"Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks," report Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, "administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks. At the center of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks - including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001." Bush administration officials are "refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions" and have "essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month."

"I'm so public about this because I've been asked to do so and because I painfully felt that the anti-war movement was being ignored," comedian and anti-war activist Janeane Garofalo told The Progressive's Elizabeth DiNovella. "It became abundantly clear that no one was getting on TV talking about this. ... I can't stand watching history roll right over us. It's like they're asking you to bend over, put your head in the sand, and put a flag in your ass." Garofalo, who's been active with Win Without War, has appeared on Crossfire, Inside Politics, Good Morning America, Fox News Sunday, MSNBC, and CNN. She accused the press of wasting America's time with celebrity bashing. "You can book a guest you can respect or you can respect the guest you book. They love to pretend that if you are in entertainment, that's what defines you and you can't possibly have any knowledge of what's going on in the news. So you have grown adult anchors and media people who are literally acting like twelve year olds, saying, 'You shut up. You don't know anything.' Literally treating you with the contempt of a schoolyard bully," Garofalo said.

"Every organisation that interacts with other agencies may be said to engage in public relations. Organisations by and large wish to project as good an image as they can, and often wish to communicate a particular message," Corporate Watch UK writes in the introduction to their new online report on the PR industry. "There is nothing essentially wrong in wanting to present one's own case in as effective manner as possible. However, in spite of frequent protestations to the contrary from the PR world, this is only a part of what modern PR does. There is a considerable body of evidence emerging to suggest that modern public relations practices are having a very significant deleterious impact on the democratic process." Corporate Watch's reports looks at how the PR industry has "often engaged in deliberate deception on their clients' behalf and have developed a deeply unhealthy relationship with the 'free press'."

MSNBC correspondent Ashleigh Banfield was reprimanded by her network following a speech she gave at Kansas State University about U.S. news coverage of the war in Iraq. Too bad, because it was a pretty good speech. Banfield criticized the "glorious, wonderful picture" that the media painted of the war, saying it "wasn't journalism." But she also provided valuable insights into the "two different languages" with which the combatants on opposing sides of conflicts see the world. "You cannot negotiate when someone can't hear you or refuses to hear you or can't even understand your language," she said, "and that's clearly what's happening in a lot of places in the world right now, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, not the least of which there's very little listening and understanding going on."

Paul Krugman notes that, " 'We were not lying,' a Bush administration official told ABC News. 'But it was just a matter of emphasis.' ... Does it matter that we were misled into war? Some people say that it doesn't: we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask some hard questions - not just about Iraq, but about ourselves. ... Thanks to this pattern of loud assertions and muted or suppressed retractions, the American public probably believes that we went to war to avert an immediate threat --just as it believes that Saddam had something to do with Sept. 11.'

"The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV news station for Muslim Iraq. It is being produced in a studio -- Grace Digital Media -- controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel," Washington D.C.-based journalists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman report. According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today. ... Grace News Network will be reporting the current secular news, along with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the Kingdom of God and its purposes." The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) -- a U.S. agency which also runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Sawa -- is responsible for the Iraq TV news broadcasts. BBG told Mokhiber and Weissman they will "broadcast accurate and objective news about the United States and the world. ... Grace will have nothing to do with the editorial side of the news broadcast." According to Mokhiber and Weissman, BBG couldn't say how Grace Digital was chosen as the production studio. Grace Digital Media also controls Federal News Service, a transcription news service.

Former television announcers from Iraqi state television have criticized the U.S. news broadcasts into the country. The New York Times reports that TV anchors, technicians, and others are trying to get Iraqi produced programming back on the air. "The anchors said that one of the reasons prompting them to return to work was what they considered the poor quality of nightly television broadcasts that the United States has started beaming into Iraq. ... The broadcasting has been developed by the Broadcast Board of Governors, a United States agency that oversees the Voice of America and other government-sponsored media projects. The anchors for the 50-minute news segment, called 'Iraq and the World,' are exiles who read news snippets about the day's events. The Iraqi anchors criticize the American show as technically 'primitive' and lacking in sound news judgment," the Times writes. "It's disgusting -- they are showing us the things they want to show us," a woman who worked as an announcer for Shabab Television told the Times.

"The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication," The Independent writes. "A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, 'Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies,' he added: 'You can draw your own conclusions.' ... Some American officials have all but conceded that the weapons of mass destruction campaign was simply a means to an end n a 'global show of American power and democracy,' as ABC News in the US put it. 'We were not lying,' it was told by one official. 'But it was just a matter of emphasis.'"

"As Americans, it's hard for us to see the roots of anti-Americanism," Nancy Snow, author of Propaganda Inc., told the Orange County Weekly. "We don't hear a lot about imperial power, but in a lot of the world the U.S. is seen as a major imperial power -- militarily, economically and culturally. We keep saying we need to get our message out, but often the world is saying, 'We get your message; we hear it all the time.' ... We need to have our voice in the world but also to understand that ours is not the only voice. Right now, the world sees us as the big megaphone."

The Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian web site, has obtained and published a PR strategy document prepared for pro-Israel activists by Luntz Research Companies, which has provided similar polling and advice for Israel in the past. Ttitled "Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003," the document counsels pro-Israel advocates to keep invoking the name of Saddam Hussein because "Saddam is your best defense, even if he is dead." It also says that Yasser Arafat has been a great asset to Israel because "he looks the part" of a "terrorist." The emergence of Mahmoud Abbas as a potential replacement for Arafat "comes exactly at the wrong time," the document states. "His ascent to power seems legitimate. He is a fresh face, and a clean-shaven one at that. He speaks well and dresses in Western garb. He may even genuinely want peace. Just as President Bush had begun to make headway in drawing attention on the need for a reformed Palestinian leadership, the Palestinians throw us this curveball."

San Francisco Chronicle technology columnist Henry Norr has been fired for taking part in an anti-war rally last month, joining a growing number of journalists who have lost their jobs or columns due to their views on war.

"More than half of U.S. consumers say they would take into account whether a company is from a country that did not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq before buying stock, according to a Fleishman-Hillard/Wirthlin Worldwide poll of 1,000 adults," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "Consumers who advocate and have taken part in boycotts of goods made in those countries were found to be white, mid- to upper-income, conservative Republicans, according to the survey." There is some confusion, however, among those surveyed as to country of origin of many brands. For example, 64 percent said Grey Poupon mustard is French (it's from the U.S.). Despite its well-chronicled PR efforts, French's mustard was identified by 29 percent of respondents as French. Seventy-eight percent said Universal Pictures is a U.S. company (it's owned by France's Vivendi). Then there's the 42 percent who said Saab is German (originally from Sweden, it was bought by General Motors), the 55 percent who said Bayer is from the U.S. (German), and the 70 percent who said Heineken is German (it's brewed in the Netherlands).

The media watchdog FAIR/Extra! has studied the guestlist of CNN's Reliable Sources to see how many critical voices were heard on the program that claims to "turn a critical lens on the media." Covering one year of weekly programs, the FAIR study found that Reliable Sources strongly favored mainstream media insiders and right-leaning pundits. In addition, female critics were significantly underrepresented, and ethnic minority voices were almost non-existent.

"The BBC was attacked by both sides over the Iraq war. It was the only news organisation apart from the Sun that was targeted by anti-war demonstrators, and senior managers apologised for the use of biased terms such as 'liberate' in their coverage. Meanwhile, ministers publicly criticised the BBC's alleged bias towards Baghdad," David Miller reports for the Guardian. "The BBC argued that criticism from all sides showed it must be getting something right. The empirical evidence, however, suggests a pro-war orientation. ... The BBC thus turned a blind eye to divisions in the [UK]. A study of coverage in five countries for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shows that the BBC featured the lowest level of dissent of all. Its 2% total was even lower than the 7% found on the US channel ABC."

"Earth Day, which began 33 years ago today as a nationwide rally to clean up the planet, has become the latest victim of the corporate takeover. From Houston to Hong Kong, companies are seeking to polish their green image by sponsoring Earth Day events, which grass-roots groups and cities struggle to fund. This year, garbage haulers, coffee companies and even missile manufacturers are underwriting Earth Day festivities, a public relations strategy that has divided environmentalists and led to protests of Earth Day itself. ... Houston Earth Day 2003, held this past Saturday ... was made possible by a $15,000 donation by [Houston-headquartered] Waste Management. ... 'Waste Management sponsoring Earth Day is similar to Enron sponsoring a seminar on corporate responsibility,' said John Stauber, [co]author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, which examined how companies disguised poor environmental records beneath glitzy green advertising and marketing."

President Bush's advisers, led by Karl Rove, are "planning a sprint of a campaign that would start, at least officially, with his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, a speech now set for Sept. 2 [2004]. ... Mr. Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. ... The strategy ... is intended to highlight what Mr. Bush's advisers want to be the main issue of his campaign, national security, while intensifying his already formidable fund-raising advantage in the general election campaign. ... Mr. Bush's advisers said they were wary of being portrayed as exploiting the trauma of Sept. 11, a perception that might be particularly difficult to rebut as Mr. Bush shuttles between political events at Madison Square Garden and memorial services at ground zero."

The secretive Rendon Group, run by self-proclaimed "information warrior" John Rendon, has a long history of accompanying the CIA and Pentagon into battle. Now they have launched a project called "Empower Peace," through which they are calling on young people throughout the world to "help us develop an International Youth Pledge of Peace." Does this mean they've joined the anti-war protests? Not exactly. Empower Peace wants people "not to refer the current political situation going on in the world today but rather focus and emphasize on the importance of breaking down cultural barriers in order to achieve peace."

PR Week's "PR Play of the Week" goes to the Pentagon's limited edition playing cards, which the trade publication described as "part troop diversion and part Most Wanted poster." The cards features the pictures of the of 55 top members of the fallen Iraqi regime. "The deck's unveiling in and of itself would have amounted to a smart PR move, as the reporters stationed at the briefing center have grown restless in recent weeks from the perceived lack of real information and news coming from [Brig. Gen. Vincent] Brooks' daily briefings," PR Week writes. "Nevertheless, besides providing the media with at least one story that day, the Iraqi rogues' gallery playing cards also seem to serve as a great communications tool on at least two levels. First, the deck served an immediate practical function by showing the troops what members of the Iraqi regime look like. Secondly, the cards' subtlety reinforced the notion that the Hussein regime was on the run, and the only major wartime task left was to round up the suspects." According to the Guardian, the decks are being marketed in the U.S. for more than $100.

Three decades after their stories in the Washington Post led to President Nixon's resignation, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have sold their notebooks and other materials from the Watergate years to the University of Texas at Austin for $5 million. "Woodward and Bernstein have found a new way to buckrake," comments Richard Blow. "While that may make them richer, it doesn't enrich the profession, or the regard in which the public holds it."

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels observed that "the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." The Big Lie technique has worked well in Bush's war on Iraq. The New York Times reports that "organizers of the antiwar movement lament how well the administration argued that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, playing on Americans' residual anger and fear after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. About half the American public, according to several polls, believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning the attacks -- an argument the administration did not make." On the contrary, officials including Powell, Cheney and Bush, in tandem with Fox and other pro-war media, repeatedly linked Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, although there still exists no credible evidence for it. This is the essence of the Big Lie technique, when authorities repeat an outrageous falsehood until it is widely believed. Opinion polls and interviews with US troops show the effectiveness of the Big Lie.

"The second Persian Gulf war was not only a runaway victory for the United States military, but for another aggressive force that fired off round-the-clock verbal cruise missiles: the White House communications operation. That is the assessment of the Bush administration's wartime public relations campaign by both its supporters and critics, who say the spin operation was extraordinarily successful in shaping a positive battlefield narrative, at least for American audiences. ... White House officials acknowledge that the communications effort in the Arab world largely failed... .'It's going to be a challenge,' Mr. Bartlett said."

"As the Ford Motor Company scaled back expectations this week for its first hybrid-powered vehicle and backpedaled on a pledge to improve the fuel economy of its sport utility vehicles, Toyota was introducing its latest Prius, which will get about 55 miles a gallon and be the first midsize vehicle with hybrid technology. For environmentalists, the contrasting developments reinforced the sense that only foreign carmakers care about curbing America's swelling appetite for oil. ... But the picture is also more complicated - and bleak, from the perspective of reducing oil consumption. Toyota, Honda and Nissan are are flooding the American market with S.U.V.'s of all sizes; Toyota and Nissan are redoubling efforts to take on the last largely unchallenged stronghold of Detroit, the pickup truck. And sales of new- model S.U.V.'s from Japan far outnumber gas-sipping hybrids."

"Arab-American activist Nawar Shora checked his e-mail one day and found scores of angry messages asking why he hated Americans and Jews," writes Anick Jesdanun. "The messages were responding to e-mails marked as coming from him. Only one big problem: he never sent the hate mail." Shora was the victim of a new form of harassment in which fake e-mail is sent using real addresses. "The tactic, known as e-mail spoofing, requires little technical know-how and no illegal computer break-ins. Yet it has caused a lot of trouble wasting time, damaging reputations and even leading to the suspension of e-mail accounts," Jesdanun writes. "Spoofing will only get worse as kids, pranksters and fired employees discover its ease. ... Little can be done to prevent it without completely reworking mail protocols."

"Shirley & Banister Public Affairs helped put together one of the largest pro-Bush rallies during the Iraq war on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., last Saturday, starring Republican heavyweights G. Gordon Liddy, former senator and actor Fred Thompson and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, among others," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The event, which drew between five and ten thousand people, was staged for longtime client Citizens United Foundation. ... The firm credentialed 60 reporters and landed coverage on NBC, ABC, CNN and in The Washington Post, The Washington Times and Associated Press."

"Burson-Marsteller is working to buff the image of the Iraqi National Congress," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. BKSH & Associates, Burson-Marsteller's lobbying wing is working for the Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation. With the assistance of the Pentagon, INC head Ahmad Chalabi and 'free Iraqi forces' arrived in Bagdad last week. Chalabi and the INC hope to be part of a new government in Iraq. "The Rendon Group worked closely with the INC during the `90s to drum up opposition to Hussein," O'Dwyer's reports.

New Mexico high school teacher Bill Nevins is fighting a March 17 suspension from his teaching job, after a student on his poetry team read an anti-war poem over the school's closed circuit TV system. School administrators have accused him of "permitting" students to participate in after-hours poetry contests at a local bookstore without school permission. (Kids these days. Why can't they just watch TV like decent folks?)

Just when you thought American TV couldn't stoop any lower, now we have the plight of Ali Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who lost both of his arms, along with his parents, three siblings and ten other relatives, in a missile strike on Baghdad. Now he has become "a redemption story, the kind we like," muses Joan Walsh. The U.S. military has flown him to Kuwait, where reporters are breathlessly following his medical treatment. "But some of the stories have tried to deal with an uncomfortable fact. Ali is, um, well, he's angry at the U.S. for killing his family," Walsh writes. "And American journalists have been flummoxed by how to report on his feelings." CNN hit bottom Wednesday morning, when anchor Kyra Phillips asked Ali's physician, "Doctor, does he understand why this war took place? Has he talked about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the meaning? Does he understand it?"

An anti-Semitic web site called the "Barnes Report" is distributing fake whistleblower memos on media bias in the Iraq war that attempt to exploit public skepticism about the accuracy of U.S. news coverage. Excerpts from the alleged memos appear on a series of web pages titled "Controlling the News." The "memos" instruct reporters to avoid showing scenes of violence from the war and to stress images that depict U.S. policy in a favorable light. Peace activists tempted to believe the hoax should note that the "Barnes Report" is an anti-Semitic web site whose primary propaganda goal is disparagement of Jews and denial that the Nazi Holocaust ever occurred.

The New York Times reports on the 'Fox Effect' of MSNBC and CNN imitating Fox's vicious style of biased, nationalistic reporting. "...[I]t has been the Fox News Channel, owned by [Rupert Murdoch's] News Corporation, that has emerged as the most-watched source of cable news by far, with anchors and commentators who skewer the mainstream media, disparage the French and flay anybody else who questions President Bush's war effort. ... Fox's formula had already proved there were huge ratings in opinionated news with an America-first flair. But with 46 of the top 50 cable shows last week alone, Fox has brought prominence to a new sort of TV journalism that casts aside traditional notions of objectivity, holds contempt for dissent and eschews the skepticism of government at mainstream journalism's core. ... MSNBC's programming moves [imitating Fox's style] were welcomed by L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the Media Research Center."

Curious to know how the news is reported in Arab countries? Now you can see for yourself. Working with WorldlinkTV, the Internet Archive is archiving and providing non-commercial access to "Mosaic," a TV program that iMosaic selects, translates, and repackages news programs from the Middle East for a western audience.

"A chill wind is blowing in this nation," actor Tim Robbins told the National Press Club. "A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications." But Robbins, who was uninvited to the Baseball Hall of Fame in retaliation for his anti-war views, is optimistic. "It doesn't take much to shift the tide," he said. "Sportswriters across the country reacted with such overwhelming fury at the Hall of Fame that the president of the Hall admitted he made a mistake and Major League Baseball disavowed any connection to the actions of the Hall's president. A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice."

Iraqis with television reception can now turn on their sets and see a parade of new faces delivering the evening news: Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Jim Lehrer and Brit Hume. The news programming, called "Iraq and the World," is part of an ambitious effort that White House officials say will show Iraq what a free press looks like in a democracy. The U.S. backed news programming will also include stories by journalists working for Voice of America and Radio Sawa, which are also U.S. funded media. The Los Angeles Times reports, Norm Pattiz, the Los Angeles-based chairman of the Westwood One radio network, is spearheading the project. Critics of the U.S. propaganda effort say it may spark a backlash in a shellshocked society that is already deeply suspicious of American motives. "If we want to demonstrate the robustness of democracy, we should also be beaming in the BBC and half a dozen other sources of international news with this effort," said Marty Kaplan, associate dean at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Initially the news programs will be broadcast several hours a day by a specially modified U.S. military plane called 'Commando Solo.' As soon as ground transmitters are set up, the U.S. will broadcast 24 hours a day.

"Margaret Tutwiler, the United States ambassador to Morocco, left Rabat for Baghdad today to assume a temporary position overseeing all public relations and information operations in postwar Iraq. Ms. Tutwiler, who was the State Department spokeswoman during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, ... also said she was still in discussions with Bush administration officials about a separate offer to return to Washington as the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. If Ms. Tutwiler took the State Department job, she would be charged with improving the image of the United States abroad, particularly in Muslim countries ... . Charlotte Beers, 67, announced last month that she was resigning from the job for health reasons."

"Nearly every military-related film to reach theaters this year has been a box-office disappointment, leaving some in Hollywood to question how much the 24-hour news coverage of the Iraq invasion has dimmed the public appetite for images of combat," and "some critics suggest that moviegoers are staying away because they have plenty of real-time war action already on cable and network news programs. 'When television came on with 24-hour news channels, it changed what we needed,' said Jeanine Basinger, chairman of film studies at Wesleyan University and author of The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. 'During World War II you needed movies to help people see and understand events they were hearing about.' Now, she said, 'we are kind of inured; we have seen a lot of blood and combat.' "

"With the most televised war in history winding down, executives at TV news organizations are noticing one startling detail in how Americans are watching the coverage: viewers are increasingly tuning out the broadcast networks' evening newscasts. ... The overall decline in the evening news programs' ratings, coming at the same time as the three cable news networks achieved gains of more than 300 percent, could be a watershed moment in how Americans get their news on television. ... Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News, said the Bush administration's new policy of placing reporters with the military units engaged in the fighting, was the most significant factor driving the decline. It introduced a new element of live, often visceral, coverage that had a profound impact on viewers, he said."

While the giant US media networks are covering the US's invasion of Iraq, they are also heavily lobbying to get rid of restriction on the number of TV and radio stations they can own in one market.The Guardian reports media critics are alarmed by what they see as a "serious conflict of interest" concerning how the broadcast industry covers the Bush administration. "It is likely that decisions about how to cover the war on Iraq - especially on television - may be tempered by a concern not alienate the White House," said Jeffrey Chester, Center for Digital Democracy executive director, in a recent article. "These media giants stand to make untold billions if the FCC safeguards are eliminated or weakened." The Guardian writes, "Mr Chester accused the US media of adopting a 'narrow-minded commercial mindset' , reflected by their failure to 'effectively analyse and criticise the Iraq war policy' ahead of an impending ruling by the FCC on the media ownership regime."

Columnist Frank Rich writes, "There's almost nothing in the war, it seems, that cannot be exploited as a network promo. ... When Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon says Saddam is responsible for 'decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before,' no one on Fox or MSNBC is going to gainsay her by bringing up Hitler and Stalin. To so much as suggest that the world may have seen thugs even more evil than Saddam is to engage in moral relativism -- which, in the prevailing Foxspeak of the moment, is itself tantamount to treason. In retrospect we can see that patriotism as a TV news marketing ploy was inevitable ... . ...the prewar joke, that this war would be the ultimate reality show, has come true."

"A day after U.S. allied forces marched into Iraq, Sony applied for a trademark on the war's catchphrase, 'shock and awe,' for use as a video game title, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It was unclear if Sony planned to make use of the name. The application, dated March 21, was first discovered by British publication Media Guardian. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office has more than a dozen applications for uses of the phrase, including for fireworks, lingerie, baby toys, shampoo and consulting services. Military strategist Harlan Ullman coined 'shock and awe' in 1996 to describe pressuring the enemy to give up with little fighting."

The producer of a CBS mini-series has been fired after comparing the climate of fear in the United States to the political environment that enabled Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Ed Gernon, the producer of "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" told TV Guide that the story "basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now." Associates say the remarks were exaggerated by a New York Post item that cited Gernon's comment as a sign of Hollywood's anti-Americanism and paraphrased his remarks as saying that Bush should be looked at "through the prism of Germany's psychopath." (They said it, he didn't.)

"As the war seemingly comes to an end with US troops in the centre of Baghdad, the propaganda war from both sides has become even more desperate," writes Charles Whelan, a former New Labour flack, for PR Week's UK edition. "The Iraqi minister for information has had a job to do made more difficult by the hour. The poor man was forced into making statements at his daily press briefing about how the brave Iraqi troops had expelled the Americans from Saddam Hussein Airport. On our split TV screens, we could simultaneously see US troops firmly in charge of the airport, and yet he defiantly claimed: 'Baghdad is safe, the infidels are committing suicide'. ... The big similarity in the war coverage over the pond is the lack of dead bodies. We are told of thousands of dead Iraqi soldiers but are never allowed to see them. It's as if there is a conspiracy between the TV companies and the governments to hide the real horror of war. The lack of dead bodies on TV has been the biggest PR coup of the war."

The Fleishman-Hillard PR firm has announced hiring former Food & Drug Administration head Dr. David A. Kessler. Under Kessler the FDA served the biotechnology industry by adopting an anti-consumer policy of not requiring safety testing or labeling of genetically engineered food. "He will offer enormous insight and value to our clients," announced the PR firm whose recent clients include Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Baxter Healthcare, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Pharmacia, Procter & Gamble, Scripps Health, and Susan Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Kessler becomes one of many politically connected, big name flacks working for F-H including Newt Gingrich, William S. Cohen, Mickey Kantor, General Barry R. McCaffrey and Leon Panetta. F-H would not reveal how much money Kessler would receive for his PR services.

Zoltan Grossman writes that "As Saddam and his Ba'ath Party are quickly eliminated, the new occupying powers will also be dismantling their main rationale for occupation. They will not only be erasing their main propaganda points from the media's blackboard, but with the invaders' main job done, Iraqi civilians and neighboring Muslim states may quickly start asking them to leave Iraq. [W]ithout Saddam Hussein to kick around anymore, the Coalition has lost its most effective propaganda touchstone. It can no longer point to Saddam's atrocities as a rationale to stay in the country, particularly if it comes up empty-handed of biochemical weapons. The enthusiasm that U.S. and U.K. troops showed when toppling Saddam statues will not be as evident when they are pulling police duty to keep ethnic and religious groups apart. The claim that foreign troops need to prevent instability and civil war will ring hollow when their provocative presence becomes a reason for instability. ... The new American civil governor of Iraq, retired General Jay Garner, has been a strong advocate of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, so is precisely the wrong guy for the job."

"One of the 'most memorable images of the war' is created when U.S. troops pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square. ... The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the television cameras." Meanwhile, BBC journalist Paul Wood reports that the US flag that was placed over the face of Saddam's statue "was the flag that was flying over the Pentagon on September 11. For a lot of the American marines, they think this war is all about defeating terrorism, they will tell you that over and over again. There is also a connection in the minds of the American public between the regime of Saddam and what happened on September 11, and apparently the flag that was draped over this face was flying over the Pentagon when the plane crashed into it." O'Dwyer's PR Daily called the photo-op a " PR bonanza" for the Pentagon.

"Today, the Army, seeking to demonstrate that its troops in Iraq are 'liberators' and not 'conquerors' barred any display of the American flag on vehicles, buildings, statues, and command posts. The order, which effectively halts the display of the flag virtually anywhere in Iraq, except the United States Embassy, said that flying the flag on buildings in Iraq would only reenforce the anti-American message that the military was 'here to oppress the Iraqis.' "

Round-the-clock coverage of the war in Iraq has eclipsed a host of bad-news stories from the rest of the world, including a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israeli killings and detentions in the West Bank, and a crackdown on dissidents in Cuba. According to Curt Goering of Amnesty International USA, the virtual exclusion of most other international news has provide an opportunity for repressive authorities to settle old scores. "That's been a fear that we had even before the war started," Goering said. "In Cuba that's certainly happening."

Bill Berkowitz writes that "a relatively quick war against an overwhelmed and outmatched foe -- sanitized of civilian casualties -- has been a tonic for a Pentagon hungry for good publicity. ... Embedding reporters is the brainchild of Victoria 'Torie' Clarke, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Clarke brings considerable PR experience to the task of winning the spin war. She recently worked with Hill and Knowlton, the public relations firm heavily involved in Gulf War I, and prior to that she was president of Bozell Eskew Advertising, an issue advocacy and corporate communications company. ... At the Pentagon, Clarke, the first woman to hold her position, 'is doing a great job,' according to Kevin McCauley, the editor of O'Dwyer's PR Daily. 'She's in there with generals in their fifties and sixties, she has everyone on message and the fact that she's a woman tends to put a softer spin on things.' "

Why is it that abolishing the estate tax is on the public agenda? Bob Thompson looks a "a group of wealthy families in Southern California" who, in the early 1990s, hired "a very sophisticated consultant." Patricia Soldano heads the Center for the Study of Taxation and the Policy and Taxation Group, which lobbies for estate tax repeal along with former Senate Finance Committee chairman Bob Packwood. "To support her anti-tax efforts, Soldano has enlisted about 65 wealthy families in 25 states," Thompson writes, including reportedly the Mars candy and Gallo wine families. Soldano herself says, "We don't disclose our membership to anybody."

"The front line in the war for hearts and minds in the Arab world and beyond is here, at the U.S. Central Command headquarters and media center," writes the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof from Doha, Qatar. Kristof gives the Bush administration credit for reaching out to the foreign press, noting that Al Jazeera was assigned a front row seat for press briefings while the Times was in the second row. But he suggests international journalists see through the spin. "This is propaganda," a Chinese journalist told Kristof at a U.S. military briefing in Doha. "I was born and grew up in a propaganda country, and so I know it well." The Chinese journalist continues, "Actually, they do the propaganda very well, better than we do it. We in China can learn from this propaganda." "Moreover, as Raghida Dergham, a columnist for Al Hayat, an Arabic newspaper published in London, notes, 'It's the policy, stupid.' Arab perceptions of America are framed by Mr. Bush's coziness with Ariel Sharon. No amount of spin can soften that; it will take a serious and balanced Middle East peace initiative of the kind that Tony Blair is urging," Kristof writes.

"The Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America, a grassroots [read: industry front] group started in 1999, is in the midst of a major membership push and revamping of its website as it seeks to become a source of pro-SUV information that the media can turn to," PR Week writes. Stratacomm, a PR firm that counts Detroit's big three auto makers as well as transportation and alcohol industry trade groups and associations as clients, has so far contacted about 120 journalists about the organization. PR Week writes: "Stratacomm plans to relaunch the association's website this month, and seeks to expand membership to 50,000 by the end of this year. The group, founded by SUV owner Bill Brouse, now has only a few hundred members." The group's board of directors includes Stratacomm's Jason Vines, who services as the board president, and representatives from the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association and the Marine Retailers Association of America.

"In an unusual mix of investor relations and grassroots political outreach, several corporate giants have sent letters to shareholders asking them to contact members of Congress to support President Bush's proposed dividend tax cut," PR Week writes. "[S]everal large dividend-paying companies, including GM, Citigroup, Southern Company, ChevronTexaco, and Verizon, have sent such letters to shareholders. 'We think this proposal makes good economic sense, and is good for our stockholders and General Motors,' read a recent letter to GM shareholders from president and CEO Rick Wagoner. 'We've shared our enthusiasm for it with members of Congress, and we urge you to do the same promptly.'"

"The Office of Global Communications, a controversial agency created by President Bush in January, has blossomed into a huge production company, issuing daily scripts on the Iraq war to U.S. spokesmen around the world, auditioning generals to give media briefings and booking administration stars on foreign news shows," the Chicago Tribune's Bob Kemper reports. "The communications office helps devise and coordinate each day's talking points on the war. Civilian and military personnel, for example, are told to refer to the invasion of Iraq as a 'war of liberation.' Iraqi paramilitary forces are to be called 'death squads.'" According to Kemper, "Critics are questioning the veracity of some of the stories being circulated by the office and deriding it as a propaganda arm of the White House." Administration officials rebut the charges, saying they "serves a crucial purpose." The Tribune reports that OGC chief Tucker Eskew told Washington Foreign Press Center journalists, "Our executive order, insists that we deal with the truth."

"If you want your core values to mean anything, you have to live them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And you cannot simply abandon them in times of crisis," PR Week columnist (and weblogger) Paul Holmes writes in his Holmes Report. "But in the wake of America's invasion of Iraq two weeks ago, some Americans -- including some of our leaders -- have engaged in a powerful, coordinated effort based on the apparent belief that while those values are fine when times are good, they are simply too large a burden when times are tough. ... Freedom of speech is the absolute foundation upon which our [PR] profession is built. ... One way to overcome misperceptions about this business -- to counter charges that it is about deceit and mendacity and manipulation -- is to make clear how central advocacy and communications are to democracy. ... How can we deliver freedom to an oppressed people overseas when we are trying so hard to discourage our own citizens from exercising theirs?" Holmes writes.

"Are Americans more vulnerable to advertisements, and perhaps less skeptical about them, than, say, Europeans?" TomPaine.com's Sharon Basco asked Jean Kilbourne, author of Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. "The only reason that Americans might be more vulnerable than people from other countries is that we believe we're not vulnerable," Kilbourne said. "There's such a widespread belief in America that we're not influenced by anything really, that you know, we're not culturally conditioned. And in a sense, that makes it more difficult for us to really see the kind of conditioning that does go on all around us. So it's a way in which -- and I think the advertisers really count on this -- that we believe we're not influenced, and therefore we're less alert, in a way."

"Why do we aid and abet the lies and propaganda of this filthy war?" asked the Independent's Robert Fisk. "How come, for example, it's now BBC 'style' to describe the Anglo-American invaders as the 'coalition'. This is a lie. ... The Iraqis try to imitate the US Central Command (CentCom) propaganda operations, though with less subtlety. ... Then there's the famous "war in Iraq" slogan which the British and American media like to promote. But this is an invasion, not a mere war. ... [W]e go on talking about an 'air campaign' as if the Luftwaffe was taking off from Cap Gris Nez to bomb London, when not a single Iraqi aircraft has left the ground. So, it's 'coalition forces', a war not an invasion, liberation rather than occupation, and the taking of cities that are 'secured' rather than 'captured', and when captured, are insecure," Fisk writes.

"If till now the coalition forces have been the ones surprised by the apathy of the Iraqi population and the cool welcome given them, apparently it is now Saddam Hussein's turn to be surprised," writes Zvi Bar'el. "The initial pictures from the battle for Baghdad show Iraqi citizens starting to wave cautiously to the U.S. and British soldiers bearing down on the capital. These encouraging pictures are an important chapter in the propaganda war underway between the coalition forces and Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf, and the reactions of the public have yet to stand the true test of Baghdad." Recent video of Saddam (or his body double) kissing babies in the streets of Baghdad demonstrates "the importance the Iraqi regime is placing on public opinion in advance of the battle in the city."

"While the Humvees are lined up in the desert, their cousins, the Hummers, continue to be Detroit's hottest seller. .... Rick Schmidt, founder of IHOG, the International Hummer Owners Group, said: 'In my humble opinion ... it's a symbol of what we all hold so dearly above all else, the fact we have the freedom of choice, the freedom of happiness, the freedom of adventure and discovery, and the ultimate freedom of expression. Those who deface a Hummer in words or deed deface the American flag and what it stands for.' '[The war in Iraq] definitely helps,' said Clotaire Rapaille, a consumer research consultant for G.M. and other automakers. 'Put four stars on the shoulder of the Hummer and it will sell better. The Hummer is a car in uniform. Right now we are in a time of uncertainty, and people like strong brands with basic emotions.' "

Australian cameraman Paul Moran, who was killed by a suicide bomber on March 20, had worked for the Rendon Group, a Washington-based PR firm currently being used by the Pentagon, the Adelaide Advertiser reports. At the time of his death, Moran was on an assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in northern Iraq. According to the Advertiser, Moran worked for Rendon throughout the last 12 years as a "freelance subcontractor specialising in audio-visual production." Moran's Rendon jobs included working with the CIA-sponsored Iraqi National Congress, and most recently, producing "public service announcements for the Pentagon which were broadcast into Iraq in preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom." The Advertiser reports Rendon Group head John Rendon attended Moran's funeral.

PR Week commentator Paul Holmes writes that "the 'embedding' of reporters in military units is the most brilliant strategic decision of this entire campaign, since its effect appears to be the transformation of usually intelligent reporters into Pentagon [Public Relations Officers]. As someone in the administration obviously realised, it's hard to hold on to journalistic integrity when you're dependent for continued survival on the people you're supposed to be covering. ... Then there's the brand name for this conflict: Operation Iraqi Freedom. ... It's possible, I suppose, that Iraqi freedom might be a by-product of this campaign, but to pretend that it's what the exercise is all about is intellectual dishonesty at its most perverse. ... But the most Orwellian usage of all has been the recent application of the word 'relevance', as in 'the United Nations faced a test of its relevance, and failed'. Relevance, in this context, means willingness to rubberstamp whatever demands the US makes. If that sounds very much like irrelevance to you, perhaps you don't understand the might-makes-right world in which we are living. ... For a student of propaganda, these are rich times indeed."

"Chemical industry trade association the American Chemistry Council said it selected WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and its public relations unit Ogilvy PR for its $50 million advertising account," Advertising Age writes. "The trade group is looking to its agency to develop a more positive image for the chemical industry, which is battling negative views that have been stoked in part by war talk of chemical weapons and bioterrorism. The council wants the ad campaign to improve the public's perception of the contribution of chemicals to improve consumers everyday lives."

News stories, letters to the editor and speeches at pro-war rallies repeat claims that US soldiers returning from Vietnam were routinely spat upon by peace protesters. Its repeated in large papers like USA Today , on TV talk shows and by radio broadcasters. Don't believe it, its a propaganda myth. Professor and Vietnam veteran Jerry Lembcke's 1998 book The Spitting Image: Myth Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam reveals that "stories of war veterans being spat upon occur frequently in modern histories. According to some historians, the image of abused veterans was an important element in the Nazi propaganda that fanned the flames of patriotism and led the German masses into World War II. In the US, the idea that Vietnam veterans had met with malevolence gained prominence during the fall of 1990, when the Bush administration used it to rally support for the Persian Gulf War."

Since the beginning of the Iraq war, write Brendan Nyhan and Bryan Keefer, "politicians and the American media have continued to circulate misinformation, much of which has gone largely unchecked." On the Spinsanity.org web site, they have compiled a list of "myths and misconceptions about the war." Examples include:

• Iraq has launched Scud missiles at coalition forces and civilians in Kuwait.
• The coalition against Iraq is larger than the one that conducted the first Gulf War.
• Evidence found at the Ansar Al-Islam camp ties Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.
• No one in the administration ever claimed the war in Iraq would be easy.

"A recent Washington Post article describing the killing of civilians by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi town of Najaf proved that 'embedded' journalists do have the ability to report on war in all its horror. But the rejection by some U.S. outlets of Post correspondent William Branigin's eyewitness account in favor of the Pentagon's sanitized version suggests that some journalists prefer not to report the harsh reality of war," Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting writes. According to the Post's account, the military did not give adequate warning to the civilian vehicle to stop and instead opened fire. In the Pentagon's version, the military followed all warning proceedures. Many U.S. papers acknowledged the discrepancy between the Post's version of the story and the Pentagon's, according to FAIR. Several news outlets, however, including the New York Times and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," failed to mention that the Post's story contradicts the official report. Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reports the incident as "a distressing tale of a family fleeing towards what they thought would be safety, tragically misunderstanding instructions," based on interviews with survivors. The Herald does not report that warning shots were fired.

USA Today reports on "a surge of anti-Americanism that threatens to erode the global dominance of American brands. ... Nike, Coca-Cola and McDonald's are just a few examples of U.S. companies that sell more than half their products abroad. Their value and the prices they can charge depend strongly on their brand image. And though Coke, Levi's, Budweiser and the like have nothing to do with the Bush administration's foreign policy, they become de facto targets for protesters lashing out at the USA's dominance. ... The same is true in the United States, where some people are pouring French wine down the drain and steering away from German Volkswagen cars... A recent survey showed that 47% of Americans were 'very' or 'somewhat' likely to substitute products made elsewhere for German products, according to the joint poll by the public relations firms of Wirthlin Worldwide and Fleishman-Hillard."

Veteran military correspondent Chris Hedges writes that "when the nation goes to war, the press goes to war with it. The blather on CNN or Fox or MSNBC is part of a long and sad tradition. The narrative we are fed about war by the state, the entertainment industry and the press is a myth. ... The coverage of war by the press has one consistent and pernicious theme--the worship of our weapons and our military might. Retired officers, breathless reporters, somber news anchors, can barely hold back their excitement, which is perverse and--frankly, to those who do not delight in watching us obliterate other human beings--disgusting. We are folding in on ourselves, losing touch with the outside world, shredding our own humanity and turning war into entertainment and a way to empower ourselves as a nation and individuals. ... I doubt the journalists filing the hollow reports from Iraq, in which there are images but rarely any content, are aware of how they are being manipulated. They, like everyone else, believe."

An executive who claimed to have developed an online file-trading service that intentionally violated copyright protection laws now says that he made up the whole thing to sell his book. Pieter Plass, author of The Honest Thief, calls it an "April Fool's joke," but his PR firm, the Alliant Group, isn't laughing. They fell for the hoax and helped spread it, as did the Wall Street Journal, Business Wire, CNET, and Wired News.

George Hesselberg writes, "let me be the 500th columnist in the United States to jump on the French's Mustard public relations people for the company's astounding press release that got -- congratulations -- national press last week. The company wanted everyone to know that 'The only thing French about French's mustard is the name!' ... And leave it to Hollywood to make the peace sign a commercial symbol. The comedy movie, What a Girl Wants, is advertised picturing the lead actress ... flashing the peace sign. ... Now, Warner Brothers is removing the peace sign because it might be seen as a political message and THAT might cost them customers. ... These are the acts of companies trying to cash in on the war, creating a spin where there is none."

"'Fog' is the