"It's easy to complain about the press -- I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Vice President Dick Cheney told tens of thousands of Republican supporters in a conference call. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets."

Friday's "Nightline" pays tribute to U.S. servicemembers killed in Iraq, with anchor Ted Koppel reading the names of fallen troops. Saying the show "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq," the Sinclair Broadcast Group is barring its ABC-affiliate stations from airing the show. The ban affects seven media markets in six states. ABC News "respectfully disagree[s] with Sinclair's decision." Senator McCain (R-AZ) protested in a letter to Sinclair's president: "Every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war." Nightline's producer remarked: "We want to remind people that each of [the dead] has a face, has a name, had a life -- and that's all its intended to do." According to the Center for American Progress, Sinclair executives have donated more than $130,000 to George Bush and his allies since 2000.

Was it the horrifiic images of US soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners that caused the announcement? If so, no mention was made of it when "Margaret D. Tutwiler, the State Department veteran who was summoned from abroad to overhaul the public diplomacy effort, said Thursday that she was resigning to take a position at the New York Stock Exchange. The move was a blow to the Bush administration's hopes to improve America's image and better articulate its policy goals as the country faces growing opposition to the war in Iraq and to its support of Israel's plan to redraw its boundaries. It also highlighted the administration's difficulty in retaining managers of public diplomacy. Ms. Tutwiler's predecessor in the job was Charlotte Beers, a former New York advertising executive, who resigned in March of last year. ... An extensive report on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world, released in October, painted a dire picture of American efforts to reach out to foreign countries and build support for Washington's actions. The bipartisan report, called 'Changing Minds, Winning Peace,' found that America's prestige had dwindled, that its good works were largely ignored and that it lacked strategic direction in its message."

Colin Powell and other U.S. officials are complaining to Middle Eastern news executives and government officials about Al Jazeera's and Al Arabiya's "inflammatory" reporting on Iraq. The Pentagon's Arabic Media and Programs Unit has developed a "truth matrix" of allegedly unfair or untrue reports. U.S. "commanders are directing soldiers and marines to use their personal digital cameras to take pictures of any insurgents shooting from mosques, from behind crowds of women and children or other places that would violate the laws of war," for Arab and Western media. Israel's Haaretz sees things differently: "Since the start of the war, the Americans have persecuted [Al Jazeera's] journalists - not because they report lies, but because they are virtually the only ones who manage to report the truth."

Bill Mitchell, whose son was a U.S. Army soldier killed in Iraq earlier this month, has written a letter to The Seattle Times thanking the newspaper for publishing the picture of flag-draped caskets that broke a Pentagon ban. Mitchell believes his son was in one of the caskets shown in the now-famous photo by Tami Silicio. "Hiding the death and destruction of this war does not make it easier on anyone except those who want to keep the truth away from the people," he wrote. "Things are getting worse in Iraq and if there is anything that I can do so that other parents can be spared the pain that is happening in my life, I will do it."

"Freedom of the press declined substantially around the world in 2003, including a worrisome drop in Italy, according to a survey released Wednesday by Freedom House. "Despite some specific recent improvements, and an overall upward trend towards greater press freedom worldwide during the late 1990s, the last two years have seen a dramatic deterioration," said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, the survey's managing editor. "State-directed intimidation and attempts to influence the media are being perpetrated by governments that seem to be increasingly unwilling to tolerate critical coverage."

"If they have sovereignty, Mr. Ambassador, what does that mean?" Senator Hagel (R-NE) asked John Negroponte, the nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, regarding the U.S. military siege on Fallujah. Negroponte, who defended giving limited power to an interim Iraqi government after June 30, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "he saw his major challenge as trying to avert conflicts if the new Iraqi government objected to American military actions." Another sovereignty question was raised yesterday when "Iraq's United States-appointed and unelected leaders had, overnight, abolished the old Iraqi flag" for a new one designed in London. Many Iraqis "are convinced that their new flag is modelled on the Israeli flag"; one political moderate said: "I will not regard the new flag as representing me but only traitors and collaborators."

Members of Congress and women's groups are asking long-time Bush adviser Karen Hughes to apologize for remarks they say "liken abortion rights advocates to those in the 'terror network'." As hundreds of thousands rallied for reproductive rights in Washington DC on Sunday, Hughes told CNN: "I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life... particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life." Women's groups are changing their message and tactics, reports the Wall Street Journal: "To counter abortion foes' use of the pulpit, they are mining college campuses for grass-roots organizational heft."

The controversial Iraqi National Congress will be the subject of a probe by Congress' General Accounting Office for using U.S. taxpayer money to convince U.S. citizens to support an Iraq invasion, according to Knight Ridder reporters Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay. The group, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, set up the Iraq Liberation Action Committee, a non-profit front group that was not subject to the same lobbying restrictions as the INC. Longtime INC representative Francis Brooke is named as ILAC's principal founder. State Department officials say the INC, which received $18 million in U.S. funds between 1998-2003, violated an agreement that they wouldn't spend the money "attempting to influence the policies of the United States Government or Congress, or propagandizing the American people." Strobel told Democracy Now! that the INC in June 2002 sent a memo to the Senate Appropriations Committee boasting that their efforts had resulted in 108 news stories on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. It turns out, however, most of the defectors INC provided to reporters as sources for their stories were fabricators.

"People living in the affected villages are very distressed because the information they receive... is inconsistent," an International Atomic Energy Agency official said about the world's worst nuclear accident. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant "spewed a cloud of radioactivity"; the amount of radiation released, the distance it traveled, and its health and environmental impacts remain in dispute. An IAEA Chernobyl Forum is now compiling "authoritative, transparent statements" for next year's UN General Assembly. One nuclear engineer who studied Chernobyl has warned: "The IAEA is in the business of promoting nuclear energy, not discouraging it." Earlier IAEA studies were "sharply criticized in scientific journals"; in 2000, the agency stated "there is no evidence of a major public health impact" from the Chernobyl radiation.

A 15-year-old boy in Prosser, Washington has been interrogated by the U.S. Secret Service about anti-war drawings he turned in to his art teacher. One drawing depicted President Bush's head on a stick. Another depicted Bush as a devil launching a missile, with a caption reading "End the war - on terrorism." Kevin Cravens, a friend of the boy's family, criticized the Secret Service investigation. "If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in '1984,'" Cravens said.

"It is designed to circumvent the campaign-finance restrictions, which would bar us from communicating to our members before elections," explained a National Rifle Association spokesperson about the pro-gun lobby group's recently launched news service. NRA's executive vice president asked, "Who's to say [Disney, GE or Time Warner AOL are] any more legitimate?" PR guru Paul Holmes applauds NRAnews.com as "a clever response to a wrong-headed piece of legislation," and opines: "Fox News already has shown that there's no requirement for even the pretense of objectivity." Duke University journalism professor Susan Tifft disagrees: "For lobbies and private interests to wrap themselves in the cloak of dispassionate news gathering when what is actually being practiced is PR and political advocacy is the ultimate cynical act."

Citing a recent poll which found 65% of respondents feel "constantly bombarded with too much" advertising and 61% think marketing is "out of control," Commercial Alert's director writes: "The main reason, I suspect, is that the [marketing] industry abides no limits or boundaries... [the] implicit message is a total lack of respect for our time, our privacy, our attention, our peace of mind, and not least for our concerns about our kids." Two examples: ads on magazine spines and "a growing number of marketers [who] want to persuade the nation's print magazines to open the text of their editorial pages to product placements." With pharmaceutical marketing budgets up 21% last year, drug makers are using "more aggressive marketing tactics," according to a Young & Rubicam Advertising executive.

In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, a new survey by the University of Maryland shows that 57 percent of the American people continue to believe Saddam Hussein gave "substantial support" to al-Qaeda before the war with Iraq. "Why would so many Americans cling to patently false beliefs?" asks history professor Juan Cole. "One can only speculate of course. But I would suggest that the two-party system in the US has produced a two-party epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. If it were accepted that Saddam had virtually nothing to do with al-Qaeda, that he had no weapons of mass destruction (nor any significant programs for producing them), and that no evidence for such things has been uncovered after the US and its allies have had a year to comb through Baath documents - if all that is accepted, then President Bush's credibility would suffer. For his partisans, it is absolutely crucial that the president retain his credibility. Therefore, rather than face reality, they re-jigger it to create a fantasy world in which Saddam and Usamah are buddies (as in the Jimmy Fallon/ Horatio Sanz skits on the American comedy show, Saturday Night Live), and in which David Kay (of whom respondents say they've never heard) never recanted his earlier belief that the WMD was there somewhere. ... It is bad for the country for policy to be made based on falsehoods, and it is even worse for failed policies not be be recognized as such because the public clings to myths. ... If nearly half the country cannot even see that things are going badly wrong in Iraq, one despairs that anyone will work up the political will to try to fix the problems before it is too late."

"Flanked by 'Survivor' champions Ethan Zohn and Jenna Morasca and two Washington Redskins cheerleaders, a leading D.C. environmentalist took time on Earth Day to thank Wichita-based Koch Industries," reports Alan Bjerga. Doug Siglin, head of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Anacostia River Initiative, praised Koch for helping pick trash out of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. But while Koch colleagues heaped praise on the company, critics wondered whether the event wasn't designed to clean up Koch's image as much as the river. "You hate to sound cynical when someone's doing something good," said Brandon deMelle, an analyst with th Environmental Working Group. "But given Koch's history, you have to wonder." Koch's track record on the environment includes the largest pollution penalty ever assessed by the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as lawsuits over groundwater pollution in Minnesota, escaping benzene gas in Texas and oil leaks in six states.

"The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to counsel and coordinate communications for Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The U.S., according to the New York Times, wants to bolster the leadership of Karzai by promoting 'visible signs of reconstruction.' The paper reports that Karzai's government, in recent weeks, has issued 'choreographed announcements about hundreds of schools and clinics to be built or rehabilitated in the next few months.' Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the country's defacto CEO, made a media splash on April 17 with a ceremony to celebrate the planting of 850,000 trees as part of the 'greening of Kabul' campaign." But Afghanistan is far from the success story that the Bush administration has been projecting, according to a recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh. An unpublished report commissioned by the Pentagon found that "the victory in Afghanistan was not, in the long run, a victory at all," Hersh writes.

The British medical journal The Lancet published a review of "six published and six unpublished trials" studying antidepressant use by children that concluded that, in most cases, "the risks exceeded the benefits." More disturbingly, the review found evidence that pharmaceutical companies "had been aware of problems but did not reveal them." In a memo leaked last month from GlaxoSmithKline, the company warned, "negative trial results could not be released" because it would damage the "profile" of the drug. An earlier review of cancer drug trials found that 5 percent of pharmaceutical industry studies reported negatively on the drug under examination, compared to 38 percent of studies carried out by independent labs.

A survey of youth marketers, PR and advertising professionals found that, while respondents say children are "unable to make intelligent choices as consumers" until nearly 12 years old, it's OK to market to seven year olds. Just over 60 percent of those surveyed say advertising targets children at too young an age, but others feel "educational purposes" and brand loyalty justify targeting three year olds. The president of The Wonder Group, a youth-marketing agency, said: "When we do research, the parents want the child to know about the product... As a marketer do you really care that the consumer is getting exactly the message you want or can recognize the brand? They point to Tony the Tiger."

"A California elections panel examining computerized voting machines has unanimously recommended that machines using touch-screen technology be banned in some California counties," reports W. David Gardner. "This is further evidence that attempts across the nation to upgrade and safeguard voting procedures won't be implemented in time for the November elections." Diebold Elections Systems, which manufactures voting machines, came in for particular criticism. "I'm disgusted by the actions of this company," said Marc Carrel, a panel member. Diebold may face criminal charges for violating state election laws.

Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times, has been fired along with her husband. Her employer, a private contractor, says it decided to fire her after receiving a complaint from the military about her violation of the Pentagon ban on images of soldiers' caskets. Silicio says she feels "like I was hit in the chest with a steel bar and got my wind knocked out." She took the photo, she said, to help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.

"Through concerted marketing and public relations campaigns... 'greenwashers' attract eco-conscious consumers and push the notion that they don't need environmental regulations because they are already environmentally responsible. Greenwashing appears in misleading product labels like 'all natural' and 'eco-friendly'; in television commercials showing S.U.V.'s rolling peacefully through the wilderness; and in the co-opting of environmental buzzwords like 'sound science' and 'sustainability'," writes Geoffrey Johnson in a New York Times op/ed. Today, "petroleum powers [Marathan Oil and ChevronTexaco], big-box developers [Wal-Mart], old-growth loggers [Sierra Pacific] and chemically dependent coffee companies [Starbucks] [are] trying to paint their public image green" by sponsoring local Earth Day celebrations across the country.

"Americans seeking to know what President Bush said in his phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month went to the obvious place: the Kremlin," writes Dana Milbank. "It may come as a surprise to some that the Kremlin, symbol of secrecy and repression, has become more transparent that the White House, symbol of freedom and democracy... Agence France-Presse White House correspondent Olivier Know has proposed a slogan for the Bush team: 'When we have something to announce, another country will announce it'." Milbank notes that the White House has also refused to confirm meetings with foreign dignitaries, domestic trips, overseas diplomatic appointments and T-ball games announced by others.

The Public Relations Society of America has issued a statement saying that video news releases (VNRs) should no longer use signoffs like the one that got Karen Ryan into hot water: "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." According to the PRSA statement, "This has caused some confusion among people who question whether someone who is not actually a reporter should be identified in a manner that could suggest that he or she is a journalist. While this is often done when VNRs are produced, we agree that this can be considered confusing and/or misleading." PRSA also says that "Television stations airing VNRs should identify sources of the material." The Campaign Desk web site, which has done some of the best reporting on the Karen Ryan affair, says it is "too early to tell if these changes will actually reduce the number of VNRs that end up running as news - or even eliminate the practice of using PR reps to impersonate reporters. But it seems safe to say that hereafter, PR companies, government agencies, and corporations will proceed with a little more caution in using this particular tactic."

"Outsourcing, the shifting of well-paid and skilled manufacturing and service sector jobs overseas, has emerged as a defining issue," but Republicans in the House of Representatives want to change the subject, according to The Hill. In mid-May, the House leadership will begin "eight weeks of debate and votes on what they say are 'populist' measures to reduce healthcare costs, eliminate red tape, curb abusive lawsuits, simplify the tax code, improve worker-training programs, enforce trade law and reshape energy policies." The "competitiveness agenda" also includes "a long-standing proposal that Congress should vote on regulatory actions, such as examining whether to raise the corporate average fuel economy standards in cars." The Competitive Enterprise Institute's president noted approvingly: "Regulations have become a form of taxation without representation."

"Roger Stone, the dirty-tricks hobgoblin of Republican politics, has exploited his Bush connections to become an influence-peddling force in the $13 billion Indian gaming industry," reports Wayne Barrett. "Stone's booming business in such a federally regulated enterprise makes his recent pro bono orchestration of Al Sharpton's double-edged presidential campaign an even stranger covert caper. Stone financed and helped organize Sharpton's campaign in the Democratic presidential primary, prompting speculation that Sharpton was actually a stealth Republican operative working to weaken the party's chances in the general election. "Stone has a history of bizarre political operations, beginning with his Watergate-era infiltration of the McGovern campaign," Barrett notes. He explores Stone's current "double-agent role" in Indian gaming, which "mirrors his seemingly bizarre orchestration of the Sharpton scam. Both are just the latest sagas in Stone's exotic career of self-serving misdirection."

"Last week, photos of flag-draped coffins in Kuwait containing the bodies of Americans killed in Iraq surfaced on scattered Internet sites, such as the Drudge Report," reports Charles Geraci. "The photos were not credited and no major news organization would touch them. But Sunday, a similar image appeared on the front page of The Seattle Times. The picture arrived amid rising debate over the Bush administration's strict ban on media outlets taking photos of soldiers' coffins offloaded at U.S. military bases."

"While U.S. regulators tend to wait for clear evidence of problems, the [European Union] has been moving aggressively to remove chemicals with the potential for trouble." Case in point: phthalates, a class of chemicals found in many cosmetics, which have been linked in animal experiments to "adverse reproductive effects." The industry group the Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance Association dismissed calls to stop using phthalates, claiming "this is more a matter of politics than of science." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes its lead on such matters from the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel, which is "funded by the industry trade group." The head of the Environmental Working Group remarked: "It's not just the fox guarding the henhouse, it's the fox designing and building the henhouse."

Two employees of a Pentagon-funded television station were killed by U.S. troops in Iraq today. Al-Iraqiya correspondent Asaad Kadhim, driver Hussein Saleh and cameraman Bassem Kamel came under fire as they drove along the road to the central city of Samara. Kadhim and Saleh were killed, while Kamel was wounded. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 24 Iraqi and foreign journalists and media workers have been killed since the U.S. invasion, not counting the latest deaths. Al-Iraqiya and two Baghdad radio stations are run by the Iraq Media Network, on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority and under U.S. Defense Department contracts with the San Diego, California-based company Scientific Applications International Corporation.

A new coalition has formed to fight the expansion of government secrecy at all levels of government in the United States. "Open the Government" which bring together groups from the worlds of journalism, organized labor, the environmental movement and others interested in open government. It has issued a report listing what it calls the "Ten Most Wanted" government documents on topics ranging from September 11 intelligence failures to contaminants in drinking water and gifts from lobbyists to Senators and their staff.

"In a report analyzing the economics of protecting a threatened fish in the Pacific Northwest, the Bush administration this month deleted all references to possible monetary benefits" from conservation. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report included the estimated habitat protection cost - $230 to $300 million over 10 years - but omitted "55 pages that detailed the benefits of protecting bull trout." The benefits, according to a consulting firm, would include "revenue from sport fishing, reduced drinking water costs and increased water for irrigation farmers," totaling some $215 million over 20 to 30 years. A Fish and Wildlife Service official said the benefits analysis was deleted because "it did not conform to analytical standards."

Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu is scheduled to be released soon from prison after serving an 18-year sentence for blowing the whistle on Israel's weapons of mass destruction. However, Israel is also forbidding him from communicating with foreigners or moving about without permission and has been told that any infraction of these rules will land him back in prison without trial. In 1986, Vanunu provided photographs to back up a major story in the Sunday Times newspaper in London, which detailed his work for Israel's covert nuclear arsenal at its Dimona plant. In retaliation, an American Jewish woman working for Mossad, Israel's secret service, lured him from London to Rome, where he was kidnapped back to Israel, convicted of treason and espionage in a secret trial, and subjected to long periods in solitarity confinement.

As McDonald's unveiled its latest marketing ploy - healthier menu options, including "Go Active!" Adult Happy Meals - one free enterprise and "personal freedom" activist is trying to prove that the fast food giant's current menu isn't so bad. Soso Whaley, an adjunct fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an animal trainer and the host of the "Camo Country Outdoors Show," has placed herself on a month-long McDonald's-only diet. She's also making a film about her experience, in direct response to Morgan Spurlock's unflattering documentary "Super Size Me." Whaley called Spurlock's film "anti-corporate," "anti-fast food" and "junk science." McDonald's has not endorsed Whaley's project.

Four years ago BP - the company formerly known as British Petroleum - launched a $200 million ad campaign to rebrand itself as "Beyond Petroleum" and to strut the company's avowed commitment to corporate social responsibility. At its April 16 annual general meeting in London, however, its real face was more visible. A resolution proposing the company stay out of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and other environmentally important areas was voted down, protests against cuts to health benefits for new employees were brushed off, and a 65-year old Azerbaijani woman campaigning against the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline to Turkey was not even allowed into the meeting.

Can John Kerry beat George Bush by selling himself to disgruntled Republican voters as the kinder, gentler, more compassionate and centrist candidate? After appealing to a left/liberal base during his primary victories juggernaut, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate is moving quickly to the right. "Declaring that he is 'not a redistribution Democrat,' Senator John Kerry told a group of wealthy and well-connected supporters on Thursday that he would soon start an aggressive campaign to define himself as a centrist, in hopes of peeling moderate Republicans from President Bush. Tacitly acknowledging his vulnerability to harsh portrayals in a barrage of Mr. Bush's advertisements over the past month, Mr. Kerry urged Democrats at a $25,000-a-plate breakfast at the '21' Club in Manhattan to help him paint his own portrait. ... 'We've got to reach out,' Mr. Kerry said. 'There are so many Republicans who have said to me: `You know, for the first time in my life, I'm going to vote for a Democrat. I'm ready to switch over.' "

University of Texas professor Sheldon Landsberger has admitted that a pro-nuclear column he submitted under his own name to the Austin American-Statesman was actually written by the Potomac Communications Group, a Washington PR firm that works for the nuclear power industry. "For at least 25 years," reports William Adler, an employee of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee named Theodore M. Besmann (who moonlights for Potomac Communications) "has had published nuclear love songs in newspapers across the country, under his own or others' names."

In an official notice signaling their intention to launch a new "recruiting and advertising program to bolster and retain ranks in the U.S. Army," the Pentagon, Defense Contracting Command and Department of the Army observe that "the market dynamics recruiters continue to face are as challenging as any faced in the history of the All-Volunteer Force," according to O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Word of the new Army ad campaign came just one day after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that some 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq will have their tours extended by at least three months. When asked if troop levels would decrease after 90 days, Rumsfeld replied: "You can't predict the future, you just simply cannot do that, so why bother?"

"The blame for all those deaths [in Iraq] has a name: George W. Bush," declared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday. An employee of the Patton Boggs lobbying and legal firm said such statements make their work "difficult but not impossible." Chavez is paying Patton Boggs more than $1 million to improve the Venezuelan government's image in America through media work, government and grassroots lobbying. According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, the Venezuela Information Office has been established in Washington DC to "prevent the U.S. Government from intervening in the democratic process in Venezuela." A leaked Patton Boggs memo advises Chavez "to demonstrate his commitment to combating drug trafficking and his cooperation with Colombia in order to neutralize" criticisms from the U.S. State Department.

"They did not go out looking for the publicity and did not ask for everything that happened to them," said a spokesperson for Alexander Strategy Group, defending their new client, Blackwater USA. Blackwater is the private military firm that's faced increasing scrutiny from members of congress, the media and the general public following the killing of four of its contractors in Fallujah, Iraq last month. Alexander Strategy Group is providing "crisis management" services, and will "help Blackwater provide input into proposed regulations circulating in the Pentagon that would establish rules of engagement for private security contractors." Blackwater is a late-comer to the PR game; the MPRI, Armor Holdings, SAIC and Dyncorp military companies already "pay top dollar for lobbyists."

"Impartial information is increasingly hard to come by in Iraq," reports Fiona O'Brien. "As fighting has intensified on the ground, U.S. authorities have stepped up a separate battle for public opinion, tightly controlling the flow of information to journalists whose ability to move freely in Iraq has been limited by increasing danger." Although U.S. military officials refuse to discuss Iraqi civilian casualties, other reports suggest that hundreds have died in the past week in Fallujah alone. Reuters footage shows "dead children, old men and women lying wounded in overfull makeshift clinics." According to U.S. journalist Rahul Mahajan, who was in Fallujah on Saturday and Sunday, "there's a big controversy now with the Arab press, Al-Jazeera, in particular reporting U.S. atrocities and war crimes in Fallujah, and the U.S. press tamely reporting Brigadier General Mark Kim's claims no such thing is happening. I can tell you from what I have seen with my own eyes that Al-Jazeera is much closer to the truth."

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression chooses April 13, the anniversary of Jefferson's birth, to issue its annual "Jefferson Muzzles" award to call attention to "those who in the past year forgot or disregarded Mr. Jefferson's admonition that freedom of speech 'cannot be limited without being lost.'" This year's awards included:

• CBS Television, which passed on the miniseries "The Reagans" amid conservative pressure, and which also refused to air Moveon.org's 30-second commercial criticizing the Bush administration during the Super Bowl, while it allowed erectile dysfunction commercials and the halftime show featuring Janet Jackson's bared breast.
• Martha Stewart's trial judge.
• Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey, who canceled a 15th anniversary showing of "Bull Durham" because of opposition to the Iraq war by its stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

Alex Irvine reports: "The Portland Press Herald, after several years of getting its nerve up, has fired reporter Ted Cohen, who in July 2000 unearthed the story of George W. Bush's 1976 DWI arrest in Kennebunkport. Cohen's editor promptly spiked the story, with the result that it didn't get out into the national media until just before the 2000 election. The discovery that the Press Herald sat on the story embarrassed executive editor Jeannine Guttman and made the paper an object of ridicule among journalists. Since then, Cohen says, 'the working atmosphere has just been strained beyond words.'"

The Bush-Cheney campaign's aptly named advertising team, Maverick Media, understands that this year's presidential election is much different than the previous one: "The environment in 2000 was peace and prosperity. Everything was going fine and the question was what to do next. This time there are challenges in the economy and we have challenges because of the war on terror and Iraq and everything associated," said Matthew Dowd, Maverick's media and statistics guru in 2000 and the Bush-Cheney campaign's current director of strategy (Karl Rove's old position). The optimistic Mr. Dowd also "noted that the controversy over Sept. 11 images in Mr. Bush's campaign ads resulted in $6 million in free air time for the ads and 40 million people seeing the spots who otherwise would not have seen them."

The Forest Service's controversial "Forests With a Future" campaign, handled by PR firm OneWorld Communications, includes a brochure explaining why increased logging will benefit Sierra Nevada forests. "The pamphlet... explains that fire risks have risen as the Sierra's forests have grown more dense in the past century. Six small black-and-white photos spanning 80 years appear beside descriptions of how the 'forests of the past' had fewer trees and less underbrush, making them less susceptible to fire... However, the 1909 photo does not depict natural conditions - it was taken just after the forest had been logged. And the pictured forest is nowhere near the Sierra Nevada. It is in Montana," reports Associated Press. The director of Cedar Ridge, California's John Muir Project called the brochure "very misleading."

When the White House released the sure-to-be-controversial Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief (PDB) on the terrorist threat against the U.S., its timing could not have been accidental," reports Greg Mitchell. "Coming shortly after 6 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, on Saturday, it not only emerged too late for the network news programs, it also gave the nation's daily newspapers just hours to digest and interpret it. To help reporters in this task, the White House also released a guide longer than the 17-sentence PDB. But if the White House hoped that all of this would make major newspapers spin the story their way, officials there must be sadly disappointed today. Nearly every major outlet chose to focus on the aspects of the brief that were not merely 'historical,' as the administraton had portrayed the document before its release."

A senior defense advisor to the Australian government says she was fired after refusing to write media briefings that supported claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. "I felt like I was part of the propaganda machine. As a public servant I shouldn't be expected to write propaganda," said engineer and analyst Jane Errey. Rather than participate in pro-war briefings, she took a leave of absence and has now been terminated permanently.

"It is ironic in the extreme that an administration that's so interested in letting industry come up with its own solutions would come down with a heavy government hand on a company that's being creative," said one public health expert, commenting on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's decision not to allow Kansas' Creekstone Farms to test every cow it processes for mad cow disease. Creekstone wants 100% testing in order to resume sales to Japan, South Korea and other countries banning U.S. beef; the inability to export "is costing [Creekstone] $40,000 a day and forced it to lay off 50 employees." Industry associations, including the American Meat Institute and National Cattlemen's Beef Association, applauded the USDA, saying 100% testing is "not based on sound science."

One year after the staged toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square, the bloody violence in Iraq is reaching new peaks. "The last several days in Iraq have seen a spiraling of violence and horror that has taken many Americans by surprise, mostly because those Americans have been relying on the Bush administration for the straight dope," Truthout's William Rivers Pitts writes. We would add that U.S. media have also failed to set the record straight. While they are reporting on the anniversary of Hussein's statue being pulled down, they are still failing to identify the event as nothing more than a glorified photo-op, which we exposed in our book Weapons of Mass Deception. This past Sunday, Firdos Square saw a demonstration by thousands of supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr against the American occupation. Canadian journalist Naomi Klein reports, "US forces pointed tanks at the crowd [in Firdos Sqaure] while a loudspeaker told them that 'demonstrations are an important part of democracy but blocking traffic will not be permitted'." The New York Times reports, the square was completely shut off Friday by U.S. military. A U.S. Humvee circling the neighborhood warned residents not to leave their homes. "Anybody who enters the area carrying a weapon will be shot on sight," the Humvee's loudspeaker blared.

In a wide-ranging opinion piece, former American Meat Institute PR man Dan Murphy asks: "Could 9-11 have been prevented? You might as well ask, could the outbreak of BSE (mad cow disease) in North American [sic] have been prevented?... For those who question why our intelligence and law enforcement agencies didn't do everything possible to forestall 9-11, I would ask: Why didn't USDA implement the extraordinary measures taken since Dec. 23, 2003, to deal with BSE years ago?" His answer: "Whether the discussion is over terrorist attacks or the appearance of BSE, assuming that either could have been prevented is assuming a lot." And his take-home message: in order to "counter the radical activists," the meat industry must reach out to local communities and realize that "it's not only about changing laws, it's about changing hearts and minds."

As violence escalates in Iraq, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, testifies today before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, following a recent, highly public clash with Richard A. Clarke, the former White House advisor who has sharply criticized the administration's handling of counterterrorism. However, her testimony comes with conditions, including a promise by the commission that no other White House personnel will be asked to testify.

Tuesday's 2-to-1 vote against a Wal-Mart supercenter in Inglewood CA "has broad implications for the expansion of Wal-Mart across the country." Wal-Mart spent more than $1 million on PR for the referendum, compared to the opposition's $150,000. "Money is important, but it's not everything," remarked one opposition member. Wal-Mart also funded a Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation study that, not surprisingly, found that "supercenters could save Southern California households an average of $600 a year, which would be pumped back into the community." Many aren't convinced; the co-publishers of The Black Commentator wrote: "If evil could be branded, its emblem would be the Wal-Mart logo." So much for Wal-Mart's efforts to portray itself as a "kinder, gentler behemoth."

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) may not "ensure adequate remedy for workers' rights abuses, protect women workers from discrimination, or improve domestic labor law enforcement," as Human Rights Watch claims, but it does have an international PR campaign. Weber Shandwick is working with El Salvador's Investment Promotion Board "to drum up U.S. corporate support for [El Salvador] and push for Congressional support" of CAFTA. El Salvador's deputy human rights ombudsman warned: "CAFTA protects the fundamental rights of businesses but not the labor rights of the citizens." An observer of last month's Salvadoran elections notes that, although the pro-CAFTA ARENA party won the presidency, "many Salvadorans with whom I spoke said that the fear" of U.S. economic reprisals "was a driving force behind [ARENA's] wide margin of victory."

Leslie Green at Stapleton Communications has a bachelor's degree in Marketing Communications from California Polytechnic State University, which must be where she learned how to stonewall reporters while still sounding upbeat. A detailed new investigative report charges her client, AXT Inc., with poisoning its workers with gallium arsenide, a potent carcinogen used to make semiconductors. Asked for comments prior to publication of the story, Green replied: "We do appreciate the opportunity to respond to, I guess, some of the questions that you have for AXT. We are going to pass on the opportunity to participate in your article at this point, but again, I do appreciate the opportunity."

Crisis management PR pro Jim McCarthy says his clients have run afoul of "the media/ activist industrial complex." Case in point: Augusta National hired McCarthy when Martha Burk challenged the golf club's policy of not admitting women members. But McCarthy's prime target wasn't Burk: "Stopping The New York Times dead in its tracks was critical... because the Times sets the agenda for the broader media world." He fed information to conservative bloggers so that news stories would be read "with the lens that you created." His efforts paid off as the Times' Augusta coverage was increasingly questioned: "The story is no longer sex discrimination but journalistic integrity. That is how you turn down the heat on a crisis, by changing the subject."

As campaigning Republicans face attacks from environmentalist on climate change, industry friendly Consumer Alert has relaunched the Cooler Heads Coalition and its website globalwarming.org. The group says it advances "sound science and dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis." Members of the Coalition come from a wide range of industry front groups and right-wing think tanks, including the group's original founder the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, Pacific Research Institute, and Americans for Tax Reform. According to its website, "Cooler Heads" focuses on "the consumer impact of global warming policies that would drastically restrict energy use and raise costs for consumers. Members of the coalition point out that the science of global warming is uncertain, but the negative impacts of global warming policies on consumers are all too real."

Moving jobs overseas has gotten a bad rap, according to PR Week: "The fact that offshoring is a complex matter... doesn't mean the media has treated it with a sober approach. The body of accurate reporting on the often intricate economic motivations for moving jobs abroad is dwarfed by the more emotional, even sensational, reporting on the effects of offshoring on American workers." Companies offshoring jobs "should follow a crisis management model" and "be open, but not to the point that they just throw everything out to the media." It's a good thing that industry front groups like the Coalition for Economic Growth and American Jobs, the International Free Trade Association and the Organization for International Investment have formed to "defend the outsourcing of jobs."

"If one needed proof that the Woodstock generation has thrown in the towel, grabbed the money and ran, it is this: Bob Dylan's new Victoria's Secret ad," writes Advertising Age. In a similar vein, last week's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Awards," organized by the nonprofit trade group Advertising Women of New York, criticized "Madison Avenue's complicity in stereotyping female consumers." The Wall Street Journal reported: "A recent survey of 138 marketers and ad executives found that 80 believed 'shockvertising' would increase the pressure for government regulation on the ad industry... still, no one expects edgy ads to disappear anytime soon." And a Beck's beer marketing executive responded to criticism by explaining that their advertising "celebrates women."

"From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment -- Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming 'Doomsday!' when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day," proclaimed an email memo sent to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen. The email -- sent on February 4 -- bases its assertions that "global warming is not a fact" and that other kinds of environmental degradation aren't really happening on claims by industry supported scientists and organizations, including the Pacific Research Institute (a think tank which has received $130,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998), the discredited Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, and Richard Lindzen, a climate-skeptic scientist who has consistently taken money from the fossil fuel industry. The memo, which was obtained by the Observer, was sent by Republican House Conference director Greg Cist. "It's up to our members if they want to use it or not," Cist told the Observer. "We wanted to show how the environment has been improving. ... We wanted to provide the other side of the story."

Anna Perez, until recently the National Security Council's director of communications and Condoleezza Rice's "counselor of communications," will become NBC's chief communications executive in May. Her resume also includes having served as Barbara Bush's press secretary during the first Bush administration (1989-1993), the Chevron oil company's General Manager of Corporate Communications and Programs (1988), and the Vice-President of California Government Relations for the Walt Disney Company (1995-1988). "I love the television business," Ms. Perez remarked, enthused about her new job. "I have no expertise in it so I will have a bit of a learning curve. But I can't remember the last time I didn't have a learning curve when I took a new job."

At the upcoming meeting of the Public Relations Society of America, "the Washington Beef Commission will unveil how it turned the PR nightmare discovery of Mad Cow... into an opportunity to educate the public about the hype surrounding the disease." According to meatingplace.com, the Japanese government isn't buying the U.S. Agriculture Department's new mad cow testing program -- or U.S. beef. Much to Secretary Ann Veneman's chagrin, Japanese officials rejected her proposal for an international panel to review both countries' mad cow policies. And in New Jersey, a suspicious cluster of human deaths from mad cow-like diseases, brought to light by one concerned citizen, is raising serious questions about the cost of dismissing the threat posed by mad cow disease and related transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.

The Green Life, a Boston-based environmental organization, chose April 1 to release its "Don't Be Fooled" report on the "10 worst greenwashers of 2003." Winners included: Project Learning Tree, a front group for the American Forest Foundation; Royal Caribbean International, for giving itself an environmental award and shielding customers from information ab