"Former vice president Al Gore (through his Alliance for Climate Protection) will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history. ... The climate alliance's initiative, however, will not go unchallenged by climate change skeptics. Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a nonprofit funded by the coal industry and its allies, is spending about $35 million this election to bolster support for coal-generated electricity. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that receives part of its funding from oil and gas companies" is attacking Gore. Meanwhile, the Glover Park Group must be laughing all the way to the bank. The public relations firm is working for Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, and also for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers against automobile fuel efficiency standards. For GPG, it's all about billable hours.

EPA Administrator JohnsonU.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson dismissed his own agency's findings that greenhouse gases threaten the public. Instead, he'll open a lengthy public comment period asking for input on greenhouse gases, before acting on a U.S. Supreme Court order requiring the EPA to regulate polluters. Johnson's move effectively delays any federal action to limit greenhouse gas emissions until well past the end of George W. Bush's final term in office. According to the Los Angeles Times, Johnson's slow approach "mirrors that advocated by a coalition of industry groups and conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation." A Sierra Club attorney called the delay "outrageous." Representative Henry Waxman said the Bush administration was "recklessly abandoning its responsibility to address the global warming crisis." An EPA spokesman disagreed, calling the move "an historic moment" because "no administration has taken this step to evaluate this new pollutant."

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at BP's dirty oil, a front group against teen drinking and what state might ban drug industry goodies for doctors. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we name a few people who have stepped through the revolving door. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

In an unprecedented move by one of the Big Green environmental groups, the "Sierra Club's national board voted March 25 to remove the leaders of the Club's 35,000-member Florida chapter, and to suspend the Chapter for four years." What did the chapter do? According to Peter Montague, it was "highly critical of the national board's decision in mid-December 2007 to allow The Clorox Company to use the Sierra's Club's name and logo to market a new line of non-chlorinated cleaning products called 'Green Works.' In return, Clorox Company will pay Sierra Club an undisclosed fee, based partly on product sales." Sierra members outside of Florida are also concerned. "The Club's Corporate Relations Committee examined the proposed deal with Clorox and rejected it, but was overridden by the national board," writes Montague. Grassroots members have pointed out that "Clorox was fined $95,000 for violating U.S. pesticide laws" even as it was negotiating the Sierra Club deal. The Sierra Club told chapter leaders not to "seek public media coverage of this internal board decision," reports the Palm Beach Post. Some leaders said "they fear punishment from the national organization" if they speak out.

It was originally planned as "a low-key classroom discussion about patriotism and service to country" at Forest Lake High School in Minnesota. But when the Republican Party-associated pro-Iraq war group Vets for Freedom "decided to call a press conference at the school and alerted media," things got heated. "Anti-war activists, including veterans of Iraq who oppose the war" decided to organize "their own press conference and rally." The high school canceled the event, and angry conservatives began contacting the principal, "calling him a coward, a Communist or a spineless America Hater." Columnist Nick Coleman writes, "Maybe a Minnesota school was just trying to keep its students from becoming pawns in a political game. There would not have been much outrage" if, instead of being billed as the "Vets for Freedom National Heroes Tour," the event had been called the "Republican Tour to Shore Up the Pro-War Vote," he suggests.

If you hear pro-Conservative Party callers to radio shows in Canada, their opinions "might not be as spontaneous as they sound," reports Alexander Panetta. "Some of those apparently ad-libbed musings are actually being choreographed at the Conservative Party of Canada's national headquarters. The governing party has produced talking points for grassroots supporters on a variety of issues, feeding them lines on everything from climate change to child care." Visitors to the ruling party's website enter their postal code, select a topic and it "spits out the times, phone numbers, and names of local talk shows to call -- along with a handy list of good things to say about the Conservatives and bad things to say about their opponents." The party's strict message discipline "has survived their two years in government: requests to speak publicly are routinely vetted by the Prime Minister's Office, scores of MPs will recite identical sound bites on any given topic, and the government often allows only one person to make public utterances on a given issue." Scripting radio calls goes even further, and has drawn objections from media professionals. "We want people to phone in and express their own opinions," said radio host Mark Sutcliffe. During a recent television show, "a caller appeared to be stumbling over a list of written notes. 'Are you reading from something?' the frustrated host interjected."

The oil giant BP has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on PR, greenwashing its image to be perceived as better than Exxon, Shell and others. But "a recent change in corporate policy threatens that green-friendly image," reports Michael Moreci. That change is BP's full-throttle attempt to mine oil from vast areas of tar sands in the Canadian wilderness, an especially destructive way to produce fossil fuel. "Tar sands extraction isn't just another hurdle for environmentalists to combat. It merely reveals a simple truth: when it comes to 'being green,' even the most publicly boastful of the oil corporations -- such as BP -- will keep their promises only as far as their bottom line allows."

Two leading anti-war journalists are challenging MoveOn, one "of the most prominent anti-war voices," to turn its activism against Democratic Party presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein write, "We should direct our energy where it can still have an impact: the leading Democratic contenders. ... While Clinton and Obama denounce the war with great passion, they both have detailed plans to continue it." But why would MoveOn pressure the Democrats when getting them elected is their number one priority? Blaming the Iraq war on the Republicans and avoiding criticism of Democrats has been MoveOn's strategy for years. MoveOn is now raising and spending millions of dollars to elect Barack Obama, but has made it clear it will support Clinton if she is the nominee. Furthermore, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes of Hildebrand Tewes Consulting simultaneously run MoveOn's anti-war coalition, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), while also employed by Obama as two of his top campaign officials. Tom Matzzie, previously the top lobbyist for MoveOn and AAEI, is trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the Campaign to Defend America, a new organization run by him and MoveOn's founder Wes Boyd to attack John McCain. Simply put, MoveOn refuses to pressure the Democrats because they are the Democrats.

The lead author of the largest lung cancer screening study ever performed has come under fire for accepting cigarette company funding for the study. Dr. Claudia Henschke, chief of the Chest Imaging Division at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, stunned the lung cancer research community by concluding that 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented by the widespread use of computerized tomography (CT) scans. Small print at the end of the New England Journal of Medicine article describing the study results noted only that the study had been partly financed by the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention and Treatment. However, the foundation was underwritten almost entirely by the Vector Group, the parent company of the Liggett Group, Inc., manufacturer of Eve, Liggett Select, Grand Prix, Quest and Pyramid brand cigarettes. Researchers and universities are increasingly creating foundations and institutes as a way to shield information about their funders from the public, publishers and the press, reports the New York Times.

U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Deborah Platt Majoras will leave her government post to work for Procter & Gamble (P&G), the largest U.S. consumer products company. Even though Majoras has excused herself from FTC matters that may impact P&G and will need to follow a year-long "cooling off" period, Multinational Monitor's Robert Weissman is concerned. "P&G is the leading company involved in 'buzz marketing,'" he writes. When Commercial Alert petitioned the FTC to investigate buzz marketing as "fundamentally fraudulent and misleading," the watchdog group cited P&G's teen buzz marketing division, "Tremor." Majoras's FTC agreed that the "assumed independence" of a buzz marketer might mislead consumers, but decided against further investigation or action. "The P&G case -- involving a quarter of a million teens who are not instructed to disclose their relationship with the company -- apparently was not noteworthy enough," Weissman concludes. An FTC ethics staffer said of Majoras's new job, "It is how things work. The nature of the business is the revolving door."

According to the Tennessee Ethics Commission's staff, a public relations firm that set up a front group that's encouraging people to contact legislators needs to register as a lobbyist. At issue is a proposal to allow Tennesseans to order wine over the Internet. The Tennessee Wine and Spirits Wholesalers, which opposes the bill, hired the prominent Nashville firm Seigenthaler Public Relations. The firm set up a website for the group "Tennesseans Against Teen Drinking." The group describes itself as "a statewide coalition of concerned Tennesseans," but "only the liquor wholesalers have provided funding so far." The group's website allows visitors to send state legislators "prepared e-mail messages opposing Internet wine sales and the sale of wine in grocery stores," saying doing so "would promote drinking by juveniles." The PR firm's president warned that requiring lobbyist registration would "lead to the chilling of free speech." But one of the legislators who requested the Ethics Commission opinion said it differentiates between "citizen groups" and PR firms hired "to create what was really not another entity; it was just a name." The Ethics Commission delayed its vote on the matter.

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined that a particular chemical in plastic was not harmful, they used scientific studies to prove it. But they relied on just two studies that were funded by the Society of the Plastics Industry, a subsidiary of the American Chemistry Council. On the other hand, they ignored "hundreds of government and academic studies showing a chemical commonly found in plastic can be harmful to lab animals at low doses." Of those two industry-funded studies, one "has never been published, and therefore never subjected to peer review; the second has been heavily criticized by researchers who say the results are inconclusive because of flawed experimental methods." This only came to light when Michigan Democrats Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Bart Stupak, who leads a subcommittee, launched an investigation into the use of bisphenol A in containers used by infants and toddlers. "Anila Jacob, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group ... said she was surprised that the FDA so openly admitted to relying on those two studies, particularly when one of them has never been published or released to the scientific world for review. 'There's a lack of transparency here,' she said, adding that the agency's reliance on these studies 'doesn't serve the public.'"

Graphic by Carlos LatuffTwenty Army National Guard public information officers based in Madison, Wisconsin, will soon begin a year-long stint at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Commander Rick Morehouse said their mission would be to "get the current image out. ... The media of the world and families need to know what's going on right now, not what happened six or seven years ago. ... The prisoners are being treated very well." Gene Grabowski of Levick Strategic Communications, a firm that works for the families of some Guantanamo detainees, criticized Morehouse's statement. Saying "prisoners [are] being 'treated very well' is entirely beside the point," he told O'Dwyer's PR blog. "As our clients have said repeatedly over the past few years, it wouldn't matter if the prisoners were being kept in a four-star hotel, their detainment without criminal charges is unjust. And the Supreme Court has said so -- twice."

A proposal before the Massachusetts state Senate to ban drug company gifts to doctors is generating controversy. "To imply that doctors who have invested years and tens of thousands of dollars in their profession can be bought with a dinner or a package of Post-its is beneath contempt," wrote the husband of one doctor. But Dr. Daniel J. Carlat, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, wrote that the proposed ban "may be one of the most important pieces of healthcare legislation in years." Carlat cited former drug sales representative Sharam Ahari, who explained that "It's my job to figure out what a physician's price is. For some it's dinner at the finest restaurants, for others it's enough convincing data to let them prescribe confidently and for others it's my attention and friendship."

The director of external relations for Procter & Gamble, Mark Chakravarty, recently told a UK healthcare PR conference that the drug industry is less than popular with the public. "There is a high suspicion of the pharma industry. Greed, dishonesty and fraud are some of its associations. The clinical trial press this week and an increased number of drug scandals add to this image," he said. David Lewis, the corporate affairs director of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, was less worried. "The industry is not as badly perceived as it thinks it is," he said. The same week, the CEO of the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, Professor Kent Woods, stated that GlaxoSmithKline "could and should have reported" information that patients under 18 had a higher risk of suicidal behavior if prescribed the antidepressant Seroxat compared to a placebo.

The MGM Mirage: How green is it?MGM Mirage's new $8 billion CityCenter project is a massive 75 acre, 4,000-room hotel-casino complex with condos and retail space currently under construction in Las Vegas. Its builders are promoting the complex as a model of green construction, and are seeking LEED certification for the project from the U.S. Green Building Council. The Council awards varying levels of the coveted LEED (for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design") certification. Certification of CityCenter would make the complex eligible for millions of dollars in tax breaks. The only problem is that MGM plans to allow smoking in the casino, and LEED certification signifies that the building is a healthy place to live and work. During a presentation about the complex at a Hotel Developers Conference last week, Stephanie Steinberg of Smoke-free Gaming of Colorado pointed out the hypocrisy of CityCenter being held up as a paragon of green building when one of its buildings won't even qualify. MGM Mirage responded by saying the casino portion of the complex would be exempt from the certification.

"The 25 most media-prominent think tanks were cited 17 percent less in 2007 than they were the year before," according to an annual survey by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). "The overall ideological breakdown was the same ... 47 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, 37 percent to conservative or right-leaning think tanks, and 16 percent to progressive or left-leaning think tanks." The downward trend "is not necessarily a bad thing. ... Given that FAIR's surveys have consistently found that these supposedly detached experts actually tilt toward the center-right, fewer of them spinning and shaping news coverage may be a net plus for media transparency, if not diversity." The current issue of FAIR's magazine "Extra!" also contains the group's annual "Fear & Favor" report. Among the news outlets mentioned is Portland's KOIN-TV, which CMD documented airing a video news release. KOIN merited mention for its "weekly medical report," which is sponsored by Providence Health Systems and consistently features Providence experts and information.

The oil industry's "nationwide publicity drive to clear up what it calls 'common and surprising misperceptions'" about its record-breaking profits continues. The American Petroleum Institute's (API's) senior economic analyst, Rayola Dougher, was in Denver recently. Her message: "It's not your grandfather's oil and gas industry anymore." She added that API is "trying to reach out to legislators and consumers in 40 locations." API received some unwanted attention on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. On March 19, the group "No War, No Warming" held a protest outside API's Washington DC headquarters. The protesters claimed that the industry group was changing its name to the "Alternative Power Institute" and notifying the U.S. Congress that, "in light of API's just announced transition to promotion of renewable energy technologies, there is no further requirement to fund the occupation of Iraq," writes David Swanson.

Senator Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist, David Axelrod, "moonlights" from his political PR firm AKP&D Message & Media. Working from the same office, "Axelrod operates a second business, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients," reports Howard Wolinsky. Axelrod's ASK partners are John Kupper and Eric Sedler, previously of AT&T and Edelman. Chicago Alder Brendan Reilly called ASK "the gold standard in Astroturf organizing." In 2005, as ComEd was "preparing to ask [Illinois] state regulators for higher electricity prices," ASK advised the company to form "Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity." The front group, which described itself as "a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations," funded ads that warned of blackouts unless rates were raised. Around the same time, ASK helped Cablevision, which owns Madison Square Garden, oppose the New York Jets's plans to build a new stadium in Manhattan. Cablevision formed the "New York Association for Better Choices," and ran anti-stadium ads in its name. ASK's other work includes helping AT&T defeat municipal broadband referenda.

Pastor John Hagee endorses John McCain for PresidentWhile news media have focused on Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, little attention has been paid to the endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain by controversial Texas televangelist John Hagee. Hagee has voiced extreme anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual views. In a September 2006 interview on National Public Radio, Hagee reaffirmed his view that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment against New Orleans for hosting a homosexual parade. Hagee has also said that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by "turning away from the true God." He referred to Catholicism as a "false cult," and said the religion contributed to Hitler's anti-semitic views. When Hagee endorsed him, McCain said he was "proud" to have the pastor's support. More recently, McCain has been working to distance himself from Hagee's inflammatory comments.

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at China's information blackout on Tibet, how PR builds, and sells, bridges, and who cheerfully refers to her job as "whore TV." In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we take a closer look at the drug industry's lobby group, PhRMA. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

One reason why E!'s logo may not inspire honestySubliminal advertising may be "more effective than regular advertising, because people don't have time to raise their anti-ad defenses," according to a new study. Duke University and University of Waterloo researchers "tested 341 students, who were told they were taking a 'visual acuity test.'" During the test, the students were secretly shown a corporate logo for 30 milliseconds. Afterwards, "students were given a second task to think of all the possible ways they could use a brick." Students shown the Apple logo "came up with more ways of using the brick, and were judged to have come up with the more creative uses," compared to those shown the IBM logo. Students shown the Disney logo "subsequently behaved much more honestly than those who saw the E! Channel logos." In a statement, one researcher suggested that "companies with established brand associations ... may want to give serious consideration to shifting marketing resources to product placement opportunities and other forms of outreach that emphasize brief brand exposures."

The PR firm MultiVu has a new "social media news release targeting the U.S. Hispanic audience," reports PR Week. Its "Interactivo Multimedia News Release" (IMNR) distributes fake news "broadcast content, photos, and text to Hispanic social networks and news sites. Video content will also be distributed to video-sharing sites such as MiGente and HispaVista. And IMNR content will appear in Spanish on the Reuters billboard in Manhattan's Times Square." MultiVu parent company PR Newswire purchased Hispanic PR Wire in January. MultiVu's new division, "MultiVu Latino," is headed by Hispanic PR Wire co-founder Manny Ruiz.

"The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago," opens the latest "State of the News Media" report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Among the major findings is that the Internet is not yet the democratizing media force many hoped for. "Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before," the report states. A detailed analysis of the news stories covered in 2007 found that "the media and the public often disagreed about which stories were important," and that U.S. media mostly ignored the rest of the world. Even though 2007 "was the deadliest for American forces in Afghanistan since that war began," less than one percent of international news dealt with that country. And journalists are more pessimistic, especially about "cutbacks in the newsroom" and the "broken economic model" for many news operations.

After the tragic collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis last August, the state wants to "restore the image of the beleaguered Minnesota Department of Transportation." So Minnesota is paying the public relations firm Himle Horner at least $550,000. The firm's work includes a "proactive, on-the-ground" initiative with "information kiosks, attempts to shape media coverage and weekly 'sidewalk superintendent tours' of the construction work." It also plans "to use a webcam to beam a half-hour live educational show from the bridge site to all Minnesota school-age children." The PR campaign was a major part of the bridge reconstruction contract. The U.S. Department of Transportation said the contract "emphasized public relations and aesthetics more heavily" than similar projects in the state. Some are questioning the need for the PR. "Who's against building a new 35W bridge?" asked the legislative director of the advocacy group Minnesota Transportation Alliance. "It ain't the spin, it's the span," quipped one columnist.

Robin RaskinIn his new book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, Farhad Manjoo covers video news releases (VNRs) by looking at "VNR Queen" Robin Raskin. Manjoo describes a high-tech holiday gifts segment by Raskin, in which she warned that Apple's iPod makes kids vulnerable to "iPorn." While the Radio-Television News Directors Association -- which opposes any action to ensure VNR disclosure -- refused to talk with Manjoo, Raskin did. "I actually joked with my own colleagues that, 'Hey, I'm off to go do Whore TV'," she told him. "I was fully aware that that's what it was. And yet it's such a commonplace thing. I mean, there are people hawking drugs, guns, war. The worst that could happen to someone watching my segment is that you might buy a game you don't like."

Republican strategists are salivating over the "inflammatory sermons by Obama's pastor" Jeremiah Wright. They believe that Wright's sermons "offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base." Notwithstanding Obama's highly praised speech on race yesterday, the videos of Wright's sermons have "convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey." According to Micah Sifry, "Obama's speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the 'truth' of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet -- and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the 'politics' of a speech, but its actual content? In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?"

"Congress' ability to curb the explosive rise in drug costs is a bellwether of the political prospects for health care reform," writes Merrill Goozner. "Along with eliminating unnecessary payments to insurance firms (like the 12 percent bump they get for selling Medicare Advantage plans), curbing Big Pharma's voracious appetite for selling overpriced and often unnecessary drugs is the low-hanging fruit of cost control." In order to prevent this from happening, therefore, drug companies are wooing Democrats, ramping up campaign contributions to Democratic politicians and hiring lobbyists who formerly worked as aides to Democratic politicians including Nancy Pelosi, Max Baucus, Charles Rangel and Ted Kennedy. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry's main lobbying group, is "leaving nothing to chance," Goozner writes, forming coalitions with other groups including the American Association of Retired Persons, the American Lung Association and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America "in the hope that it will curb their new allies' appetites for going after Big Pharma."

Protest in northeastern Tibet (source: Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy)"China has begun to fight back against criticism of its handling of the Tibetan protests," during which protesters have been killed, with a "sustained publicity offensive as well as blocking foreign broadcasters and websites and denying journalists access to areas of unrest," reports The Guardian. "After days of ignoring and then playing down protests," Chinese television stations "aired hours of Friday's anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa." China's English-language TV service was told "to keep broadcasting footage of burned-out shops and Chinese wounded in attacks. No peaceful demonstrators were shown." An international reporter remarked that while the images of injured Chinese are "genuine," they're "not put in context." The Chinese government has also blacked out international TV broadcasts, blocked online videos and censored Internet searches about the protests, reports BBC News. In response, the U.S. government is increasing its international radio broadcasts into Tibet. "Our audience clearly will benefit from these trustworthy sources of news and information, which differ sharply from Chinese government sanctioned broadcasts," said U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors chair James Glassman.

We can use your help cleaning up Tobaccowiki's database of people involved with the tobacco industry. Many of the descriptions in the database are currently in fragmented sentences. For example, the entry for Mike Malik says, "(Manager, Direct Communications, Philip Morris c. 1992-95): Worked with web pages, Internet presence" We would rather it say "Mike Malik was Manager of Direct Communications at Philip Morris circa 1992-1995, and worked with Web pages and Internet presence." You don't need to add any information to the descriptions in the database; we just want to make sure the descriptions that already exist are in whole sentences, and correct any punctuation or spelling errors. You can work on any part of the list, and do as much or as little as you want. To get started, go to the Tobacco documents biographies page, click on any letter of the alphabet and start editing any of the entries in the list that need cleanup. If this is your first time editing on SourceWatch, you can register here, and learn more about adding information to the site here, here and here. Have fun, and thanks for your help!

Additional details have surfaced about the story we mentioned last month regarding a corporate-sponsored hoax at Hunter College. The college receives donations from the Coach Corporation, a manufacturer of handbags, shoes and other women's accessories. In particular, Coach funded a "guerrilla marketing" class that "educated" students about the dangers of knockoff products by creating a fictional student named "Heidi Cee" who claimed that she had been conned by a counterfeit Coach handbag. "The professor who taught it says that he was pressured to do so even though he has no expertise in advertising or public relations (he teaches computer graphics) and had ethical qualms about the course," reports Scott Jaschik. "Further, the professor -- and other professors who have investigated the circumstances of the course -- maintain that the professor was required to teach only one side of the issue, had to accept industry officials watching him teach, and had little clout to fight back since he didn't (and still doesn't) have tenure." According to Hunter professor Stuart Ewen, the lessons in deception were designed by Paul Werth Associates, an Ohio-based PR firm working for the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, a Coach-funded organization.

"A pair of agriculture groups has temporarily suspended about $1.5 million in grants to the University of Minnesota to protest a controversial study by U scientists earlier this month about biofuels and global warming," reports Tom Meersman. The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, which funds university research into soybean use, cut off the funds after university scientist David Tilman published a study that found that dedicating huge amounts of land to grow corn, soybeans, sugarcane and other food crops for fuel could drastically change the landscape and worsen global warming. "The university hurt the farmers' feelings, OK? That's probably the best way to say it," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two soybean groups.

The National Security Agency, once known for its skill in eavesdropping on the world's telephone calls, is adapting to the times by "focusing on widespread monitoring of e-mail messages and text messages, recording of Web browsing, and other forms of electronic data-mining, all done without court supervision," reports Declan McCullagh. "Taken together, those activities raise unique privacy and oversight concerns greater than those posed by large-scale monitoring of voice communications. ... If the reports are correct, what this transactional-data-dragnet amounts to is a rebuilding of the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program, which promised to do extensive warrantless data-mining to identify 'information signatures' that could identify criminals."

The Environmental Protection Agency began closing several of its libraries in 2006 due to a shrinking budget. But the agency did not take into account how access to important environmental data would be blocked for legislators, researchers and citizens. Out of its 26 repositories, the EPA "closed physical access to three regional office libraries in Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas, and to the headquarters library and the Chemical Library in Washington. Operating hours were reduced at libraries in Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Boston." In early 2007, further closures were halted due to Congressional concerns, and in December, Congress allocated $1 million to re-open the facilities and directed the EPA to do so. To date, none have been re-opened. The EPA says that they plan to digitize their collections to provide access online, but due to copyright and other concerns, only about 10 percent of the collection would be eligible for digital transfer. Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee said, "The agency's modernization effort is characterized by poor planning, failure to communicate with its employees, the public or Congress and failure to protect unique government assets. As a result, EPA library services are impaired, employees will have a harder time doing their jobs and the public has lost access to government information."

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at Arnold Schwarzenegger's commute, bottled water for Africa and when lobbyists say no. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," just how many tragedies has Monsanto helped create? The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

When some people in the audience at the premiere of the new Dr. Suess movie "Horton Hears a Who" started yelling "A person's a person no matter how small," others thought they were just over-enthusiastic Dr. Suess fans. Instead, it turned out that a pack of anti-abortion activists had hijacked the elephant star's famous line to promote their view that abortion should be banned. After their shouting stint, they handed out fliers designed to look like movie tickets. Audrey Geisel, widow of Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and her attorney, Karl ZoBell, who has long represented the legal interests of Dr. Seuss, were also attending the premiere. ZoBell, who has never hesitated to send cease-and-desist letters to people expropriating Dr. Suess's material for their own use, said he wished the protesters would use original material. The Geisels have long opposed any political use of Dr. Suess's intellectual property. But the anti-abortionists are persisting. A Colorado group gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would legally define fertilized human embryos as people plans to show up at Denver theaters when the movie opens and use the event to collect signatures for their measure.

"State officials struggling to convince critics about the safety of aerial spraying to control an invasive moth awarded a $500,000 no-bid contract to a prominent public relations firm with ties to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger," reports Associated Press. The contract, with the Porter Novelli firm, was suspended after AP began investigating it. California's agriculture department "invoked emergency powers to award the contract without competition." Upon review, a state lawyer questioned why the department "could not get bids or go through [a national competitive bidding] process." The Porter Novelli deal included subcontracting work for Jeff Randle, "a frequent campaign and political adviser to Schwarzenegger." California began the spraying last year, to fight a moth species unintentionally imported from Australia. After spraying two counties, "more than 600 people complained of health problems." A University of California report suggests the moths "can be kept in check by natural predators" instead. The Porter Novelli contract involved holding focus groups and designing advertisements "to counter the concerns raised by local environmentalists and residents."

Kelly Dougherty, the former sergeant who is the executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), announced on March 13th the start of the group's three-day Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan investigation into the United States' conduct of its wars, featuring testimony of scores of anti-war veterans. Dougherty promised that "No longer will public debate on the Global War on Terror be framed solely by politicians and pundits. IVAW will use the ongoing Winter Soldier project to ... broaden and strengthen our strategy to end the Iraq occupation." The Winter Soldiers at IVAW held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington to kickoff their hearings, and luckily were not relying on the mainstream media who attended the news conference but then almost entirely ignored the three days of testimony. "Every minute of testimony will be broadcast live and will be available to watch in an online on-demand library." The pro-war lobby, including Eagles Up, the Gathering of Eagles, Move America Forward, Free Republic and commentator Michelle Malkin condemned and protested the event. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, politicians did not attend, and the major Democratic Party-aligned peace groups with multi-million dollar budgets, such as MoveOn and Americans Against Escalation in Iraq also completely ignored the riveting Winter Soldier testimony and failed to publicize it to the millions of people on their email lists.