Our latest issue of PR Watch exposed the gap between words and deeds at the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. Amid lofty-sounding proclamations, the Bush administration and business lobbyists are blocking measurable standards and accountability, while pausing for periodic photo opportunities with the same environmental, labor and human rights groups that they are working to neutralize. The most recent example involved a joint statement put out by Greenpeace and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD). As Tom Turner of Earthjustice observes, this is an odd collaboration, since WBCSD's members include "some companies generally considered environmental scofflaws -- Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum being the most prominent -- and it has had a difficult relationship with the environmental community since its founding several years ago."

Coinciding with the World Summit on Sustainable Development taking place in Johannesburg, the Green Oscars announced this year's winners. In the category of Best Green Actor for achievement in Corporate Greenwash, the award goes to BP, for their Beyond Petroleum rebranding campaign, and their "Oil is old news" ad. In the category of Best Blue Actor for achievement in Corporate Bluewash, the award goes to Nestle, for overcoming one of the worst corporate reputations out there and daring to show its face at the United Nations. In the category of Best Supporting Government for facilitating excessive corporate power, the award goes to the United States, for representing corporate interests in environmental treaty negotiations. And for the Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding long-term achievement in environmental destruction and green PR, the award goes to Shell, for outstanding greenwash for over a decade. Congratulations go out to all the winners.

EcoPledge.com, a coalition of environmental organizations that uses boycotts to put pressure on environment-abusing companies, has joined Earth Day Resources in putting out a report titled "Don't Be Fooled: The Top 10 Misleading Environmental Claims of the Year." The report calls attention to the companies that have made the most misleading claims about the environmental benefits of their products and industries. Examples include:

• Kraft's Post Selects Cereals, for falsely promoting them as having "natural ingredients" when, in fact, they use genetically engineered corn.
• Tyson Chicken, for promoting its products as "all natural," even though the company treats its chickens with antibiotics.
• The Audubon Nature Institute -- not to be confused with the National Audubon Society -- for falsely claiming to support the protection of natural habitats as a way to preserve animal species, while also belonging to the National Wetlands Coalition, a corporate front group that lobbies to weaken the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.
• Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, for falsely promoting coal as a "clean fuel," even though carbon dioxide, one of the byproducts of coal burning, is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

The maker of Sam Adams beer is following the standard PR script for crisis management and offering a public apology for encouraging people to have sex in public places, including St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Following the public outcry which got two radio shock jocks fired, Boston Beer CEO Jim Koch now says, "We were not in control of the program, and it was never our intention to be part of a radio station promotion that crossed the line." It's hard to see how Koch could have been surprised, though, since this was the third year his company has sponsored the "Sex for Sam" contest (in which copulating couples are rewarded with trips to Boston for the company's annual beer fest). On the day that St. Patrick's was desecrated, Koch himself was in the studio of the radio show, acting as the contest's Grand Marshal. "Along with handing out bottles of Sam Adams to contestants who stopped by the studio to take a break from having sex in cabs, ATM vestibules, and the Disney Store, Koch also served as the contest's official 'celebrity' voyeur," notes thesmokinggun.com. "That meant if couples had sex in front of Koch, they were awarded 30 points (by comparison, sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral was worth 25 points)."

Now in its 26th year, Project Censored is back with a new annual report on the biggest stories the major US news media have ignored or underreported. Stories awarded this dubious honor include:

• FCC Moves To Privatize Airwaves
• New Trade Treaty Seeks to Privatize Global Social Services
• United States' Policies in Colombia Support Mass Murder
• Bush Administration Hampered FBI Investigation into Bin Laden Family
• U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water System
• U.S. Government Pushing Nuclear Revival
• Corporations Promote HMO Model for School Districts
• NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities in U.S. and Abroad
• U.S. Faces National Housing Crisis
• CIA Double Deals In Macedonia

"The Saudi government has spent millions of dollars on well-connected lobbyists and national television advertisements since Sept. 11 in a drive to improve its image among Americans and is poised to spend more as the anniversary of the events approaches," The New York Times' Christopher Marquis reports. "In all, the Saudis have hired several public relations firms and have already spent more than $5 million, according to new Justice Department filings. These firms include one of Washington's most prominent, Patton Boggs, which received $170,000 in the first six months of this year, according to the filings. ... The Saudi government has also hired Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, a firm founded by Robert W. Strauss, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, paying out $161,799 in the first half of 2002, the filings show. Frederick Dutton, a former special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and a longtime adviser to the Saudis, received $536,000 to help manage the Saudis' handling of the aftermath of Sept. 11 -- and he has a continuing contract with that government." It is common for countries to hire U.S. lobbyist, but prior to September 11, the Times reports, the Saudis spent relatively little on lobbying. "In the first half of 2001, the kingdom spent only $256,770 on two lobbying firms. By contrast, during the same period, Israel spent $5.1 million on eight firms and Japan spent $24.6 million on 58 firms," Marquis writes.

"Can A Sitting President Be Charged With Plagiarism?" asks TomPaine.com's New York Times op-ad. "As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell's 1984," writes Daniel Kurtzman, a San Francisco writer and former Washington political correspondent. "1984 was intended as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism -- not a how-to manual."

Fox TV pundit Sean Hannity has a book out, titled Let Freedom Ring. Spinsanity.org analyzes its rhetoric, calling it "a poorly researched effort full of blatant falsehoods and highly distorted versions of the truth. ... Hannity seems on the brink of becoming America's leading conservative pundit. Let Freedom Ring is troubling evidence that Hannity won't let a little thing like truth get in the way of his rapid ascent."

"For many citizens, the notion of an American 'secret court' would appear a striking contradiction in terms," writes law professor Jonathan Turley. "Until last week's disclosures by Congress, few Americans were aware that our government routinely used such a court to conduct searches of its own citizens for the purpose of foreign intelligence gathering, searches that would be denied as unconstitutional by any conventional court." Under the little-known Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the secret court has operated for more than two decades, approving more than 10,000 covert seaches (and has never turned down a single request!). We're hearing about it now because the secret court itself is blowing the whistle over the Ashcroft Justice Department's Kafkaesque power grab which threatens to eliminate the distinction between spying on foreign enemies and spying on U.S. citizens.

It seems Washington just can't get enough PR advice these days. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently called a meeting of his "strategic communications" group to critique a "presentation on the whereabouts of terrorists around the globe." PR Week reports a dozen private-sector PR professionals "intermittently offer messaging advice to the Pentagon." According to PR Week, the presentation's purpose is to "convince someone of the need to engage 'rogue states' -- including Iraq -- that are likely to harbor terrorists." The groups includes Republican PR notable Sheila Tate, beltway lobbyists Charlie Black and Tommy Boggs, whose firm received $100,000 early this year to lobby on behalf of Saudi Arabia, and Republican spokesman cum columnist Rich Galen. Pentagon public affairs head Victoria Clarke, who used to run Hill & Knowlton's Washington DC office, is reported to have assembled the group. "They wanted to show us a declassified version of a presentation they had developed that showed where terrorist groups are situated around the world and at what stage of development those areas had weapons of mass destruction," Tate told PR Week.

MSNBC reports that weblogs -- "blogs" for short -- are "helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment." Since 1999, the number of weblogs has grown from a few dozen to nearly half a million, offering everything from film criticism to personal diaries and news commentaries, and redefining journalism in the process. According to Steven Levy, blogging "lends itself to a new kind of reporting: on-the-spot recording of events, instantly beamed to the Net. ... The A-list blogs are sufficiently integrated into the food chain now that public-relations agencies are circulating memos on how to exploit blogs to hype their clients. The next wave seems to be corporate blogs." Everyone seems to be joining the blogging trend -- except for certain journalists. In two recent separate incidents, U.S. journalists have been fired for running their own weblogs. Houston Chronicle reporter Steve Olafson got the sack because his editor thought having a weblog violated "journalistic ethics." In Los Angeles, radio reporter Ron Fineman was fired after his web site posted critical remarks about the executive producer at a TV station owned by Viacom, which also owns the station where Fineman worked. British journalist Andrew Orlowski decries the U.S. "ethics Taliban" which "demands its reporters remain silent eunuchs, even when they're off-duty." And if blogging is a violation of journalistic ethics, here's a long list of other journalists who also need firing.

"There is nothing new about using public relations with a commercial twist in foreign policy," writes Victoria De Grazia. "The Romans demonstrated their power from Gaul to Galilee by stamping the emperor's face on their coins, and Her Majesty's government publicized the Pax Britannica by celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee with global distribution of figurines and cups with her image. Yet, no country has developed as close a link between statesmanship and salesmanship as the United States." De Grazia compares Bush administration's current effort "to win market shares from jihad" with previous government PR campaigns from World War I to the Cold War.

Leni Riefenstahl, the director of Nazi propaganda films including "Triumph of the Will," marked her 100th birthday while continuing to insist that she "just did my job" and "never intended any harm to anyone."

"After learning that some celebrities who talked on its news programs about their health problems were being paid by drug companies, CNN has issued a new policy and will tell viewers about the stars' financial ties to corporations," New York Times' Melody Petersen writes. In an August 11 Times article, Petersen revealed the widespread testimonial practice. Petersen reports stars like Lauren Bacall and Kathleen Turner "had been paid to help promote drugs or other medical products" on network morning "news" programs. PR pro Bill Daddi complains that the new disclosure policy is hypocritical: "Was CNN not aware that virtually all celebrity appearances on its network and other news organizations are driven by the fact that the celebrity is there to promote something, usually something like, say, their movie? Why else does CNN think celebrities make appearances on its shows, because they missed the anchors?"

"Some people are suspicious that President Bush will go for a 'wag the dog' strategy -- boosting Republican prospects with a military assault on Iraq shortly before Election Day. But a modified approach now seems to be underway. Let's call it 'wag the puppy,'" media watcher and nationally syndicated columnist Normon Solomon writes. He suggests the appearance of a "healthy debate" on Iraq may lack real substance and may instead serve to distract attention from negative economic issues facing the Bush Administration. "Before initiating vast new carnage abroad, the White House wants its propaganda siege to take hold at home. Countless hours of airtime and huge vats of ink are needed to do the trick. Like safecrackers trying first one combination and then another, the Bush team will continue to twirl the media dials till their war-making rationales click," Solomon writes.

A recently-released list of overnight guests at the White House shows that George W. Bush is following the precedent of Bill Clinton and inviting major political donors to sleepovers at the White House. The list of guests at the Bush White House includes six "pioneers" -- Bush supporters who raised more than $100,000 for his presidential campaign.

PR wheeler-dealer Ian Kortlang has become the new chief of Burson-Marsteller's Australian office, ousting CEO Varina Nissen. Kortlang has a reputation for backstabbing former clients, such as a local Australian winery that he represented before switching sides to represent its adversary, a well-heeled multinational corporation, in a bitter business dispute. Kortlang has also represented Shell Oil in Australia, and he did damage control for Australian radio show host John Laws during the nasty "cash-for-comment" scandal, that prompted a government inquiry after the public learned that Laws and another radio host had taken millions of dollars in secret payments from private business interests in exchange for delivering seemingly "improvised" commentary that was actually scripted by their sponsors.

As the current Bush administration gears up for a second war with Iraq, now would be a good time to refresh our memories about the PR campaign used to sell the first war to the American people. In our book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, we showed how the first Bush administration collaborated with the Hill & Knowlton PR firm to peddle a false story about "babies removed from incubators by Iraqi soldiers," which helped swell public outrage against Saddam Hussein. Given the obvious relevance of this topic to the current buildup toward a second war against Iraq, we've added a relevant excerpt from our book to this site. (H&K staffer Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who helped prepare the "babies from incubators" story, is still trying to convince people that the story is true. PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton recently sparred with her on the web site of O'Dwyer's PR Daily.)

Conservative pundits such as Charles Krauthammer are accusing the New York Times of "liberal bias" for reporting that "Leading Republicans from Congress, the State Department and past administrations have begun to break ranks with President Bush over his administration's high-profile planning for war with Iraq." As Joshua Marshall notes, however, the Times coverage has been far more accurate than Krauthammer's own column on the subject, which is "filled with mistatements, tendentious misconstruals, intentional ignoring of awkward data, and so forth." Prominent Republicans are dissenting from Iraq war plans -- a fact which alarms the Bush administration so much that it sent GOP House Whip Tom DeLay to attack critics as "apologists for idleness" in a "campaign driven by a congenital mistrust of American principles and a consistent hostility to American action."

"The United States, faced with a survey by diplomats showing widespread foreign skepticism about their motives, is planning a public relations offensive to build international support among foreign opinion leaders for a war against Iraq," reports UPI correspondent Eli Lake. The Iraq Public Diplomacy Group, "which includes representatives from the CIA, National Security Council, Pentagon, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development," plans to publish a brochure and hold interactive teleconferences targeting "opinion leaders" in Europe and the Middle East. Good luck, guys. You'll need it, according to USA Today, which reports that "anti-American sentiment has turned into a contagion that is spreading across the globe and infecting even the United States' most important allies." The Bush administration has "squandered" the wave of sympathy and goodwill that America encountered after September 11 with a series of unilateral moves that have enraged the rest of the world on issues ranging from global warming to support for Israel, steel tariffs, farm subsidies, and refusal to participate in the UN's international court.

Last month a Bush administration appointee at the Department of Veterans' Affairs sent out a memo implementing a novel way of saving money: just stop healthcare outreach programs to vets so they won't know what services they're entitled to receive. "It's not the sort of thing you'd expect from an administration that wraps itself so tightly in the flag -- not, that is, unless you've been paying attention," writes New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "For stories like this are popping up more and more often." The White House lionizes 9/11 firefighters while cutting funding to provide them with new equipment. Bush made a point of personally congratulating rescued coal miners in Pennsylvania, while his administration's energy plans call for major increases in coal mining, coupled with reduced funds for mine safety. "The point is that there is an inexorably growing gap between the image and the reality of the Bush administration's policies," Krugman writes. "Mr. Bush is a master of photo-op populism; his handlers seek out opportunities to show him mingling with blue-collar workers. But the reality is that this administration loves 'em while the TV crews are around, then leaves 'em when it comes to actual policy. And that reality is becoming ever harder to conceal."

"'If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where all these profits came from, and why all these acquisitions went sour, what our net income is, and why WorldCom stock prices are in the toilet, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me. . ." So begins the opening paragraph of the winning submission in the "Best Fictional Earnings Release Contest," sponsored by Gregory FCA, an investor and public relations firm, based in Ardmore, PA. The winning author, Judy Parr, a publications engineer for a computer company, of Westerville, OH, won the $500 first prize for her essay seemingly written by former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers in the words of J.D. Salinger. "Some contestants would surely have benefited more if they had entered a literature contest where the judges were more, well, literate. Cervantes, for instance, was referred to as 'the windmill guy'. Joyce, just like college, was 'too hard' and Nikolai Gogol, though a terrific entry, was heretofore unread by anyone at the table," Gregory FCA President Greg Matusky said. "And Nietzsche in a Form 10 K, while wonderful, wasn't the right length or format, but definitely worth hanging on to."

Brian Whitaker profiles the "cosy and cleverly-constructed network of Middle East 'experts'" who "pop up as talking heads on US television, in newspapers, books, testimonies to congressional committees, and at lunchtime gatherings in Washington." Players include the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute and the Middle East Forum. "Although these three privately-funded organisations promote views from only one end of the political spectrum, the amount of exposure that they get with their books, articles and TV appearances is extraordinary." Meanwhile, the media largely ignore the 1,400 full-time faculty members who specialize in Middle East studies at American universities. "Those who work for US thinktanks are often given university-style titles such as 'senior fellow,' or 'adjunct scholar,' but their research is very different from that of universities - it is entirely directed towards shaping government policy," Whitaker writes. "What nobody outside the thinktanks knows, however, is who pays for this policy-shaping research."

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress gave the U.S. Justice Department substantial new powers to wiretap and spy on suspected terrorists, but the Justice Department refuses to tell Congress what it is doing with those powers. In response to questions from the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department refused to answer "how often 'roving' wiretaps had been conducted, how many times phone-tracing devices had been used against American citizens and resident aliens, how often libraries and bookstores have had to produce materials or even how many times citizens or resident aliens had been subject to new surveillance since the passage of the legislation."

The American Jewish Committee is sponsoring a multi-million dollar TV ad campaign to "bolster support" for Israel in the U.S. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports, "The pro-Israel ad campaign will position the country as a beacon of freedom in a rough area of the world. It also will argue that Israel is committed to the peace process, having already signed agreements with former adversaries Egypt and Jordan. The pro-Israel ads may go head-to-head with those from Saudi Arabia." The Qorvis Communications-developed Saudi Arabian campaign pitches the Kingdom as a reliable U.S. ally and partner in the "war on terror." Qorvis CEO Michael Petruzzello told O'Dwyer's the TV spots "flags" and "allies" are ready to run. Democratic political consultant Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi is developing the AJC ad effort. A recent poll by AJC found that more Americans are expressing "neutrality" concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dot-com CEOs, day traders and other leading icons of the roaring 1990s are passing from the scene along with the economic bubble that created them, but Baffler editor Tom Frank notes that "one group remains untouched: the public intellectuals of the bull market. The writers of Dow-worshipping books and commentators who handed down daring pronunciamentos from the silicon heights are still cruising from one posh gig to the next. If you tuned in to CNBC at any point during the long, slow meltdown of the last couple of months, you probably saw the news reader turn to a representative of Forbes magazine, formerly one of the world's most enthusiastic pushers of bull market optimism, now cast as an expert on a market in retreat. If you kept watching for a few hours, you probably enjoyed the surreal sight of James Cramer, one of the late boom's most prolific publicists, trying to feign outrage at the same forces he once cheered. And you undoubtedly gaped in disbelief when you recognized Cramer's co-host as Larry Kudlow, the hyperexuberant economist who once proclaimed from the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal that the free-market policies of the Reagan/Clinton years were so profoundly correct that they would one day cause the Dow Jones industrial average to hit 50,000. ... We are finally rid of the most egregious corporate swindlers of the 1990s. Why aren't the intellectual snake-oil salesmen following the dot-cons into oblivion?"

During the roaring 90s, big media missed the big story about corporate America's excesses. "Reporters spent a lot of time covering PR news releases instead of looking behind the curtain," says investigative journalist Lowell Bergman. But corporate CEOs themselves seem to have had a pretty good idea what was lurking there. Fortune magazine looked at major companies whose stock has fallen by 75% or more since the heady days of the stock market bubble, and found a widespread pattern: "How much cash did the top executives at America's Losingest Companies reap by selling their shares to the investing public? ... The numbers are astounding. Executives and directors of the 1,035 corporations that met our criteria took out, by our estimate, roughly $66 billion. Of that amount, a total haul of $23 billion went to 466 insiders at the 25 corporations where the executives cashed out the most."

WorldCom may be a bad example of how to run a company, but it's doing a good job of reputation management, according to Idil Cakim of the Burson-Marsteller PR firm. "WorldCom is a good example of how crisis could be managed, or at least the public could be answered, via the Internet," Cakim said, praising the web site which WorldCom has created to share information with the public about its bankruptcy. B-M advises companies to make sure that their web sites offer a section about their CEOs, "a key figure in building and fostering a company's image and reputation." They offer several tips to "help CEOs win public favor and establish trust through the Web."

"Cheap heating bills! Great gardens! Thriving civilizations! In energy-crazed Houston, friends of greenhouse gases abound," writes Dylan Krider as he examines the career of Gerald T. Westbrook and other global warming skeptics. "In this energy capital of America, eager listeners still abound for the message delivered by Westbrook and at least a handful of colleagues: Global warming threats are just so much foolishness, hatched by environmentalists to fuel the fears of the populace." Krider interviews PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton and leading climatologists as he shows how the growing evidence of global warming has forced the skeptics to adjust their message. First, they said global warming doesn't exist. Then they said that even if it exists, it's actually a good thing. Now they are are beginning to say that even if it exists and it's a bad thing, there's nothing we can do about it.

"Florida's environmental bureaucrats are in the process of removing 600 bodies of water from the state's 'impaired' list by changing the rules. They redefined impaired," Palm Beach Post editorial writer Sally Swartz reports. When a lake or river is classified "impaired," explains Swartz, the state is required to set a limit on how much pollution can be dumped into the water. If a body of water isn't on the "impaired" list, there are no limits. Large developers, corporate farms, and other industry would benefit from the redefinition. "Under President Bush, EPA is pushing to turn over enforcement of clean-water standards to states. In the past, the EPA has had to force states to set such standards. Florida lags far behind other Southern states in setting pollution limits ... but probably will become a model if the agencies backed by Gov. Bush and President Bush have their way," Swartz writes.

A fundraising letter from the Liberal Party in British Columbia, Canada, is "inviting people who work in public relations to donate $10,000 apiece at the same time that the provincial government is assessing contract proposals from the industry," reports the Globe and Mail, one of Canada's national newspapers. In addition to making direct cash donations, the letter invites PR firms to "build a fund-raising effort around an event or two -- events where we can invite clients or others for an intimate lunch or dinner with a key cabinet minister."

The Initiative for Software Choice appears to be a front group for Microsoft, which is lobbying to stop governments from using open-source software. The governments of Peru and Canada are considering going to open source, which is cheaper (often free) and usually more secure and bug-free than proprietary software like Windows. The Initiative for Software Choice claims that a policy of preference for open source would "discriminate" against "merit" and hurt capitalism. Open-source advocate Bruce Perens responds that Software Choice is trying to "maintain an unfair bias for proprietary software in the market" and has created his own rebuttal web site, Sincere Choice. (This isn't the first time that Microsoft has sponsored a front group. The Freedom to Innovate Network helped defend its interests during federal antitrust hearings.)

Effective today, we have added a new feature to the PR Watch web site: a message board where visitors can post their own comments and questions about public relations manipulations of the news and public opinion. The PR Watch forum is linked to Spin of the Day, so by clicking on the link at the bottom of each item you can join a thread that discusses that particular story. Use this forum to talk back about flacks!

The Online Journalism Review recently posted a couple of articles on researching people using the internet. Part I shows how to use online databases to do background checks on someone's property ownership, business ties, professional licenses. Part II covers affiliations with businesses and other organizations, with links to sources of information on state corporate filings, non-profit Form 990 filings, campaign contributions, etc.

Ray Hanania, a Palestinian Arab-American activist and former journalist who now works in public relations for KemperLesnik Communication, has written an essay urgin Arab Americans to "pursue journalism as a career choice rather than as an option in a political battle." Coverage of the Arab community is biased, he says, in part due to an "anti-Arab American media," but also because of a scarcity of professional Arab journalists. "The biggest challenge we face is the fact that the Arab community comes from a society where, historically, journalism does not exist. Despite some recent (past 20 years) exceptions, free speech is prohibited in the Middle East. Inexperienced in this fundamental essential to the profession and craft of journalism, Arabs who come from this scenario are burdened by restrictions and distortions in what journalism really is." (Hanania himself straddles the gap between journalism and advocacy, calling for objectivity and professionalism while also advising the Arab-American community in PR techniques.)

In the wake of recent corporate scandals, Business Ethics magazine, which promotes the movement for corporate social responsibility, is facing up to some unpleasant realities. "It appears that much of the corporate social responsibility movement has dealt in peripheral matters, in language, in mechanical social screens. Behind the scenes, the dirty work went on as usual," says contributing writer Milton Moskowitz, who reluctantly concludes that "Much of the movement has been a public relations smoke screen." Editor Marjorie Kelly agrees. ""The lesson," she says, writing in the magazine's 15th anniversary issue, "is that all the things CSR has been measuring and fighting for and applauding may be colossally beside the point."

"For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous institute in the United States. The gifts are high-quality translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge," the Guardian's Brian Whitaker writes. The emails come from the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Looking more closely at the free emails that also go to other journalist, politicians, and academics, Whitaker finds an organization not too keen on disclosing information about itself and a pattern of stories that either "reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel." Whitaker located now-deleted pages from MEMRI's website which reveal that "besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel.'" On another deleted webpage, Whitaker discovers that three out of six of the MEMRI staff members listed had worked for Israeli intelligence. Of the other three, "one served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps, one has an academic background, and the sixth is a former stand-up comedian," Whitaker reports.

"After more than five decades of relying on advertising for its recruitment efforts, the Marine Corps has decided to let PR pros take a shot at finding them a few good men," PR Week reports in a front page story. Longtime Marine advertising agency J. Walter Thompson recruited sister company Hill & Knowlton to join in on a bid for the five-year, $200 million contract. Having won the account in July, the campaign details are still being worked out. "Product placement, digital initiatives, and the use of former marines as third-party advocates are among those being discussed," PR Week writes.

"Public relations firms giving advice on corporate ethics? That sounds like a plot line straight out of a movie by Woody Allen," Jeff Barge, president of Lucky Star Public Relations, wrote in a July 30 Wall St. Journal letter-to-the-editor. Quoting Barges remarks, Paul Holmes, editor of the Holmes Reports, reflects on PR's role in ethical corporate policy making. "The idea that public relations, a discipline largely associated in the public mind with mendacity and obfuscation and spin, might be able to provide corporate America with some sort of ethical compass is clearly laughable -- even to public relations practitioners." Holmes challenges PR people to show leadership and work to convince "skeptical CEOs not only of the importance of real ethics, but of the role PR people can play in achieving ethical performance."

The Media Education Foundation has produced a new educational video inspired by the work of the Center and titled Toxic Sludge Is Good For You - The Public Relations Industry Unspun. You can view a short clip and order the video, narrated by Democracy Now's host Amy Goodman, from the MEF website which says "this video illuminates ... the way in which the management of the public mind' has become central to how our democracy is controlled by political and economic elites. ... Toxic Sludge Is Good For You tracks the development of the PR industry from early efforts to win popular American support for World War I to the role of crisis management in controlling the damage to corporate image. The video analyzes the tools public relations professionals use to shift our perceptions including a look at the coordinated PR campaign to slip genetically engineered produce past public scrutiny. PR critics [interviewed] include PR Watch founder John Stauber, cultural scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Stuart Ewen. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You urges viewers to question the experts and follow the money back to the public relations industry to challenge its hold on democracy."

"I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings," writes Joe Eszterhas, the author of movie megahits such as Flashdance and Basic Instinct. "I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did." His crime? Making smoking look "cool and glamorous ... an integral part of many of my screenplays." Eszterhas says his moral awakening came after he was diagnosed with throat cancer, "the result of a lifetime of smoking. I am alive but maimed. Much of my larynx is gone. I have some difficulty speaking; others have some difficulty understanding me." After witnessing firsthand the suffering that goes on in cancer wards, Eszterhas now says that glamorizing smoking is "unconscionable" and calls Hollywood "the advertising agency and sales force for an industry that kills nearly 10,000 people daily. A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old. ... The gun will go off when that kid is an adult. We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smoke screen of phrases like 'creative freedom' and 'artistic expression.' ... I don't wish my fate upon anyone in Hollywood, but I beg that Hollywood stop imposing it upon millions of others." According to Stanton Glantz, Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and an outspoken opponent of the tobacco industry, "It would be nice if the power structure in Hollywood felt the same way he did. Right now, movies are still the leading pro-tobacco influence in the world today as far as kids are concerned."

"Saudi Arabia should stop its 'PR drivel' in the U.S., and flat out explain to the American people that serious issues exist between the Kingdom and the U.S., according to Khaled Al-Maeena, editor-in-chief of Arab News, the Kingdom's English-language paper," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "He urges Saudi Arabia to 'abandon those fancy public relations firms whose own executives look at us unfavorably, but are doing the job for the dollars.'" Saudi Arabia's PR firm, Qorvis Communications, receives $200,000 a month for its work. Saudi Arabia's Embassy paid PR giant Burson-Marsteller $2.7 million for advertisements and work done in the two months following the September 11 attacks.

The U.S. State Department is seeking dismissal of a human rights lawsuit against Exxon Mobil's activities in Indonesia, where villagers say that they were victims of murder, torture, kidnapping and rape by the military unit guarding the company's gas field. "In response to a request by the corporation for an opinion, the department declared that pursuit of the case would harm Washington's campaign against terrorism," reports the New York Times. Last week Secretary of State Colin Powell promised $50 million in military aid to Indonesia, where human-rights groups blame the army for regular abuses against civilians. More than 12,000 people, mainly civilians, are estimated to have died in Aceh during a 26-year separatist war. Indonesia has also failed so far to convict any of the 18 military officers, militia and civilians alleged to be responsible for killings in East Timor.

"I believe it is vital to the interest of the journalist and the public alike that we engage in an urgent, forceful and consistent campaign to educate the public with the knowledge that in a democratic society the journalist is, in fact, exercising the highest form of citizenship by monitoring events in the community and making the public aware of them and their import; by skeptically examining the behavior of people and institutions of power; by encouraging and informing forums for public debate," writes Bill Kovach, North American representative and chair of the International Consorium of Investigative Journalists Advisory Committee and chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. "We need to make it clear to the public that the journalist best expresses citizenship by functioning as a committed observer, especially when the community is under stress or undergoing rapid, disorienting change."

"U.S. Public Diplomacy chief Charlotte Beers' approach to generating goodwill and understanding for America and Americans in the Muslim and Arab world is remarkably -- even astonishingly--naive and ignorant," writes David Gaier in a guest commentary for O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Gaier is a former U.S. Marine, ex-Special Agent with the U.S.Department of State, and PR veteran, who has spent much time in the Middle East. "Reaching out to Arab Muslims in such times is fraught with difficulty stemming from centuries of history, borders drawn arbitrarily by colonial powers, lack of democratic institutions in the Western sense, and traditions that are tribal in nature and virtually impossible for people from New York or Des Moines to comprehend. ... [T]he best course of action is for our government to articulate clear principles and goals, in support of which we will act using our economic, diplomatic and military capabilities. Keep the focus groups and silly outreach for selling peanut butter," Gaier writes.

"The Bush administration's refusal to cooperate with even the most routine and basic congressional requests for information is infuriating members of Congress and violating congressional rights and responsibilities," reports Alexander Bolton in The Hill, a newspaper for Washington insiders. Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress are complaining about the secrecy, which extends beyond issues like national defense and foreign policy and includes areas such as environmental, educational and science issues. "A number of lawmakers are threatening to subpoena the administration -- an extreme step reserved by lawmakers as a last resort to elicit cooperation on mundane inquiries," Bolton writes.

For years the tobacco industry has been using restaurant trade associations as front groups in its battle to keep Americans puffing. Now this strategy is documented on a new web site hosted by the University of California-San Franciso. "If Big Tobacco can't buy hospitality groups to serve as fronts, it sets up its own," the site states. Examples include the "California Business and Restaurant Alliance" and the ""Beverly Hills Restaurant Association" (created by a Tobacco Institute PR firm). In other cases, the industry uses offers of funding to buy the loyalty of groups like the National Restaurant Association and the American Beverage Institute. Ironically, the victims of this flackery include restaurant owners themselves, who are hoodwinked by bogus research into believing that tobacco restrictions will cost them money -- even though restaurants end up footing the bill for insurance, maintenance and expensive ventilation systems to accommodate smokers.

The American Civil Liberties Union is denouncing the Bush administration's "surreal" decision to channel Operation TIPS calls to FOX-TV's "America's Most Wanted" program. "It's a completely inappropriate and frightening intermingling of government power and the private sector," said ACLU's Rachel King. "What's next - the government hires Candid Camera to do its video surveillance?" The arrangement between FBI and Fox was discovered when writer David Lindorff signed up for Operation TIPS, which encourages Americans to inform the government about "suspicious activities" by their neighbors. Lindorff called to inquire about the status of his application and was shocked when the Justice Department instructed him to phone a receptionist for "America's Most Wanted."

The recently cleaned-up Weldon Spring site in St. Charles County, Missouri is now open to tourists. As part of its reclamation project for the hazardous waste site, the Department of Energy has opened an interpretive center at the base of "a seven-story high tomb of radioactive waste." The St. Louis Post Dispatch writes, "The mountainous site covers 45 acres and stores 1.5 million cubic yards of material. And it's there for you to explore." A new 6-mile-long hiking and biking trail is scheduled to open in the fall. The Weldon Springs site manufactured explosives during World War II. In the 50s, the site processed uranium for nuclear weapons. During the 60s, uranium and other radioactive materials were disposed on the site. In 1967, the US Army used the site to produce "dangerous herbicides." Some local residents blame the waste site for a "recent cluster of infant deaths and illnesses," the Post Dispatch reports. "I think it's fluff to make people feel safer than they are," the mother of one of the children who died said of the Department of Energy's public access plans.

In an effort to "bring additional value to our educational partners," Coca-Cola is launching its "Step With It!" campaign. Coke will promote walking to middle school students in 10 cities. According to PR Week, the campaign will encourage students to walk 10,000 steps a day, giving students pedometers to keep track of their walking. Coke will also promote the campaign to local media. Over the past few years, Coca-Cola has faced criticism from parents and public health advocates for placing vending machines in schools, creating exclusive contracts with school districts in exchange for financial sponsorships, and selling products with no nutritional value. Michael Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told PR Week, "The major thrust [of Coke's campaign] is to distract attention from the junkiness of its product."

El Salvador has hired PR giant Fleishman Hillard to promote the country internationally encourage foreign investment reports PR Week. The campaign, "El Salvador Works," seeks to double the rate of foreign capital by 2004. In the past two years, foreign countries have sunk $500 million into El Salvador, with about 60% coming from the US. Fleishman Hillard highlight the country's low interest rate and "open economy" as selling points to international investors.

"On Nov. 22, 2000, the so-called 'Brooks Brothers Riot' of Republican activists helped stop a vote recount in Miami -- and showed how far George W. Bush's supporters were ready to go to put their man in the White House," writes Robert Parry, who cites newly-released documents which "show that at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters were paid by Bush's recount committee. The payments to the Republican activists are documented in hundreds of pages of Bush committee records -- released grudgingly to the Internal Revenue Service last month, 19 months after the 36-day recount battle ended. ... The records show that the Bush committee spent a total of $13.8 million to frustrate the recount of Florida's votes and secure the state's crucial electoral votes for Bush. By contrast, the Gore recount operation spent $3.2 million, about one quarter of the Bush total. Bush spent more just on lawyers -- $4.4 million -- than Gore did on his entire effort."

Public domain information - including our shared culture of literacy and democratic dialogue, basic drug research and government information resources paid for with public tax dollars - has grown in importance now that the Internet has empowered everyone to become a creator and to readily share information with others. As a result, writes David Bollier, corporate "content aggregators" -- film studios, publishers, record labels -- have "brazenly cast a broad net of claimed ownership rights in the intangibles of our culture. Whether it is an image, a sound riff, a screen persona or an acronym, chances are that some white-shoe attorney in Los Angeles or New York will send a 'nasty-gram' letter claiming that our shared culture -- even silence -- belongs to some mega-corporation. ... One member of a self-appointed committee of copyright lawyers has boasted that they have developed restrictions on every means of transmission of thought except smell, taste and extrasensory perception." Previous generations took for granted that our shared culture was infinite, shared and self-replenishing. As Bollier warns, however, "The public domain cannot last very long if McDonald's threatens food businesses that use 'Mc' in their names and Mattel threatens legal action against art photographers who use images of Barbie dolls to comment on American beauty ideals."

David Corn critiques Congressman Henry Hyde's notion that Hollywood and Madison Avenue can razzle-dazzle those pesky foreigners who don't like America. "This is ridiculous. Hollywood pushes escapist fiction, and advertising firms try to hornswoggle people into believing they can get laid if they purchase the right car, the right toothpaste, the right beer, or the right cigarette," Corn writes. "But the poohbahs of U.S. foreign policy keep wondering why 'they' still don't love us, and that creates a demand for Hyde's simplistic analysis." Ultimately, actions rather than propaganda will determine the world's opinion of America. "The United States is no cereal. A better package with a new-and-improved label isn't the answer," Corn writes. "America's image is not a product that can be pushed with hype and ads. ('America: Just Like Us.') If the Office of Global Communications does not realize this fundamental -- it's the story, not the script, that counts -- it will end up a box-office flop."

Curtis Moore looks at corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy whose anti-environmental messages permeate the news. "Fashioning themselves after the very university research centers they deplore (or old-style "think tanks" that are only a step removed from universities), these groups have neither the neutrality nor the expertise of their academic counterparts," Moore writes. "They are simply self-described as 'libertarian' or 'market liberals,' as if this explains why their conclusions differ so sharply from those of academic or government researchers."

Adelphia Communications is using Robinson Lerer & Montgomery for crisis PR in the aftermath of its bankruptcy filing and the arrest last week of several company executives. "RL&M's mission is to reassure cable subscribers that the company has a future once its reorganization is completed," writes O'Dwyer's PR Daily. An ad campaign will urge cable subscribers to "stick with us," characterizing the bankruptcy as "a reorganization effort to rebuild the company and restore its integrity."