreaming up ethical options for environmentally aware customers. ... The question is whether these products really make a difference, or whether it is simply a case of providers jumping on the green bandwagon. ... Sarah-Jayne Clifton of Friends of the Earth says: 'Naturally we welcome any move to reduce CO2 emissions but you can't help thinking that some are cynical attempts to cash in without making any real changes.' " Meanwhile, Shell has been ordered by a Dutch agency to stop running a greenwashing advertisement that shows a smokestack spewing flowers.

An Australian government agency has refused to release the results of market research on controversial labor de-regulation laws until after the next federal election. "The disclosure of the reports could have a tendency to encourage the public's consideration of matters on the basis of misleading impressions," Ted Cole form the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations wrote in response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Sydney Morning Herald. The Freedom of Information legislation has the aim of extending "as far as possible, the Australian community's right of access to information in the possession of the Commonwealth." However, Cole claimed that the immediate release of the 2005 survey results "could tend to encourage speculative and ill-informed public debate".

Cherie Blair Tony Blair's wife, lawyer and barrister Cherie Blair, is representing David West, the owner of the sex-themed London nightclub Hey Jo. The flamboyant, pink-suited millionaire is challenging the U.K. government's July 1 ban on smoking in enclosed spaces on the grounds that, since he lives above his nightclub, Hey Jo is an extension of his home and thus smoking should be allowed. In taking on the case Mrs. Blair, a human rights lawyer who operates under her professional name of Cherie Booth QC, will be challenging the public health law enacted by her husband. West recently showed Booth around Hey Jo, which features mens-room urinals shaped like lips and waitresses dressed like naughty nurses. Not surprisingly, West's associate Harry Barnett told PR Week that they are looking for a PR agency to help out.

CMD's John Stauber is a guest this week on National Public Radio's nationally syndicated On The Media program. You can listen online by clicking here. Despite decades of deceptive PR by the oil, auto and coal industries, the public's perception is catching up to the scientific consensus that global climate change is real. The news media has rediscovered environmentalism, and corporate advertisers are greenwashing themselves like crazy, pandering to the public's concerns. In this five-minute radio interview Stauber takes aim at BP's "beyond petroleum" marketing campaign, and Coca-Cola Company's funneling of twenty million dollars to WWF in a mutually beneficial PR effort that masks Coke's abysmal environmental and social justice record.

One of the architects of the war in Iraq for the Bush Administration and former World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, has landed a role as a Visiting Scholar at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. The Washington Post notes "Wolfowitz has a long association with AEI, serving as an adviser before joining the Pentagon in 2001." Wolfowitz was one of the early founders of PNAC, the Project for the New American Century, itself closely tied to AEI. In March, the Washington Post revealed that Wolfowitz's partner, Shaha Riza, had been promoted in the World Bank before transferring to a public diplomacy role with Karen Hughes at the U.S. State Department. The discovery that Riza had landed a major pay raise as a result of Wolfowitz's intervention fueled protests by World Bank staff and eventually led to Wolfowitz's resignation. The AEI states that Wolfowitz will be working on "entrepreneurship and development issues, Africa, and public-private partnerships."

A Google advertising sales rep has apologized after using her company blog to urge healthcare companies to take out Google ads attacking Michael Moore's new movie, "Sicko." Moore "attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst," wrote Lauren Turner. "Moore's film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare's interest in patient well-being and care." In response, she suggested, Google ads can help companies "better manage their reputations through 'Get the Facts' or issue management campaigns. ... We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network." After coming under heavy criticism from non-Google bloggers, Turner beat a hasty retreat, writing that her statement was just "my personal opinion." According to a report in Forbes, however, "The incident does more than call attention to Google's ever-cozier relationships with corporate advertisers as it deepens its role as an online advertising agency: It also highlights Google's unorthodox use of bloggers to communicate with the public. Google has long used blogs as a casual form of public relations, both on its official sites and on the personal sites of its employees, sometimes blurring the line between the two."

Next week the Congresspedia project on SourceWatch will launch a new section of the site on legislation and issues. Congresspedia's staff and citizen editors have worked with more than a dozen policy wonks to write a first set of 150 articles, but we need you to help us identify what we've missed.

So, take a look at our complete list of legislation and issue articles and, if you see something missing, add it to our requested articles list. We'll use this in the coming weeks and months to make sure Congresspedia covers what citizens think are the important issues.

If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here and here.

"If I had to do it all over again, I don't think I would use the Ontario system," said Canadian cancer patient Lindsay McGreith. "I would get my wife to drive me to Buffalo, because I know in Buffalo you'd get looked after, whereas here you'd just sit for seven and a half hours. ... Our system is lousy." McGreith's comments are in a soundbite and B-roll video package (basically, an unassembled video news release) distributed by the PR firm MultiVu and funded by Health Care America, which is funded in part by pharmaceutical and hospital companies. It's part of an organized industry response to the Michael Moore movie "Sicko." Another MultiVu fake news video, which was funded by America's Health Insurance Plans, promotes a "public-private" health care system and decries Moore's single-payer proposal as an unpopular, "simplistic" and unrealistic "public takeover of the healthcare system."

The Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority recently held its first "fam," or familiarization tour, of the year, "wooing about 35 meeting and event planners, people in the tourism business, travel journalists and their guests." Included in the junket were "pina coladas and a lobster dinner overlooking Gardner's Basin ... and tickets to see Jimmy Buffett. Free." One of the travel journalists attending was Valarie D'Elia, who the Center for Media and Democracy earlier documented airing a video news release. "As she waited in Boardwalk Hall for the Jimmy Buffett concert to start," D'Elia explained that "the real work occurs when reporters do work on their own." She's filming "a 'Today' show segment ... on boardwalks, highlighting Atlantic City's," and "a separate piece for NY1 News on new developments here."

Drawing on documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Rolling Stone details the Bush administration's "ongoing strategy to block federal action on global warming." In 2002, the administration's Climate Action Report was reported on as a "stark shift" in U.S. policy. An alarmed Philip Cooney, then at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, contacted Myron Ebell of the ExxonMobil-funded think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "We tried to put some qualifiers ... in the report," fretted Cooney. "I know you're in crisis mode," Ebell replied. "I want to help you cool things down, but ... I think that what we can do is limited until there is an official statement from the administration repudiating the report." Bush released a statement the next day. Karl Rove also helped spin the Climate Action Report, writing on a letter drafted by Cooney, "Great ... defends the report rather than staying focused on the policy."

Following the news that President Bush has commuted the 2 1/2-year prison sentence of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Brad DeLong is highlighting a column written two weeks ago by Jeff Lomonaco, which predicted this outcome. Bush's action leaves Libby's perjury conviction intact along with a $250,000 fine. Instead of commuting the prison time, Bush could have issued a complete pardon, but Lomanoco points out that to do so would have eliminated the rationale that Bush and Cheney have "used successfully for four years to avoid addressing their own roles in the case." Bush and Cheney have justified their silence "with claims that they shouldn't comment on an ongoing legal proceeding. If Bush were to pardon Libby, he and Cheney would no longer have such a rationale for evading the press' questions — nor would Libby be able to claim the right against self-incrimination to resist testifying before Congress about the role that Cheney and Bush played in directing his conduct. But if Bush simply commutes Libby's prison sentence without effectively vacating Libby's conviction, the appeals process goes forward and Bush and Cheney continue to have their rationale for not answering the press' questions."

Karl Grossman, a professor of journalism at the State University of New York and host of the nationally aired TV program Enviro Close-Up, recounts that the "overwhelming majority" of the pitches he and his producer receive are from "conservative public relations companies promoting conservative guests." Grossman observes that "in terms of volume and intensity, there's nothing comparable from the progressive world. Speaking of the politics of media, it's a clear and daily demonstration to me of how the right, far more than the left, realizes the importance of communication." In particular, he singles out the lack of funding for media work from the more progressive foundations. The "most active PR operation that pitches us," he writes, "is Special Guests," a PR firm headed by Jerry McGlothlin. His firm pitches for conservative clients such as the Family Research Institute and Chris Simcox, the president of the anti-immigration Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered a manual from the Bush Administration detailing its tactics for suppressing protests at presidential appearances. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two people from Colorado who were forcibly removed from a presidential "Town Hall Meeting" because their car had a bumper sticker that said, "No more blood for oil." They have obtained a copy of the "Presidential Advance Manual," which details tactics "to stop a demonstrator from getting into the event." A section titled "Preventing Demonstrators" advises event organizers to recruit local Republicans into "Rally Squads" whose "task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (sic) (USA! USA! USA!) As a last resort, security should remove the protestors from the event site."