According to the Nielsen Company, product placements on broadcast television increased 39 percent during the first quarter of 2008. All told, there were 117,976 brand occurrences on cable and broadcast networks in the first three months of the year. The show with the most product placements was NBC's "The Biggest Loser," followed by "American Idol" on Fox, "The Apprentice" on NBC, "Deal or No Deal" on NBC, and "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" on ABC. On cable television, the leaders were "American Chopper," "Project Runway," "L.A. Ink," "Real World Road Rules Challenge," and "Making The Band 4."

On the heels of last month's New York Times investigative report exposing the hidden relationship between media military analysts and the Pentagon and defense industries, Media Matters for America has documented more than 4,500 media appearances by the Pentagon pundits on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, and NPR. "In the face of such damning evidence, the silence of those in the media who hosted or quoted these military analysts more than 4,500 times reeks of irresponsible journalism," said Karl Frisch, a spokesman for Media Matters. "Because the media have failed to follow up on this story with the tough questions one would expect, members of Congress have been forced to act. It's time for the media to step up and do their job." One reporter answering the call is Alyssa Rosenberg at The New Republic, who is reviewing the 8,000 pages of Department of Defense documents obtained by the Times to produce a series of "DOD Document Dumps." Reading through the documents, she writes, is "like paging through a flip book from hell. Anyone who has watched cable news for more than five minutes over the past few years won't be shocked to find that the Bush administration used self-serving talking points to promote the war. But browsing through years of spin all at once, the thing that strikes me most is that anyone actually fell for the clunky attempts at minting catch-phrases and laughably convoluted logic the military and its mouthpieces were peddling."

New York Times reporter Melody Petersen, who covered the pharmaceutical industry for four years, has now published a book titled Our Daily Meds: How the pharmaceutical companies transformed themselves into slick marketing machines and hooked the nation on prescription drugs. In her book, Petersen refutes the commonly-held notion that drug companies plow their profits back into research to develop life-saving drugs, and concludes instead that drug companies primarily put their profits into influencing medical science and marketing drugs. Petersen writes, "With their hoards of cash, the companies have readily handed money to patient groups, hospitals, universities, physician societies, government agencies and just about any organization they want on their side. ... The industry's cash-filled coffers have given it a stranglehold on medical science." Petersen also exposes the problems with direct-to-consumer advertising and the drug industry's portrayal of common conditions, like anxiety and urinary frequency, as illnesses, as a way to convince people they need medication.