The British government is setting up a new "Department of Truth" in an effort to end damaging publicity about the role of politically appointed "spin-doctors." The rumored brain behind this strategy, however, is Peter Mandelson, the former Labour Party communications director who is credited with being the first of the new wave of spin-doctors when he worked for the party in the 1980s. "He is the one advising Tony Blair," said a government insider. "The King of Spin is in charge of the death of spin."

"This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations," notes John Dean. "Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless. The report - entitled 'Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy' - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress."

Alastair Campbell, the top spin doctor for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has announced his resignation amid continuing controversy over his role in building the case for war with Iraq. Nicknamed England's "real deputy prime minister," Campbell said his family had paid a heavy price for the "real and intense" pressures of his job. He will be replaced by David Hill, a PR executive at Bell-Pottinger Communications and managing director of Good Relations ltd, which has represented Monsanto.

"For most Americans, August is a time for summer vacation. For members of Congress, their aides and some lobbyists, it's a time for privately sponsored junkets," the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin writes. "This month, for example, 20 members of Congress jetted to London for a week-long visit in which they delved into such issues as trade, terrorism and foreign affairs. These politicians had no fear of getting lonely, however: More than 100 lobbyists accompanied them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post." The trip, sponsored by the Republican Ripon Educational Fund, is free for the congressional contingent. The lobbyists -- representing corporations like American Express, AOL Time Warner, Bristol-Myers Squibb, General Motors and Hewlett-Packard -- pay their own way plus Ripon annual membership fees of $9,500.

"If the first Iraq war of 1991 was dubbed Desert Storm , the second might be called Perfect Storm," writes Lance Bennett, professor of political science at University of Washington. "The run-up to the 2003 war witnessed an extraordinary convergence of factors that produced near-perfect journalistic participation in government propaganda operations. ... On a scale from one to ten -- if 'one' is rigorously sceptical and 'ten' supine -- Perfect Storm scored ten out of ten, far exceeding the already impressive levels of press complicity achieved in the first Iraq war. ... This time, the level of mediated public deliberation was so diminished as to make the preponderance of journalism little more than an instrumental extension -- a sort of propaganda helper -- of the strategic communication goals of the administration. With few notable exceptions, the press took a pass on its fourth estate prerogatives. Posing the hard questions, testing the administrations logic and execution at every point, remaining sceptical -- all this was drowned in a sea of waving flags and gung-ho celebrations of military technology." Bennett itemizes the "top ten factors that created this perfect propaganda storm," which include "9/11 happened," "Master scripting and directing by Karl Rove," and "The Fox Effect."

"Fox News channel talk show host Bill O'Reilly says 'shut up' the way other people say 'um,'" observes Jack Shafer. "On his daily show, The O'Reilly Factor, he uses it as a place-holder for an idea still formulating in his brain. As a way to begin a sentence, end it, or punctuate it. ... He's even heaved this impolite language at entire nations, demanding they recuse themselves from the international conversation. In the half-decade his top-rated show has been on the air, he's called for the muzzling of practically everybody. At the rate O'Reilly is going, he'll be the only person allowed to speak in a couple of years."

Unable to find Saddam Hussein's suspected chemical and biological weapons, U.S. intelligence officials say they're looking into whether they were victims of a disinformation campaign meant to trick them about Iraq's weapons stockpiles, the Los Angeles Times reports. Officials are now questioning the information coming from Iraqi defectors, claiming the Hussein regime had "double agents" disguised as defectors to the West planting fabricated intelligence. They also suggest that "Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites," the Times writes. "Critics had charged that the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence on Iraq to bolster support for the war. The broader question now is whether some of the actual intelligence was fabricated and U.S. officials failed to detect it. One U.S. intelligence official said analysts may have been too eager to find evidence to support the White House's claims. As a result, he said, defectors 'were just telling us what we wanted to hear.'" Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, has claimed his group provided three defectors with knowledge of Hussein's illegal weapons to the Defense Intelligence Agency. The CIA and State Department, however, had repeatedly warned that intelligence from the INC had been unreliable in the past. Chalabi's defectors failed to lead the U.S. to any concrete evidence.

"Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map," journalist Naomi Klein writes. "The spectre of terrorism - real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses. Many have argued that the War on Terror is the US government's thinly veiled excuse for constructing a classic empire, in the model of Rome or Britain. Two years into the crusade, it's clear this is a mistake: the Bush gang doesn't have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy one country, let alone a dozen. Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers, and they know how to contract out. What Bush has created in the WoT is less a 'doctrine' for world domination than an easy-to-assemble toolkit for any mini-empire looking to get rid of the opposition and expand its power. The War on Terror was never a war in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser."

"Last week," notes columnist Paul Krugman, "a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House." Columnist Jimmy Breslin is even more blunt: "They lied because the administration did not want people not going to work. They lied the first week and they lied the week after that and they have lied every day of the past two years to the people of this city. ... I sit here in New York and I don't believe one single solitary word of what the government says. ... And now we have this administration welding their lies together on two matters: the air you breathe and the war they insist is good for us."

The Motion Picture Association of America is courting two Congressmen involved with deregulating the movie industry's corporate parents. Up for grabs is MPAA's $1.15 million lobbying job. Top candidates for the post are Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who oversees the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the House and champions an FCC ruling loosening station ownership limits, and Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), who is on the record opposing efforts to roll back that FCC ruling in the Senate. "It's obscene for Tauzin and Breaux to be in the running for the MPAA, the fattest media lobbying job in Washington, while advocating in Congress on behalf of companies that control the MPAA," said Robert McChesney, Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It tends to confirm what the vast majority of Americans have suspected - relaxed media ownership rules are an X-rated exercise in power and influence." Also of concern is that the top MPAA contenders have taken at least $217,500 in tobacco money. Tobocco control activists say, "Big Tobacco depends on smoking scenes in youth-rated movies to recruit more than half of all new young smokers."

As the American death count continues to rise in Iraq, the White House has launched a campaign to defend its handling of the Iraq occupation, addressing a number of different veterans groups. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the May 1 "end of major combat operations" has surpassed the number of troop deaths during "Operation Iraqi Freedom," begun March 19. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Texas that the public needs to be patient, the Washington Post reports. "Transformation in the Middle East will require a commitment of many years," Rice said. "The transformation of the Middle East is the only guarantee that it will no longer produce ideologies of hatred that lead men to fly airplanes into buildings in New York or Washington." Addressing the American Legion convention in St. Louis, George W. Bush pledged to continue fighting the "war on terrorism." "No nation can be neutral in the struggle between civilization and chaos," Bush said.

Nearly two years after the collapse of the World Trade Center, the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general reports that the failure of EPA officials to properly inform New Yorkers of the dangers of the fallout can be traced to inside the White House. "The news that White House staff ordered the EPA to minimize potential health dangers near Ground Zero was bad enough," NY Daily News' Juan Gonzalez writes. "But the details in the 165-page report about how the EPA lied to the public - and even subverted its own safety standards in the process - are chilling. The original draft of a Sept. 13, 2001, EPA press release, for example, stated, 'Even at low levels, EPA considers asbestos hazardous in this situation ...' Staff members at the White House Council on Environmental Quality turned those words upside down. 'Short-term, low-level exposure [to asbestos] of the type that might have been produced by the collapse of theWorld Trade Center buildings is unlikely to cause significant health effects,' the revised report stated." Gonzalez told Democracy Now! that the man in charge of the Council on Environmental Quality, James Connaughton, prior to his June 2001 White House appointment earned his living as a lawyer defending asbestos polluting companies and other industrial polluters.

"I'd love to make the case that Fox News will suffer irreparable damage to its reputation as a result of its frivolous lawsuit against satirist and author Al Franken, but I can't," writes Paul Holmes for PR Week. "Because the kind of people who take Fox News seriously won't care, and the kind of people who care are already incapable of taking Fox News seriously. ... The suit is rich in irony, from the fact that Fox News can trademark a phrase so unrelated to its true agenda (it's as if Larry Flynt had trademarked the phrase 'tasteful and modest') to the fact that O'Reilly can accuse anyone of launching 'gratuitous personal attacks' to the fact that right-wing Fox, which is opposed to frivolous lawsuits, would itself launch one of the most frivolous in living memory. (Even The Wall Street Journal editorial page found the suit ridiculous.) ... In fact, the only impact of the suit will be that Franken's book sells many more copies than it could without the publicity - it's already shot to number five on Amazon's bestseller list."

"A clear majority of American consumers are more likely to trust media reports than advertising, according to a nationwide poll conducted by consumer research company RoperASW last month," PR Week writes. "The study ... showed that 68% of participants place more weight on news coverage than advertising when determining their trust of individual companies. While just 23% of respondents said they consider the two to be of equal value, a mere 9% called advertising more important." While this may come as no surprise, it's a boon for PR firms, often vying with advertisers for corporate dollars. "We wanted to demonstrate the best way for a company to rebuild the consumer trust that's been taken away by the recent corporate scandals," explained Ron Hanser, president of Hanser & Associates, which sponsored the survey. Among other results, the survey found that trust in the media also appeared to rise with education and income level.

"I no longer believe; I have lost my conviction, my determination," writes Tim Predmore, a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq. "I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies. My time is done as well as that of many others with whom I serve. We have all faced death here without reason or justification. ... How many more tears must be shed before America awakens and demands the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader's interest?"

A federal judge has ruled against Fox News in its lawsuit attempting to suppress publication of liberal satirist Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Franken's book rose to the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list after Fox filed the suit, in which it claims that the title of the book infringes upon its trademarked slogan, "fair and balanced." According to Peter Ames Carlin, Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly is still lying about one of the lies that Franken exposes in his book, in which O'Reilly falsely claimed to have received a prestigious Peabody Award for journalism. "O'Reilly had nothing to do with the award," Carlin writes. "He should take responsibility for claiming otherwise. Instead, he's attacking Al Franken and trying to bully me into changing the record for him."

"The Justice Department has urged U.S. attorneys to contact congressional representatives who voted against a key anti-terrorism provision of the USA Patriot Act," the Washington Post's Dan Eggen reports. "An Aug. 14 memorandum from Guy A. Lewis, director of the executive office for United States Attorneys, encourages federal prosecutors 'to call personally or meet with ... congressional representatives' to discuss 'the potentially deleterious effects' of an amendment approved in the House last month that would cut off funding for 'sneak and peek' warrants in terrorism cases. Attached to the memo is a list of names and telephone numbers of House members, with an asterisk next to the names of those who voted in favor of the amendment .... Justice officials said they believe the effort does not violate the Anti-Lobbying Act, which generally prohibits government employees from lobbying for or against legislation. But Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday questioning whether a current speaking tour by Ashcroft and contacts between U.S. attorneys and members of Congress amount to a violation of the law."

"Pacific Lumber, the Northern California redwood logging giant whose clear-cuts have made it among the most vilified companies in the West by environmental groups over the past 15 years, is getting a makeover," the San Jose Mercury News writes. "Famous for enduring tree-sitting protesters, threatening to chop down the ancient Headwaters Forest, and facing constant lawsuits, Pacific Lumber has unveiled a new 'rebranding' campaign to repaint its image green." The company, now known as "Palco", has a new green logo, revamped website and newspaper ads featuring loggers replanting trees. But critics still laugh at Palco being environmentally friendly. "If Palco's green, I'm Princess Diana," Kathy Bailey, a Sierra Club logging activist in Mendocino County, told the Mercury News. "These kind of campaigns usually succeed in making employees feel better," Eric Dezenhall, president of the crisis communications firm Nichols-Dezenhall, told the Mercury News. "But the public knows oil companies drill for oil and timber companies chop wood. I haven't in 20 years found campaigns to appease one's attackers to be that effective."

"Perhaps even more disturbing than the administration's indifference to the truth or falsity of the various claims it made before the war is the fact that it seemed to believe its own propaganda," the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes. "President Bush and Vice President Cheney really thought that if they wished it, it would come -- 'it' in this case being not only a quick victory in the war but also a rapid rallying of Iraqis to the American standard afterward. Last March on 'Meet the Press,' moderator Tim Russert asked Cheney: 'If your analysis is not correct and we're not treated as liberators but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, bloody battle with significant American casualties?' Cheney replied: 'Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.'"

"The U.S. media model works beautifully: For the governing, that is -- not the governed," writes Stephan Richter for the Globalist. "What is truly shocking about the state of the U.S. media today is that, to an amazing extent, the belief to restrict themselves to the facts -- as they are provided by the government -- is willingly accepted by the mainstream U.S. media. ... In most countries around the world, journalists choose their profession with a proud claim that they are part of a permanent opposition. They act as a checks-and-balances mechanism for those in power -- and ask vital questions concerning the nation's future. It is high time for many in the U.S. media establishment to reconsider their establishment-enhancing ways. The media must once again learn to be critical."

The State Department has issued a request for proposals for "an advertising campaign targeting Arab-language media on the web with the goal of explaining U.S. policy in the Middle East," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "As part of that work, State also wants to pitch its 'Rebuilding Afghanistan' Arabic site to show that 'the U.S. follows through with its obligations and promises,' according to a copy of the proposal. The two-month campaign would target seven to ten key Arabic portals, identified by the government to possibly include Al-Jazeera (Qatar), MSN Arabia, CNN's Arabic site, Asharq Al-Awsat (London), Al Bahhar (United Arab Emirates), and other sites based in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Ads, which are to include banners, skyscrapers and pop-ups, are required to show the U.S. flag and the URL for the State Dept. website being pitched."

The vacationing George W. Bush recently said from his Crawford, Texas ranch, "We've made a lot of progress" in Iraq. The pronouncement was timed with the White House release of a 24-page report called "Results in Iraq: 100 Days Toward Security and Freedom". Detailing "highlights of the successes" in Iraq, the report -- prepared by the White House Office of Global Communications and the staff of L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq -- makes claims that "differ significantly from the dozens of daily reports filed by journalists on the ground," WorkingforChange.com's Bill Berkowitz writes. "One of the things the terrorists in Baghdad and Jerusalem blew up yesterday was the credibility of the Panglossian Bush version of what's happening in the Middle East," the New York Times' Maureen Dowd writes. "In yet another spun-up government document on Iraq, the White House listed 100 ways that things were going great in the 100 days we've been on the scene. The report burbled with gimcrackery about the '10 signs of better infrastructure' -- days before an oil pipeline and then a water pipeline were blown up -- and about soccer balls and science textbooks."

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently launched a national campaign to dismiss growing criticism of the controversial USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the September 11 attacks. Speaking at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Ashcroft said, "To abandon this tool would disconnect the dots, risk American lives and liberty, and reject Sept. 11th's lessons." The Department of Justice Patriot Act website is LifeandLiberty.gov. Ashcroft will take the life and liberty message to police and prosecutors in a dozen cities in the next few weeks. The Chicago Tribune reports the ACLU's Laura Murphy said that Ashcroft's effort was merely a "charm offensive" to "favorably spin policies violative of civil liberties." "Although the Department of Justice is understandably reluctant to admit it, the real significance of this road show is that it shows the Patriot Act is becoming a kitchen table issue," Murphy said.

"U.S. authorities have appointed a media commissioner to govern broadcasters and the press, establish training programs for journalists and plan for the establishment of a state-run radio and television network -- part of an effort to regulate Iraq's burgeoning news media while dodging allegations of heavy-handed control," the Washington Post's Daniel Williams reports. In June, the U.S. issued "guidelines" for all media outlets in Iraq, forbidding them from inciting violence or opposition to the occupation authority. "Occasionally, U.S. soldiers have raided newspaper offices deemed to be in breach of the regulations.... But the delicacy of sending heavily armed troops to enforce media rules has prompted the occupation officials to look for other ways to exercise their power to censor," Williams writes. Simon Haselock, a media supervisor for U.N. authorities overseeing Kosovo, will be the new media commissioner. Haselock will govern the state-run Iraqi Media Network (IMN), a $6 million a month radio and TV project. Top defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. was hired by the Pentagon to launch IMN, oversees operations and supply equipment. The network will try to cover all Iraq and offer 24-hour news programming as well as media training.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller hasn't yet been able to provide any evidence since the war to support her breathless reporting about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but the "newspaper of record" has finally noticed Weapons of Mass Deception. The new book by PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber appears this week as #25 on the Times bestseller list for nonfiction paperbacks. Even though leading publications like the Times haven't bothered to review the book, sales are strong thanks to word of mouth and reviews in local and alternative media - including a recent review by musician Brian Eno.

The State Department's glossy Arabic-language magazine aimed at 18- to 35-year-olds is getting mixed reviews with its target audience. Hi Magazine which focuses on cultural and societal issues, is funded by more than $4 million of State Department money. So far 50,000 copies have been distributed from Morocco to Kuwait. U.S. officials hope to increase the circulation to 250,000. In Beirut, a 20-year-old Lara Hawi, a Lebanese design student, told NPR, "The name is attractive and we lack Arabic magazines that are not all full of interviews and stupid things." But Twenty-year-old Hassan Moustafa of Beruit wasn't impressed by Hi. "I would be more interested if the magazine talked about why Americans support Israel or why they did what they did in Iraq," he told NPR, adding that it's clear to him that Americans know nothing about Arabs.

Journalists and generals met in Chicago last week to discuss the media's role in reporting on the war in Iraq and agreed that the Pentagon's strategy of "embedding" journalists marked a sea change in combat reporting. "We brought the military service members into the homes of Americans, and they became spokespersons for the U.S. military," said an army chief of public affairs. But journalists like CNN's Walt Rogers criticized the Pentagon's use of the press in Iraq as "the weaponization of reporters." Many reporters expressed dismay that disturbing images of war did not make it onto the air. "If we show any U.S. casualties," said a broadcast network correspondent, "the Pentagon goes berserk, because they think about the families first. But if we had shown them, it would have had a profound impact on public attitudes toward the war."

"Why isn't the F.D.A. adopting the same rules as the European Union to protect Americans from Mad Cow Disease? Since 1996, Chicago Life readers have been learning about a very serious human and animal health issue, Mad Cow disease spurned by most media. The facts surrounding this issue are being heavily spun by government agencies and

The sale of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to women is a multi-billion dollar cash cow for the pharmaceutical industry. What will its PR machine do in the face of evidence that long-term HRT use increases women's risk of blood clots, strokes, heart attacks, breast cancer, and dementia, and has no quality of life benefits? Jocalyn Clark recounts the history of the industry's campaign to "medicalize menopause," beginning in the 1960s when Wyeth, which accounts for more than 70% of the global HRT market, subsidized the publication of a book titled Forever Feminine, which touted hormone replacements as a virtual fountain of youth for the "dull and unattractive" aging woman. More recently, PR firms such as RED Consultancy, the Social Issues Research Centre, and Haas & Health Partner have orchestrated testimonials from celebrities and industry-funded nonprofit organizations to downplay evidence of HRT's health risks and convince women that it will give them better careers, relationships, health and sex lives.

The official Hutton Inquiry in England is posting daily transcripts and other evidence related to its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly, who died of an apparent suicide after he was identified as a source for news stories alleging that the British government "sexed up" its weapons dossier on Iraq. Recent evidence includes the transcript of a tape-recorded conversation between Kelly and BBC reporter Susan Watts. During their conversation, Kelly confirmed that he was uneasy with the dossier's claim that Iraq had the capability to deploy chemical weapons and biological weapons in "45 minutes." He adds that the "real concern" about Iraq was "not so much what they have now but what they would have in the future. But that unfortunately wasn't expressed strongly in the dossier because that takes away the case for war." In testimony to Hutton, however, Watts distanced herself somewhat from fellow BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, who has acknowledged that some of the language "wasn't perfect" in his reports that used Kelly as an anonymous source.

The White House is ducking questions about its plan to cut the pay of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last month, the Pentagon proposed cutting the $75 a month that soldiers receive in "imminent danger pay" along with the $150 a month that they receive in "family separation allowances." According to the Defense Department, their budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities. "It's all part of the lie of the Bush administration, that they say they support our troops," said Susan Schuman, whose son Justin is with a National Guard unit stationed in Iraq.

"Wal-Mart, concerned about its public image, is using a consultant to analyze that image and has commissioned radio and television ads to try to reverse criticism from local officials, consumers and others," Constance Hays reports. "It is the first time that Wal-Mart, known for parsimony in its business practices, has invested in 'reputation research' - using polling techniques, focus groups and phone interviews - and then spent more money to try to repair the distressing aspects of what it found." PR giant Fleishman-Hillard is tracking Wal-Mart's relationships with consumers, employees, bankers, community leaders and suppliers. Wal-Mart's rapid growth and economic influence have attract close scrutiny of the company's reliance on part-time workers, its treatment of female employees, and its distain for organized labor. "The project found that many people view Wal-Mart as a place of dead-end jobs, and that its performance as a corporate citizen leaves much to be desired," Hays writes. "To reverse the impression about its jobs, Wal-Mart is broadcasting three ads nationwide that portray it as a great place to work."

The U.S. military ordered and then took back a directive that would have restricted journalists from going with American troops on all but routine missions in Iraq. According to the Associated Press, "The directive told commanders throughout Iraq that reporters, photographers and television crews would be prohibited from traveling with the military on some operations as so-called 'embedded' journalists. The U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad rescinded the order shortly after The Associated Press reported on it. No explanation was given. ... Media coverage of the frequent U.S. raids has resulted in some unflattering pictures of American troops entering Iraqis' homes and holding families at gunpoint during searches for weapons, Saddam loyalists and anti-American attackers."

Who are the figures behind actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign to become the governor of California? Max Blumental looks at the behind-the-scenes political operatives who have orchestrated the state's recall election. Schwarzenegger's high-priced consultants, George Gorton and Don Sipple, have worked with Republican operatives including Howard Kaloogian, David Gilliard, and former Enron pollster Frank Luntz, who "devised a strategy for the recall campaign centering around negative character attacks and avoidance of policy discussion," Blumenthal writes. "Thanks to this handful of men and the millionaires who bankrolled them, what started with a petition and a few phone calls has become an election that may unseat a twice-elected governor and dramatically affect the lives of one in seven Americans."

The Fox News Network is suing comedian Al Franken in an effort to block publication of his upcoming new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. The lawsuit claims that Franken's title infringes Fox's trademark on the phrase "fair and balanced," and characterizes Franken as "shrill and unstable," a "parasite" whose behavior is "either intoxicated or deranged." Evidently the network is still fuming over Franken's hilarious run-in with Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly at a recent book publishers' convention. The Authors Guild has issued a statement calling Fox's lawsuit "deplorable" and is compiling a list of other books that could be suppressed under the same legal argument, such as Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions or Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.

The mainstream broadcast media in the U.S. have thus far avoided reviewing Weapons of Mass Deception, the new book by PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. Nevertheless, the book debuted this week at #4 on the San Francisco Chronicle's paperback best-seller list. The book has also received strong reviews from a number of newspapers and from national media outlets in England and Australia. Check out our updated list of reviews, including our Friday interview on Democracy Now.

"After years as political agnostics, the programmers and engineers who orchestrated the technological revolution of the 1990s are trying to reboot government," writes Joseph Menn. "They have money, earned during the boom. They have time, found since the bust. And they are using their technological savvy to recruit even casual Internet users to their causes." Menn looks at the new "techno-populists" such as MoveOn.org and DigitalConsumer.org.

In an article based on "interviews with analysts and policymakers inside and outside the U.S. government, and access to internal documents and technical evidence not previously made public," the Washington Post's Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus report the White House overstated Iraq's nuclear threat in its case to go to war. "The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied," Gellman and Pincus write.

Breaking the traditional silence of military families during time of war, Susan Schuman is complaining loudly about the government decisions that sent her son Justin to Iraq. "I want them to bring our troops home," she says. "I am appalled at Bush's policies. He has got us into a terrible mess." Soldiers and their families are airing their grievances using a weapon not available during previous wars: the Internet. "Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in [Iraqi] eyes. We don't feel like heroes any more," writes Private Isaac Kindblade of the 671st Engineer Company. Criticism is coming from retired soldier David Hackworth, Veterans for Common Sense, and Military Families Speak Out.

A new study says the "Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters," the New York Times writes. The 40-page report, Politics and Science in the Bush Administration, was prepared at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman, the Government Reform Committee's ranking Democrat. From agricultural pollution to global warming to workplace safety, the Bush administration has compromised the scientific integrity of federal research, monitoring and regulatory institutions and "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report says. "The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," adds the report. White House press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed the report. According to the Times, McCellen "contended that its sponsor, Mr. Waxman, who is widely known for his aggressive inquiry into the tobacco industry, was seeking to score political points."

Fresh from the slammer, disgraced celebrity publicist Lizzie Grubman is trying to rehabilite her image by teaching a three-hour class called "How to Succeed in Public Relations and Image Marketing." According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, Grubman's presentation included two and a half hours of Q&A in which "she did not mention the 2001 hit-and-run incident at Conscience Point in the Hamptons which landed her in jail, and some questions submitted by the audience were not read by moderator Michael Katz, a manager for actors and entertainment talent. Grubman was escorted in under bodyguards and the audience was asked to remain seated while she left by a side staircase and departed in a black SUV."

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank that is funded by right-wing foundations and industries that deny global warming, sued the Bush administration over its 2000 report on climate change. The New York Times reports CEI is trying to stop the government from distributing the report, saying it is inaccurate and biased. The suit says the report violates the Federal Data Quality Act, a little known law passed in December 2000 that requires information disseminated by the government to pass standards for objectivity, quality, and utility. While sounding like reasonable lawmaking, the watchdog group Public Citizen warns that FDQA is "susceptible to misuse by opponents of regulatory safeguards who may attempt to exploit the Act to dissuade agencies from disseminating information

"A tobacco company is offering a free lifetime supply of cigarettes to celebrity smokers as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to raise the public profile of its recently launched brand," the Associated Press reports. "In a tersely worded pitch, Freedom Tobacco International Inc. said it was seeking to 'seed' its cigarettes with adult celebrities. The appeal was made Tuesday to publicists through a Web-based network subscribed to by hundreds of public relations agencies. ... Freedom paid covert actresses, called 'leaners,' to smoke the cigarettes in Manhattan bars and nightclubs for several weeks this spring in a New York effort to promote the fledgling brand, company spokeswoman Nancy Tamosaitis said. The company is also behind the Right to Smoke Coalition, a group organized to fight bans against public smoking, like the one recently enacted in New York City," AP reports.

"Attorney General John Ashcroft is hitting the road to rally support for the Victory Act, which would further expand his powers to go after Al Qaeda and narcoterrorists," the New York Daily News reports. Ashcroft's 10-day tour will visit 20-states promoting his Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act. Critics say expanding Ashcroft's powers would further erode civil liberites. The Victory Act if passed would "clamp down on Arab hawala transactions, where cash exchanged in an honor system has been funneled to terrorists; get business records without a court order in terrorism probes and delay notification; track wireless communications with a roving warrant; and increase sentences for drug kingpins to 40 years in prison and $4 million in fines," the Daily News reports. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is expected to introduce the Victory Act next month.

PR Watch's Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber will talk about their new book Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq 7 p.m., Friday, August 8 at the Barnes & Noble on 82nd & Broadway in Manhatten.

Maverick ex-soldier David Hackworth believed the Bush administration's claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction until recently, but now he's steamed. "A whole bunch of folks here in the USA and around this beat-up globe are all worked up over George W. Bush's 16 shifty words in his 'Let's Do Saddam' State of the Union speech when they should be taking a harder look at the president's judgment on the most critical matter to a state: war," Hackworth writes. "Don't have heartburn over those 16 words. Have it instead over the folks who've gotten our nation in a megamess that might cost hundreds more casualties and around $100 billion by Christmas, a figure this regime's Liars Club is busy doing its best to hide."

"After several troops made some highly publicized negative comments to the media about the war effort in Iraq, the Pentagon has taken steps to keep the frustrations of both soldiers and their families out of reports," PR Week reports. "According to a story in the July 25 edition of Stars and Stripes, the military appears to be curtailing its much-touted embedded-journalist program, which has allowed reporters almost unfettered access to military units throughout the war and occupation. The 3rd Infantry Division, from where many complaints have arisen, has expelled many of its embedded reporters, and its troops are no longer allowed to talk to the media outside of pre-approved news features. ... Soldiers' families are also being advised not to complain to the media, according to news reports," PR Week writes.

After much speculation, Ambassador to Morocco Margaret Tutwiler is finally returning to Washington to take Charlotte Beers' old post as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Ad queen Beers stepped down among much criticisms in March. The Washington Post's Al Kamen writes that Tutwiler, who served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs for the elder Bush, "was most happy with her Morocco assignment -- apparently even with an occasional terrorist bomb going off -- and was said to be ambivalent about coming back. But duty calls, and Tutwiler, who did a stretch in Baghdad, working to put together a media operation there, should be in town by the end of the month." Kamen also writes that the search for Torie Clarke's replacment as Pentagon public affairs chief goes on. Strong candiates are There are strong candidates, including, Diane Leneghan Tomb, now assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Tomb is a veteran in the trade, having worked for then-Vice President George Bush in the White House press office and later at Burson-Marsteller," Kamen reports. Also talked about is Kevin Kellems, "a former reporter and longtime aide to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) who is now special adviser to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, is a strong contender," Kamen writes.

The Bush and Blair governments, straining to answer critics of the Iraq invasion, are pushing a new campaign. "The 'big impact' plan is designed to overwhelm and silence critics who have sought to put pressure on Tony Blair and George Bush," the Independent's Andrew Buncombe writes. "At the same time both men are working to lower the burden of proof - from finding weapons to finding evidence that there were programs to develop them, even if they lay dormant since the 1980s." Key to this new effort is former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, who was appointed in June by CIA chief George Tenet to head the Iraq Survey Group, now leading the hunt for WMDs in Iraq. Buncombe told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman that Kay had been doing private consulting for a company called SAIC, a CIA contractor. After giving evidence last week to closed-door sessions of the US Senate's armed services and intelligence committees, Kay said, "We do not intend to expose this evidence until we have full confidence that it is solid proof." He cryptically added, "The American people should not be surprised by surprises. We are determined to take this apart and every day we're surprised by new advances that we're making."

Officials with the British Ministry of Defence were preparing to destroy a "media plan" about Dr. David Kelly three days after his death, according to a the Telegraph. "It is not clear whether the papers were burned, but MoD officials admitted last night that ministry security guards called the police after finding the 'media plan' relating to the Kelly affair in a sack of classified waste being prepared for incineration," the paper reported. "Officially, the MoD continued to insist last night that it was an insignificant document that had no importance for the inquiry and that security guards had 'over-reacted' in calling the police."

Just in from the been there, done that department: "With anti-American sentiment rising worldwide, Bush administration officials say they are stepping up efforts to market America throughout the world," reports Michelle Orris. "Polls indicate that international opinion of the United States has plummeted in the last year, and worldwide sympathy for the United States after Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has all but dissipated."

Columnists for the Washington Times write that "the Pentagon adopted a new strategy in its search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It is called the 'big impact' plan. The plan calls for gathering and holding on to all the information now being collected about the weapons. Rather than releasing its findings piecemeal, defense officials will release a comprehensive report on the arms, perhaps six months from now. The goal of the strategy will be to quiet critics of the Bush administration who said claims of Iraq's hidden weapons stockpiles were exaggerated in order to go to war."

The New Republic has interviewed an official who has read the 28 pages that the Bush administration is withholding from the recent congressional report on September 11. According to the official, the still-classified section of the report documents connections between the 9-11 terrorist attack and "the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. ... This week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal flew to Washington for a hastily convened meeting with President Bush. Faisal publicly demanded that the 28 pages be declassified, but he had to have known in advance, and welcomed the fact, that his request would be denied - ostensibly friendly nations don't normally send their foreign ministers to meetings halfway around the world to be surprised." The New Republic's informant said, "If the people in the administration trying to link Iraq to Al Qaeda had one-one-thousandth of the stuff that the 28 pages has linking a foreign government to Al Qaeda, they would have been in good shape." He added: "If the 28 pages were to be made public, I have no question that the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight."

The U.S. Potato Board is facing a crisis stemming from the decline in french fries sales, O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. So, they've enlisted the creative powers of the St. Louis-based firm Osborn & Barr, whose clients have included the Cattlemen's Beef Board, National Pork Board and United Soybean Board. The Potato Board is looking for "concepts aimed at opinion leaders and consumers" to be part of a $1 million campaign (run by food industry PR giant Fleishman-Hillard) to get Americans to eat more french fries.

The photographs released by the Bush Administration of Uday and Qusay Hussein's dead bodies have provoked strong reactions throughout the world. The Guardian's Mark Borkowski writes in his column Stuntwatch: "What was the Bush administration's motivation in making the images public and how did the outcomes relate to the stated objectives? Since this is war, this is PR and the Uday and Qusay photograph incident, planned as a surgical media strike, has turned mucky (both in media and military terms) because no one had the sense to think through the PR implications properly. It's been a total PR disaster." The photos are part of a larger administration failure to convince the people of Iraq that war has been about their liberation. In addition, the grim pictures of reconstructed corpses have fueled wide ranging conspiracy theories in Iraq. "There's a strong likelihood these were Saddam's sons, I'm sure," Borkowski writes. "So why do so many people disbelieve it? Because the administration mismanaged the information and because - so bizarrely given the media history of this conflict - it was honest about the way in which it opted to manufacture an image to suit the needs of the media."