Tobacco, booze and restaurant industry lobbyist Rick Berman is sending around a news release crowing about being included in this year's list of "star rainmakers" in Hill magazine, a publication for Washington insiders "aimed at the 100 senators, 435 House members, 40,000 aides and tens of thousands in the influence industry whose work affects the lives of all Americans." Berman has also received two "pollie" awards from the American Association for Political Consultants for his attacks on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and his ActivistCash.com website, which spreads misinformation about activist groups ranging from Greenpeace to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. For more details about Berman's web of front groups, check out our report in the Impropaganda Review section of this web site.

U.S. news media are overwhelmingly biased in favor of genetically modified (GM) crops, according to a survey of major newspapers and weekly newsmagazines conducted by Food First. "A search was made to find all opinion pieces over a two-year periodofrom September 1999 through August 2001," reports Nick Parker. "We found a four to one (81.58% to 18.42 %) ratio of opinion pieces favoring genetically modified crops and foods compared to those opposing them or taking a generally critical stance." Moreover, the arguments used to support GM crops are "the same arguments used by the biotechnology industry in their advertising campaigns. We were very disturbed to find an overwhelming lack of attention to widely expressed doubts concerning these arguments. ... Rather than taking a balanced view of facts and arguments for both pro- and con- positions on the issue of GM foods and crops, the media appears to follow the lead of industry advertising and public relations in a lock-step fashion."

On April 14, McDonalds issued a self-congratulatory Report on Corporate Social Responsibility, boasting that it is "working with experts" such as The Natural Step to address concerns about "globalization, nutrition, and the environment." But according to author and leading Natural Step advocate Paul Hawken, the report is "a low water mark for the concept of sustainability and the promise of corporate social responsibility. It is a melange of homilies, generalities, and soft assurances that do not provide hard metrics of the company, its activities, or its impacts on society and the environment. ... The McDonald's Social Responsibility Report is like Ronald McDonald - a fantasy. It presupposes that we can continue to have a global chain of restaurants that serves fried, sugary junk food that is produced by an agricultural system of monocultures, monopolies, standardization and destruction, and at the same time find a path to sustainability. ... Nothing could be further from the idea of sustainability than the McDonald's Corporation." Hawken has compiled a list of issues that McDonald's did not deal with in its report.

"Anti-GMO (genetically modified organism) scientists and activists are increasingly having their credibility attacked through a campaign orchestrated by the biotech industry," investigative reporter Andy Rowell writes. In two in-depth stories Rowell and Jonathan Matthews, of Norfolk Genetic Information Network, examine the dirty tricks Monsanto has played to promote its gene altered food. Employing an international PR firm called the Bivings Group who specialize in "internet advocacy," Monsanto has trashed peer-reviewed scientific research to undermine and manipulate the scientific debate on genetic engineering.

"To generations of Israeli fans, Yaffa Yarkoni has been 'the Singer of the Wars.' Whenever troops marched into battle, they could be sure Yarkoni would follow. Clad in fatigues, she raised spirits at the front with her rousing renditions of patriotic songs," writes Mary Curtis. But after Yarkoni, now in her 70s, publicly criticized the recent Israeli army actions in the West Bank, she was denounced by government ministers, targeted with a boycott, and "received so many hate calls, her daughter said, that she is now too frightened to appear in public." She is only one victim of a national mood in which "anything that is not the official line is considered treachery or betrayal."

Two young Michigan men have died from a mad cow-type disease called "sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD)." The men did not die of actual British mad cow disease, called new variant CJD or vCJD in humans. No one knows what caused their sporadic CJD, but the odds of two young men dying at the same time in the same hospital are astronomical. The human victims of British mad cow disease are also typically young. The Michigan deaths raise many sobering questions: Could their TSE infections (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) have resulted from eating US venison, pork, sheep or beef? Did they consume nutritional supplements made from animal glandular tissue? Do their deaths, along with others including young hunters Doug McEwen, Jay Whitlock and Kevin Boss, indicate that a strain or strains of TSE from US deer, elk, or livestock are now infecting humans? Only time and research will tell, but unfortunately the US government refuses to provide sufficient research funding, refuses to adequately test livestock for TSE agents, refuses to ban the feeding of slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and will not require mandatory reporting of CJD cases. Read our 1997 book Mad Cow USA, available as a free download.

Rissig Licha, the Fleishman-Hillard PR firm's executive director in Argentina, is urging businesses there to "show their hand and defend the capitalist system. Once society begins to question the system, it will be much more difficult," says Licha, whose clients have included Philip Morris and the Clarin Group, a powerful media conglomerate. The problem is that Argentinians are already doing more than "question" the system. "You know what we want to do? Burn these banks down," says a typical Argentinian quoted in The Miami Herald, which reports that "the public mood is turning ever darker" against both banks and politicians -- "a startling change in a country where they have long formed an elite and untouchable class whose members lived off privileges, perks and fat payrolls. It is hard to exaggerate the depth of the current crisis afflicting Argentina, a nation mired in its longest and deepest recession ever -- worse even than the Great Depression. Nearly one out of four Argentines is out of a job. The banking system teeters on collapse. Three million citizens confront some level of hunger." Inflation is soaring. According to Alan Cibils, the crisis is "the culmination and logical outcome" of a quarter century of unfettered capitalism, combined with extreme austerity measures imposed on the poor by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In their resignation letters, the top two members of the Ombudsman Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have accused the agency of covering up the existence of deadly pollution in the area of the destroyed World Trade Center towers in New York. Emergency workers who were sent to the scene and residents of Lower Manhattan are developing serious, and in some cases, life-threatening respiratory ailments and other health problems. Ombudsman Robert Martin's Earth Day resignation letter accuses EPA Administrator Christine Whitman of withholding data about the problem for personal gain. Whitman's husband is an officer at Citigroup, which owns an insurance company that could have to pay out large claims if the extent of toxic exposure at the 9/11 site becomes known.

Hill & Knowlton, the PR firm that "managed communications" at Three Mile Island and worked for the government of Kuwait to spin the war in the Persian Gulf, has now been hired "to salvage Enron Corp.," according to O'Dwyer's. Howard Paster, the White House lobbyist for former President Clinton, is working on the account with a variety of other H&K staffers with ties to both Republican and Democratic politicians.

It's official: Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, has now changed its name to "Altria," from the Latin root for "altruism." The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids isn't impressed. "No matter how often a snake sheds its skin," they say, "it's still a snake." Despite an expensive public-relations effort to change its image, "Altria" still markets cigarettes to kids and plays unethical games with the public's health. Advertising Age in its article "Behind the Philip Morris Name-Change Plan" quotes Jeffrey Wigand, former vice president of research and development for British American Tobacco's Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., "They spend more money telling you what good they do than on the actual good they're doing." (PM's name change prompted SatireWire to quip, "lung cancer today announced it will change its name to Philip Morris.")

"A crisis without precedent is underway in the United States. And its consequences will be far graver than those wrought by the U.S. presidential election of 2000 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The collapse of the Jeffersonian 'free and uncensored press' in America endangers the liberties of all Americans and, arguably, citizens from all walks of life around the globe," write John Stanton and Wayne Madsen for Counterpunch. In a far-reaching article, Stanton and Madsen look at how U.S. corporate media has not only failed to examine boundless and money-making U.S. military action, but it has become "the integral [operative] for U.S. war propaganda and concomitant public indoctrination."

"Burson-Marsteller is handling the public and media uproar over the safety of New York's Indian Point nuclear plant for the facility's owner Entergy Corp," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "Activist groups and the media have criticized the safety record of the plant and its potential vulnerability to an attack by an airliner in the wake of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center tragedy. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in its annual review of the nation's 103 reactors released last month, gave the Indian Point 2 reactor its lowest performance rating. Larry Gottlieb, director of communications for New Orleans-based Entergy, told this website [O'Dwyer's] that B-M was hired 'mainly for the Indian Point issues, but its work now includes handling the overall image of the company.'"

Are the ways most media report and discuss the Israeli-Palestinian war making the crisis worse? Do accusations of media bias push people farther apart? How can news stories help bring about peace? The MediaChannel offers a compendium of news features and essays.

PR Watch editor John Stauber and Hunter College Professor Stuart Ewen recently participated in a a panel discussion on the topic of "perception management" and managed to make an impression on columnist Danny Schechter's own perceptions of today's over-spun media environment. The influence of PR, he observed, has some unintended consequences for us all. When spin doctors "drive the news agenda" with "pre-fabricated messages," rational public discourse starts to break down. "Think about the messages of the terror war or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Schechter says. "Note how each side defines words differently and uses them to shape core ideas and massage perceptions. I am thinking of hot button words like 'evil' and 'enemy,' 'terrorist' or 'resistance fighter,' 'militants' and 'martyrs,' 'incursion' and 'atrocity,' 'survival' and 'extinction,' 'security' and 'insecurity.' All of these terms are given different contexts. As a result, warring communities lack a common language as well as common understanding. After a while, one only becomes interested in those facts that support one's views. Journalists are distrusted because they/we challenge conventional understandings. And practiced pundits take over with a quick sound bite or smart-ass comment. Soon context and caring disappear. Media becomes more about posturing than informing."

Lester Crawford, acting director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told the Associated Press "we should probably try to eradicate (Chronic Wasting Disease in deer). There's no reason you couldn't stop it. It's not something you want in the livestock herds." Tough talk, but don't expect much action. Crawford supposedly is well-informed on mad cow-type diseases, but his statements ring hollow and provide no specifics. The FDA has failed even to respond to a 1999 petition from the Center for Food Safety urging the agency to close dangerous and gaping loopholes in US animal feed regulations. FDA and USDA are asleep at the wheel when it comes to this issue, except for repeating the marketing-mantra that 'we don't have mad cow disease in the US.' Also quoted in the AP article is Dr. Will Hueston who, when he was with the USDA, appeared on Oprah Winfrey's April 16, 1996 program examining mad cow risks. Later, when she was put on trial in Texas by the cattle industry for the "crime" of food disparagement, Hueston was a highly paid expert witness for the cattlemen. In his court testimony he compared Winfrey's program to a lynching, a remark for which he was made to apologize..

Tobacco, booze, and restaurant industry front-group website ActivistCash.com received "hot site" status in USA Today. "In the Internet age, all secrets are open secrets. With gleeful abandon, ActivistCash.com reveals the diverse and oftentimes surprising sources currently funding nonprofit activist organizations. From Mothers Against Drunk Driving to Greenpeace," USA Today writes. What's missing is ActivistsCash's own funding sources. Perhaps disclosing $900,000 of start-up money from Philip Morris would have dampened their "gleeful abandon."

The Child Health Corporation of America, which "says its mission is to find the best medical supplies for some of the nation's biggest children's hospitals," is "endorsing certain products in return for a percentage of sales and, in some cases, shares or warrants from their manufacturers." Nevertheless, "Manufacturers that receive the seal hold it up as a major independent endorsement."

Trade publication PR Week reports that critical news stories have caused the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) to pull a $3-million PR plan that "would have gathered community input for its long-range planning process." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's reporting on MMSD's PR spending led city commissioners to question the cost and details of the PR plan. According to the Journal Sentinel, MMSD's "budget for publicity and lobbying ranks fifth overall -- second among similar-sized systems -- and No. 1 in salary for its top communications officer, an informal national survey of 19 sewer utilities indicates." MMSD's director of communications Mark Kass' salary this year is $101,937. MMSD defends Kass' salary, saying that "Kass' duties extended beyond communications to include managing the district's Milorganite marketing program; its computer department; a household hazardous waste pickup program; and records." Milorganite is MMSD's name for the sewage sludge it markets as fertilizer.

"Take an ad suggesting that doing illegal drugs can lead to terrorism and add the word 'beer' and what do you get?" Advertising Age asks. "As the Office of National Drug Control Policy discovered some very angry beer wholesalers and brewers." The ad copy in dispute reads "Last night, I met the guys for beers, went out for dinner and helped gun down 21 men, women and children." The White House drug office says the ad is part of a series showing how illegal drugs finance terrorism and is not meant to make a connection between alcohol and illicit drugs. Earlier this month, Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski came up with his own version of the fund-a-terrorist trope. According to Reuters, Murkowski, arguing in favor of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, told his colleagues that U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil are funneled through Saddam Hussein to Palestinian suicide bombers. "Each time an American goes to the gas pump he is funding indirectly the suicide bombers," Murkowski said.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media mogul who already owns most of the country's television outlets, is trying to stamp out the few voices of dissent left on the airwaves. "On Thursday, the conservative prime minister accused two journalists and a comedian who have been critical of him in the past of the 'criminal use' of state television," reports the New York Times. ... Under his government, Mr. Berlusconi said, state television 'cannot be so seditious.'"

The resignation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ombudsman Robert Martin ends his long-running battle to preserve his office and its ability to independently investigate cases where the agency mishandled Superfund sites. His resignation came on the heels of actions taken by EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to disband his office, including sending agents to confiscate his files and his computers, and to change the locks on his office. For years, the Ombudsman has been deeply critical of numerous EPA decisions regarding the clean-up of Superfund sites across the country. Efforts to limit his independence began under the Clinton Administration and dramatically escalated under Whitman's authority. Martin says Whitman muzzled him for criticizing a sweetheart Superfund settlement with a big investor in her husband's firm. According to the New York Times, Martin's departure reflects "evident demoralization at the E.P.A.," where he has "joined a parade of officials resigning in protest."

The Bush administration, Exxon-Mobil and other energy companies successfully connived behind the scenes to oust climatologist Robert Watson from leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation's international scientific panel on climate change. Meanwhile, an extensive research survey published in March confirms that global warming is already affecting life on earth. "All the major biomes on Earth have been affected by a temperature increase of just a little more than half a degree Celsius--most of which has occurred during the last two decades," says Eric Post, one of the scientists who participated in the study. "That such a small change has had such an extensive effect is alarming when you consider that even conservative estimates predict the climate will heat up at least two or three degrees more."

The US government says that a 22 year old British woman living in Florida is apparently dying of British mad cow disease. Over one hundred Brits have now died of the disease and the death toll is doubling every three years. The Associated Press quotes US officials assuring the public that "all evidence indicates her illness poses no threat to anyone else or the agriculture industry." However, the US government is failing to adequately address the British mad cow threat as well as the threat of other mad cow-type diseases in the US. Chronic Wasting Disease in wild deer is being spread across North America by trafficking in infected farmed animals, and there is no proof that it won't eventually infect cattle and humans. Also, US regulations still allow the annual feeding of billions of pounds of rendered slaughterhouse waste back to livestock. US deer, elk and sheep infected with their versions of mad cow disease can legally be rendered and fed to pigs, pets and poultry, which in turn can be rendered and fed to cattle. The US refuses to adequately test slaughtered livestock for prion diseases, but for marketing purposes claims to be disease free. However, until a country initiates rigorous and ongoing testing there is no legitimacy to such claims.

In an intriguing essay, "Oxblood Ruffin" of the Cult of the Dead Cow (an internet hackers' group) examines the struggle between political "hacktivism" and government efforts to censor the Internet. "There's an international book burning in progress; the surveillance cameras are rolling; and the water canons are drowning freedom of assembly," he writes. "But it's not occurring anywhere that television can broadcast to the world. It's happening in cyberspace. ... China is often identified as the world's worst offender with its National Firewall and arrests for on-line activity," but other countries are also harassing Internet activists. On the bright side, more and more groups are using the Internet in attempts to loosen dictators' restraints. "Four years ago when cDc first started talking about hacktivism, most Internet users didn't know, or care, about things like state-sponsored censorship or privacy issues. But now the terrain has changed. Increasingly human rights organizations, religious and political groups, and even software developers, are entering the fray, each for unique reasons."

An increasing number of observers are reaching the conclusion that the Bush administration covertly backed the recent attempted military coup in Venezuela. As Josh Marshall points out, there is "something odd and perplexing about the drifting accounts being provided by administration officials. Every day there's a new detail. Each new detail is provided to exonerate administration officials but as often as not they tend rather to inculpate them." Marshall scrutizines the spin in a recent Washington Post article about the coup and notes some telling facts buried near the bottom of the article, such as the observation by a "U.S. diplomat" that two of the coup plotters recently got $100,000 apiece from a bank account in Miami. "This really gives new meaning to the phrase 'burying your lede,' " Marshall says. "The article just drops it there and provides no explanation or discussion. But this seems like something well worth discussing, doesn't it? Two members of the Venezuelan military who later participated in the coup each got $100,000 from a bank account in the United States 'for denouncing Chavez.' That's a bit of money. Whose was it? And how does this American diplomat know about it?"

"The Israeli assault on the West Bank town of Jenin has produced dramatically different media accounts," says Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. "The British press is playing it as a massacre, while American newspapers say there's no such evidence. How on earth can journalists visiting the same refugee camp reach such different conclusions?" Even conservative British media, such as the Economist, report that "the evidence of the Israeli army's absolute negligence in trying to protect civilian life is everywhere." The BBC quotes British forensics experts, working with Amnesty International, who compare the situation in Jenin to Bosnia and Kosovo. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, meanwhile, is working to direct more outrage at the Palestinians by trying to replace the term "suicide bomber" with "homicide bomber". In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal opines, "Whatever his rough edges, Ariel Sharon is clearly following that Bush principle trying to defend his civilians against suicide bombers."

Former Senate Majority Leader and Presidential candidate Bob Dole is lobbying for Malawi reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "His firm, Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, is receiving $300,000 in annual fees from the country, where the average life expectancy is 37 years for both men and women. Malawi's ten million people face an HIV/AIDS epidemic, deforestation and erosion among other problems. VLBM&H's contract calls for it to promote a 'greater and deeper appreciation and recognition in the USA of Malawi's role as a friend and economic partner of the USA.' It will work 'diligently to secure USA businesses and individuals to invest in and visit Malawi and purchase Malawian goods and services at favorable prices.' Malawi's agricultural-based economy is driven by the growth of tobacco, sugar, tea, corn and cassava," O'Dwyer's reports.

The Internet has been hyped as "a revolutionary new medium, so inherently empowering and democratizing, that old authoritarian regimes would crumble before it," but Andrew Stroehlein points out that the reality is more sobering. "The idea that the Internet itself is a threat to authoritarian regimes was a bit of delusional post-Cold War optimism. It is true that many activists and journalists have brought their struggle for democracy, the rule of law and freedom of expression to the new medium, but they have not been blessed by inevitable victory, and plenty of nasty regimes have learned how to co-exist with the Internet in one way or another. In country after country, the same old struggle goes on: hard-line regimes and their opponents remain locked in battle, and the Internet has become simply one more forum for their fight."

In the aftermath of the failed coup against populist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Bush administration officials have admitted that they "met several times in recent months" with leaders of the coup "and agreed with them that he should be removed from office." Those meetings, and the haste with which the White House proclaimed its support for the military-installed regime, have prompted suspicions that the U.S. helped instigate the coup. On the very day of the coup, the plotters were on the phone with U.S. assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs Otto Reich (one of several Bush administration retreads from the Reagan administration's covert disinformation campaign related to its war in Central America). An eyewitness account from Venezuela by sociologist Gregory Wilpert suggests that media coverage of the events surrounding the coup was carefully stage-managed to create the appearance of a popular uprising. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and other American officials quickly blamed the coup on Chavez and praised the Venezuelan military, saying we "look forward to working with all democratic forces in Venezuela to ensure the full exercise of democratic rights," even as the coup organizers were proceeding to abolish the legislature, the judiciary, the national electoral commission and the Constitution. Leading U.S. newspapers including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday and the Los Angeles Times followed the government's lead, hailing the coup as a pro-democratic move.

"Every Arab is watching this closely," says an Egyptian attorney who, like his neighbors, has been glued to the television in horror watching the Israeli military offensive in the Palestinian territories. "It may be worse for us even than Sept. 11 was for you - because it goes on and on," he says. "Every time you turn on the television, it's as though you were watching someone beat you." According to the New York Times, the story's impact in the Muslim world is comparable "to the way television news reports from the Vietnam War shook Americans in the 1960s. While the scale of the violence in the West Bank might not rank with that of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 or Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the current Israeli offensive is, for the first time, playing out live in Arab living rooms." The non-stop media coverage has deepened Arab outrage at Israel and its supporters, especially the United States. According to Hussein Y. Amin, an expert on the Arab media at the American University in Cairo, "It is on the national media, the local media and the satellite media. Every second, there is a new report, and there is only one message: solidarity with the Palestinians."

"Something very bad has been taking place in the relationship between the Israel Defense Forces and the media in recent days," says Amos Harel, a correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. Harel is critical of the IDF's exclusion of journalists from its war zones in the West Bank, but is skeptical of reports that the restrictions were intended to cover up a massacre. In fact, he says, blocking journalists was a mistake that Israel will come to regret: "Infantry officers there felt that there was no reason to be embarrassed of the fighting and claimed that it was the exclusion of the press that led to the soldiers' portrayal as war criminals seeking to hide their actions." (As the Mideast war heats up, the British paper the Guardian offers a number of resources, including a weblog page with resources, and a list of media links. For more direct access to more Mideast papers, go to ABYZ Newslinks.)

Over the past two decades, America's prison population quadrupled, creating a $50 billion corrections industry that houses two million inmates. "That's bigger than tobacco," notes American RadioWorks correspondent John Biewen. "The crackdown on crime has enriched corporations that build prisons or sell products to them, prison guard unions, and police departments that use budget-fattening incentives to pursue drug criminals." Biewen examines the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council and other political pressure groups that help keep the "prison-industrial complex" profitable by lobbying for longer jail terms and stricter sentencing guidelines.

Israeli troops are still denying foreign reporters access to the Jenin refugee camp, amid reports that they are burying bodies in mass graves, but Israel "cannot bury the terrible crime it has committed: a slaughter in which Palestinian civilians were cut down alongside the armed defenders of the camp," writes Independent reporter Phil Reeves. Meanwhile, a military official with the Israeli government media centre is trying to spin the restrictions on journalists as evidence of Israel's respect for the dead: "Believe me, we would love to let you guys into Jenin, but unlike the Palestinian terrorists, we respect the dignity of the dead," he said. "They want to gather up the bodies and show them off to the international media as evidence of a massacre - that is typical of the sort of PR tricks they play." But Israel's best weapon in the international propaganda war may be the Palestinians themselves. "Just as the world's media focused on the Jenin atrocities, a suicide bomber wiped the story off the airwaves on Friday by murdering six Israelis in Jerusalem," Reeves writes. "Israel's propagandists hardly seemed necessary. The Palestinians were doing the job for them."

The U.S. Interior Department's web site features a video prepared by the Patton Boggs lobbying group to promote exploration for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Its distribution of the video violates a law forbidding federal agencies to engage in PR activities "designed to support or defeat legislation pending before the Congress." The Interior Department is becoming "a cinema house for lobbyists," says Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey. "The Interior Department should not be spreading oil company propaganda any more than the Department of Energy should be promoting Enron stock," he said. "It's not their job."

"A journey through the TV and radio channels and the pages of the newspapers exposes a huge and embarrassing gap between what is reported to us and what is seen, heard, and read in the world - not only in the commentaries and analytical pieces, but also in the reporting of the dry facts," writes Aviv Lavie in the Israeli newspapeer Ha'aretz. "Israel looks like an isolated media island, with most of the reporters drafted into the cause of convincing themselves and the reader that the government and army are perfectly justified in whatever they do. Some have actually been drafted - Yedioth Aharonoth has started running a regular column by its reporter, Guy Leshem, who reports with determination from the heart of the West Bank, straight from his military reserve service. This is another step in erasing the line between the defense framework and the editorial framework that is supposed to report and criticize."

Remember all the warnings that sugar was bad for you? It still is, says Aubrey Sheiham, professor of dental public health at University College, London - but food companies are covering it up. The sugar industry's tactics have included infiltrating nutritional advisory boards, threats of legal action against critical researchers like Sheiham, and funding of front groups such as the International Life Sciences Institute (founded in 1978 by Coca-Cola and other food companies). "The sugar industry has learned the tricks of the tobacco industry," says Professor Philip James, deputy director of the Medical Research Council clinical nutrition department in Cambridge. "Confuse the public. Produce experts who disagree, try to dilute the message, indicate that there are extremists like me involved in public health."

While formulating its national energy policy, the Bush administration's Energy Department met with 109 representatives of the energy industry and its trade associations from late January to May 17, 2001, but gave environmental groups less than 48 hours to review and comment on the policies.

The full extent of Wall Street's corruption doesn't stop at Enron and Arthur Andersen. Extraordinary revelations about Merrill Lynch surfaced this week when Eliot Spitzer, the New York state attorney general, publicized e-mail messages that circulated among Merrill's stock analysts, suggesting that the analysts privately doubted the stocks they publicly recommended to clients. Stocks that Merrill rated as "buys" were described internally as "a piece of junk" and "a piece of crap." One analyst, Kirsten Campbell, wrote to a colleague that the pressure to bring in investment-banking fees was distorting stock ratings. "We are losing people money, and I don't like it," she said. "The whole idea that we are independent from banking is a big lie."

Richard Reeves, author of an acclaimed work on President Kennedy, has joined other leading historians in criticizing President Bush's executive order last fall that tightened access to presidential records of previous administrations. Currently working on a book about President Reagan, Reeves held up an index of government documents that he has been prohibited from seeing. "There's great determination to prevent these papers from ever becoming public," he said.

The Society of Professional Journalists is asking the government of Israel to stop the harassment of journalists trying to cover the conflict in the West Bank. "SPJ is deeply concerned that the Government of Israel is worsening the grave situation in the Occupied Territories by injuring and intimidating journalists who are attempting to report the biggest story in the world today," said SPJ President Al Cross in a letter delivered to the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

"As Israelis and Palestinians ratchet up the violence, dimming prospects for Middle East peace, their supporters in the United States are conducting an ever more frenetic public relations battle," reports Reuters correspondent Christian Wiessner. But Palestinians trying to win support for their side in the U.S. are facing what "often seems like a lost cause," says Nathan Guttman, Washington correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. "Public opinion remains tough on the Palestinians. Arafat is getting his lowest popularity ratings ever in the U.S. - and it's an understatement to say he's never been very popular in the U.S. According to Edward Abbington, a former U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem and now a political adviser to the Palestinians, Israel began its public relations 'blitz' a few months ago, getting a head start on the Palestinians. He describes the balance of forces between the two sides as David and Goliath. 'On one side there's a sophisticated people with access to the administration and the media and on the other side the Palestinians are unorganized and don't succeed at getting their message across,' he says." AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, is "considered one of the most powerful in the country. It has tremendous organization abilities, able to reach people across the country and to influence legislators. The Israeli government also has its own public relations apparatus, and there are the individual Jewish organizations, which work together to maintain Israel's image in Washington."

The American Society of Newspaper Editors reports, "Nearly 2,000 journalists left the newspaper industry last year, the largest loss in 25 years, while the percent of minority journalists working at daily newspapers rose nearly a half of one percentage point to 12.07 percent." In their annual census of newsrooms, ASNE found that most of the losses were reporters at medium-size newspapers. "In 2001, many publishers and editors offered buyouts to senior staffers and laid off other employees as the industry struggled to cope with the recession and a decline in advertising," ASNE writes.

Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now reports: "Yesterday [Monday], Democracy Now saw a CNN news zipper announcing that the Ramallah offices of CNN, Fox and other networks had been raided by the Israeli military. It also said that the news organizations had been told to run their reports by the Israeli authorities. But after scouring the internet and wires last night, we could find no other reports of this, aside from a sentence buried in a CNN story confirming that 'Israeli forces raided the offices of several news organizations and one U.S. aid organization Monday, using gunfire and explosives to enter the buildings.' The CNN story made no mention of having to clear reports with the Israeli authorities. But the Boston Globe reports this morning that Israel is considering litigation against news organizations that do not comply with its restrictions. An Associated Press report today says Israel's military censor has ordered 'significant deletions.' ... At least 20 journalists have come under Israeli fire since the most recent offensive began March 29, according to the Paris-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. Five journalists have been wounded, including one U.S. reporter, Anthony Shadid of the Boston Globe."

Arctic Power, a lobbying organization that promotes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, has ended its $4-million account with Qorvis Communication reports PR trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Arctic Power says there is a conflict of interest since Qorvis also is working for Saudi Arabia. One of Arctic Power's key arguments for opening ANWR to oil drilling is that it would reduce US dependence on foreign oil, particularly Middle-Eastern oil. The US is Saudi Arabia's second top export market. Although Arctic Power calls itself a grassroots organization, it received $1.75 million from the state of Alaska last year for its ANWR lobbying work. The Alaska legislature allocated another $1 million for Arctic Power this year. The oil industry also funds Arctic Power. Anchorage Daily News reported last year that BP contributes $50,000 a year to Arctic Power. American Prospect writes that there is no guarantee that oil from ANWR would even stay in the US, since the oil industry managed in 1995 to remove a ban on selling Alaskan crude oil internationally.

The outbreak of what has been dubbed 'mad deer disease' in Wisconsin is gathering national media attention from Business Week, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Most articles downplay human health risks. Given the long invisible latency of such diseases in humans, it might not be proven for decades whether or not people can die from handling or eating infected deer. Dr. Byron Caughey, a government National Institutes of Health researcher who is an expert in the field of mad cow-type diseases, says that he would not eat venison from the area of Wisconsin where chronic wasting disease, CWD, has been discovered. Says Caughey, "The risk may be small but it's not a risk I'd want to take." A recent study showed that the British human death toll from mad cow disease is doubling every three years and now exceeds 100. The eventual toll is predicted to go as high as 100,000 dead in the decades ahead, but no one knows for sure.

Though President Bush says he envisions a world that settles disputes with "reason and good will," he is deepening U.S. ties with countries that commit human-rights abuses. "But Bush's coalition against terrorism is deepening U.S. military ties with countries that ... commit human-rights abuses that are well documented by the State Department," writes Frida Berrigan. "Last month, the department released its annual 'Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.' It lists 52 countries that are receiving U.S. military training or weapons as having 'poor' or 'very poor' human-rights records."

Leonard Downie Jr., and Robert Kaiser, two top editors at the Washington Post, have written a new book detailing the corrupting influence of corporate ownership on mainstream news. Titled The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril, their book details how the push for profits during the past quarter century has substituted entertainment for analysis, undermined investigative journalism (too expensive), given us ever-more stories about actors, sports figures, and celebrities, and blurred the lines between news and advertising.

The email correspondence of Los Angeles' Roman Catholic cardinal as he struggled to contain a scandal over child-molesting priests was broadcast across the city after copies of his correspondence was leaked to radio station KFI-AM's popular talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou. "The correspondence paints a portrait of church officials scrambling to stem the tide of a public relations nightmare and carefully doling out tidbits of information to detectives investigating possible child abuse. ... Kobylt and Chiampou obtained the e-mails from an anonymous source just hours before they began their afternoon show on Thursday and began reading from them over the air, until frantic church lawyers called demanding that they stop." The radio hosts responded by taunting the church's lawyers, asking if they "had ever responded that quickly to molestation victims."

Recent months have seen ferocious criticisms of Enron, but Columbia Journalism Review contributor Scott Sherman thinks journalists should have asked tough questions much earlier. During the 1990s, he notes, business coverage "crackled with enthusiasm about Enron," with Fortune comparing the now-failed energy company to a "gate-crashing Elvis" in the "staid world of regulated utilities and energy companies ... far and away the most vigorous agent of change in its industry." According to Sherman, "The print media coverage of Enron's top executives was pure hagiography." Jonathan Weil of the Wall Street Journal, one of the few journalists who actually investigated the company's shady finances prior to the collapse, says now that financial journalists "outsourced their critical thinking skills to Wall Street analysts, who are not independent and, by definition, were employed to do nothing but spin positive company news in order to sell stock." But Weil's critical reporting never appeared in the WSJ's national edition.

In Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, we wrote about efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency and sewage treatment plants to enhance the image of sewage sludge by renaming it as "biosolids" so that it can be "beneficially used" as fertilizer. Now the EPA's own Office of Inspector General (OIG) has officially released a report on EPA's sewage sludge rule. The OIG identified over ten major problem areas under the current rule and warned that "EPA cannot assure the public that current land application practices [of sewage sludge] are protective of human health and the environment." Currently the EPA permits over 3.5 million metric tons of sewage sludge waste to be "land applied" on farm land and forests throughout the United States.

"The Israeli army has taken harsh action in recent days against news media covering its campaign in the West Bank, employing intimidation and other drastic measures to keep journalists away from its largest offensive in a generation," reports MSNBC. The Israeli government press office has announced that no "foreign citizens (including members of the media) are allowed to be in the closed zone," and that "anyone found in the closed zone henceforth will be removed." Israel threatened unspecified legal action on Tuesday against CNN and NBC for ignoring military orders and broadcasting from the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, and revoked the credentials of two Abu Dhabi TV journalists after their network broadcast a story alleging that Israeli troops executed a group of young men in Ramallah. "Journalists' groups have united in their condemnation of the Israeli authorities for failing to protect press freedom in the West Bank town of Ramallah," reports Jessica Hodgson. Some information, however, is coming out through non-traditional, activist media. For the Palestinian side of things, check out the Electronic Intifida, which includes an eyewitness report from Ramallah by Tzaporah Ryter, a Jewish peace activist from Minnesota, titled "How to Get Food While Getting Shot At.". Useful historical background about the current conflict appears in Robert Friedman's December article from the Nation, "And Darkness Covered the Land," or read Charles Yost's "Israel and the Arabs: The Myths that Block Peace" (written in 1969). Also, the Guardian of London has assembled a roundup of recent perspectives from both Israeli and Middle Eastern newspapers.

The science journal Nature says an article it published last year on genetically engineered corn growing in Mexico was not sufficiently researched and should not have been published reports the Washington Post. The controversial article reported that corn growing in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca contained genetically engineered material, although GE corn has been prohibited in Mexico since 1998. "The initial study also offered evidence that the genes spliced into corn plants were unstable, a finding that would challenge a basic assumption about the workings of agricultural biotechnology," writes the Post. "The editor's note does not distinguish between the two aspects of the study, by David Quist and Ignacio Chapela at the University of California at Berkeley. But the two authors, a graduate student and a professor, said they stand by their first finding and believe they were on the right track with their second, although they may have misinterpreted some readings." Val Giddings of the Biotechnology Industry Organization told the Post, "We believe that Nature erred in publishing the article to begin with, and it seems they came to the same unavoidable conclusion. ... The authors made mistakes that first-year grad students learn to avoid, which further demonstrates that their commitment was not to data and science but to a religious commitment to an [anti-biotechnology] dogma."

PBS has applied its "conflict of interest" guidelines to refuse programming that receives sponsorship from unions, lesbians or battered women, on grounds that these groups have a "vested interest in the subject matter of the program." When it comes to corporations, however, the network follows a different standard. Currently the network is premiering a six-hour series about the global economy which was sponsored by major corporations that have a clear interest in the show's content. Titled "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy," the series has already received a rave review from the Wall Street Journal under the headline "PBS Likes Capitalism More Than the Commercial Networks Do," in which it hailed the series as a "paean to private enterprise."

When Spozhmai Maiwandi, who ran the Pashto service of the U.S. government's Voice of America, aired remarks made by Taliban leader Mullah Omar not long after September 11, the Bush administration got upset. Maiwandi lost her job. Frank Smyth writes for TomPaine.com that "unfortunately the VOA case is only one of many examples in which Bush officials have manipulated the press, particularly since 9/11. The administration has demonstrated a callous disregard for journalism, truth and transparency. As a result it has undermined both the credibility of the United States overseas and the ability of the American public to stay informed at home."

The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is keeping lobbyists and PR firms busy on both sides of the issue. New York Times reporter Evelyn Nieves writes: "In an effort to counter the nuclear industry's own deep-pocketed Washington lobbyists -- John Sununu, chief of staff for the first President Bush, and Geraldine Ferraro, the onetime vice-presidential candidate, have been enlisted in the pro-Yucca fight -- Nevada is planning a multimillion-dollar advertising and publicity campaign intended to stoke opposition to the plan beyond Nevada's borders. On March 27, officials announced that they were trying to raise $10 million to pay for national television commercials that would be broadcast in states where nuclear waste would travel before reaching the burial site, presenting the argument that the Yucca plan is dangerous for every city and town, every highway and byway and every truck stop and railroad yard along the way. Officials are hoping to raise the money from local and county governments as well as the casino industry and other private businesses. The state also plans to send trucks with mock nuclear casks into cities around the country, where they will find themselves trapped in traffic jams, demonstrating the potential problems with transporting nuclear material through 43 states." O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports that Nevada's Republican Governor Kenny Guinn has hired Las Vagas-based Brown & Partners for a million-dollar national PR and ad contract.

PR Week describes how the Distilled Spirits Council, an alcohol industry trade group, handled a "crisis" when the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) released a study claiming that children consume 25% of alcohol sold in the US. "Such a study could do irreparable harm to the alcohol industry," says PR Week. DSC pored through the raw data used in CASA's study, rerunning the numbers "in hope of finding some miscalculation" and ready to jump if there was a mistake. "And just to be safe, Coleman [DSC communications VP] started digging for dirt on the CASA," PR Week writes. As it turns out, CASA had made an error with the data. Instead of 25%, it turns out that "only" 10-15% of alcohol sold in the US is consumed by 12- to 20-year-olds. DCS spun that statistic as good news. After reviewing CASA's history for the past ten years, DCS also found a couple of previous statistical errors, and fed the errors as a "scandal" to reporters. "In the end, the coverage of the 'scandal' [CASA's mistake] outweighed the coverage of the study itself," PR Week boasted.

"Between them, the authors of the incendiary new book Into the Buzzsaw, out this month from Prometheus, have won nearly every award journalism has to give -- a Pulitzer, several Emmys, a Peabody, a prize from Investigative Reporters and Editor, an Edward R. Murrow and several accolades from the Society of Professional Journalists," writes book reviewer Michelle Goldberg. "One is veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration and a best-selling author, another is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. And most of them are considered, at best, marginal by the mainstream media. At worst, they've been deemed incompetent and crazy for having the audacity to uncover evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by government agencies and corporate octopi." Into the Buzzsaw includes 18 chapters by contributors such as Jane Akre (who was fired after investigating the use of Monsanto's bovine growth hormone), Gerard Colby (who came under fire for writing a critical book about the DuPont family) and Gary Webb (whose career as a journalist ended when he wrote a series for the San Jose Mercury news about the CIA's role in the crack epidemic). "Though the subjects and personalities involved are wildly diverse," Goldstein writes, "the stories echo each other in disturbing ways. Journalists are sent by their bosses to do their jobs. ... Sometimes what they find is impolitic, other times it brings threats of corporate lawsuits. Suddenly, editors kill the story, or demand changes. In some instances, ... reporters are ordered to insert outright lies in their pieces or face firing. Other times, ... the bosses are spooked after the fact and withdraw their support from work already published, hanging reporters out to dry."

As of April first, 130,000 hectares of rainforests have been added to New Zealand's National Parks and conservation reserves, thanks to the the unravelling and demise of a devious pro-logging PR campaign run by a government-owned company, Timberlands, and its PR adviser, Shandwick New Zealand. In 1999 a whistleblower leaked hundreds of pages of internal Shandwick documents which formed the basis for the shocking exposé Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign by Nicky Hager and Bob Burton. The book's surprise release discredited Timberlands and undermined New Zealand's Prime Minister who subsequently lost the November 1999 election to the Labor Party. Last week new Prime Minister Helen Clark announced that all the rainforests formerly under Timberlands control would be transferred to the Department of Conservation. "I want to pay tribute to the dedicated conservationists who campaigned for many years for the protection of these forests," Clark said. Thanks also to a courageous whistleblower who blew the lid off the Timberlands and Shandwick PR campaign, and to fearless investigative journalists Nicky Hager and Bob Burton who made the story a best-selling book in New Zealand.

Details of "the great biofraud," as the Washington Times dubbed the affair, emerged just before Christmas of last year. Wildlife scientists in Washington State were accused of "planting" clumps of wild lynx fur in national forests. Supposedly the fraud was planned so the Endangered Species Act could be invoked to close the forest to campers and loggers. In reality, as government employees have insisted ever since the beginning, the whole story is a fabrication. Outside magazine "interviewed 25 scientists, investigators, and policy makers familiar with the incident, and reviewed all the relevant reports. What emerges is not a scientific scandal but a case study in media-amplified demagoguery. There is no evidence whatsoever to support either a conspiracy or a cover-up. The scientists didn't 'plant' lynx fur in the forests. They didn't plot to invoke the Endangered Species Act through falsified data. And even if they had, it wouldn't have worked."

George Bush likes to insist that he governs "based upon principle and not polls and focus groups." In reality, writes Joshua Green, "the Bush administration is a frequent consumer of polls, though it takes extraordinary measures to appear that it isn't." In 2001, the administration spent close to $1 million for polling, using political advisors like Jan van Lohuizen and his focus-group guru, Fred Steeper. "Policies are chosen beforehand, polls used to spin them. Because many of Bush's policies aren't necessarily popular with a majority of voters, Steeper and van Lohuizen's job essentially consists of finding words to sell them to the public."