The Guerrilla New Network has "picked the administration's packaging and sale of the case for war based on Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction as our Spin of the Year. The case has turned out to be so flimsy that the administration has been forced to backtrack and deflect questions about the still missing weapons. Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair this summer that it was a 'bureaucratic' decision to focus on the WMD, and even Rumsfeld has repeatedly contradicted specific claims he made to reporters in the run-up to the invasion."

The United States has spent millions of dollars on PR convincing Americans that mad cow could never happen here, and now the US Department of Agriculture is engaged in a crisis management plan that has federal and state officials, livestock industry flacks, scientists and other trusted experts assuring the public that this is no big deal. Their litany of falsehoods include statements that a "firewall" feed ban has been in place in the United States since 1997, that muscle meat is not infective, that no slaughterhouse waste is fed to cows, that the United States tests adequate numbers of cattle for mad cow disease, that quarantines and meat recalls are just an added measure of safety, that the risks of this mysterious killer are miniscule, that no one in the United States has ever died of any such disease, and on and on. The latest spin is to blame the United States mad cow crisis on Canada.

As the U.S. casualty rate accelerates in Iraq, the Army Times, a civilian newspaper that is sold mainly on military bases, has used eight pages of its year-end review to run photos of almost all of the more than 500 soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the paper's managing editor, Robert Hodierne, getting the photos was a struggle because "The military doesn't give out so many photos of the dead." According to Jimmy Breslin, "The chilling photos run at a time when the government tries to describe the war as a civic venture, and nearly all of the news industry doesn't know how to object. This probably is the worst failure to inform the public that we have seen. ... The complaint about the military holding back pictures is one part of the attempt to make you as unaware as possible that soldiers are dying in Iraq. ... And the dead are brought back here almost furtively. There are no ceremonies or pictures of caskets at Dover, Del., air base, where the dead are brought. ... The wounded are flown into Washington at night. There are 5,000 of them and for a long time you never heard of soldiers who have no arms and legs." CNN and the Washington Post also maintain photo galleries with faces of the fallen.

Columnist Paul Krugman is wondering if the news media will take its job seriously when reporting on the 2004 elections and offers some suggestions to reporters: "Don't talk about clothes." "Actually look at the candidates' policy proposals." "Beware of personal anecdotes." "Look at the candidates' records." "Don't fall for political histrionics." "It's not about you." Although this is all pretty basic advice, concludes, "I don't really expect my journalistic colleagues to follow these rules. ... But history will not forgive us if we allow laziness and personal pettiness to shape this crucial election." Journalism professor Jay Rosen thinks that Krugman "should be this year's Pulitzer Prize columnist" for "his courage and relentlessness" but also thinks his advice is likely to go ignored.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's 1997 hardcover book Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? predicted that mad cow disease would come to the U.S. because of the failed and dangerous policies of the USDA, FDA and the meat industry. Now, Mad Cow USA has apparently become a collector's item, difficult to find with used copies advertised on Amazon.com as high as $126. A paperback version will be published in 2004, but you don't have to wait to read the book, you can get it right here, online for FREE. Simply click here, then scroll down to the words "Mad Cow USA is now available as a free download" and click on the PDF icon. The book will download into your computer in an easy to read format, all 245 pages with footnotes and glossary. All proceeds from the sale of this and our other books benefit our non-profit Center for Media & Democracy and support the Center's investigative reporting on this and other issues. If you appreciate the Center's work and this free copy of Mad Cow USA, please contribute to our work by clicking here.

"US corporations are picking up the pace in shifting well-paid technology jobs to India, China and other low-cost centres, but they are keeping quiet for fear of a backlash," reports David Zielenziger. "Morgan Stanley estimates the number of US jobs outsourced to India will double to about 150,000 in the next three years. Analysts predict as many as two million US white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications designers will shift to low cost centers by 2014." But the companies using 'offshoring' to cut costs -- including Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, Walt Disney, CNN and Fox News -- aren't talking about it publicly. "The problem is that companies aren't sure if it's politically correct to talk about it," said Jack Trout, a principal of Trout & Partners, a marketing and strategy firm. "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way."

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's 1997 book Mad Cow USA warned that unless the US adopted the same strict regulations implemented in Britain, including a ban on feeding rendered slaughterhouse waste as animal feed, mad cow disease would eventually emerge in the US. The US failed to act and late Tuesday the Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman announced that the first US case of mad cow disease has appeared in a "downer cow" in the state of Washington. Within minutes of USDA's news conference John Stauber was interviewed on CNN and Rampton or Stauber were interviewed in The New York Times, The Guardian and other media refuting the reassuring spin of the USDA. Center for Consumer Freedom, a tobacco, booze and food industry front group, wasted no time attacking Rampton and Stauber on behalf of its corporate funders such as Excel/Cargill, National Steak & Poultry, Outback Steak House, Tyson Foods, Wendy's, Whitecastle and others. The first case of mad cow disease in North America was found in Canada in May, 2003. You can read an interview Stauber gave this August warning that the disease was likely also in the US. In related news, Nature reports what might be the first case of human mad cow disease spread by blood transfusion. In laboratory experiments blood plasma can spread mad cow-typed diseases, but the US government allows calves to be fed milk formula containing cattle blood plasma as a source of protein.

After Seattle, Washington TV station KIRO-TV aired an investigation last year into the cattle industry's continuing sale of downer cows for human consumption, the station came under attack from the industry as well as state and national government regulators. According to KIRO reporter Chris Halsne, "The USDA public relations folks in Washington DC are spinning 'pure' fantasy to imply KIRO-TV played 'gotcha journalism.' Perhaps, the USDA didn't want proof that their meat inspectors failed repeatedly to perform a proper inspection of downer cows outside a slaughterhouse in Chehalis. ... Big-money beef and dairy promoters are out to protect themselves, their industry, their profits and their political interests by silencing future journalists who dare question them." KIRO's investigative team found that "meat from dying, sick or diseased cows" is "getting into your food." After the report aired, a "host of state agencies" spent "tax money in a campaign to discredit our findings." KIRO stands by its story, even though "The Washington Beef and Dairy Commissions have been conducting a public relations campaign, criticizing KIRO-TV for broadcasting the stories of downer cows you just saw. You may not know, but you're paying for this government agency to attack our investigation."

We've done our best to ignore the media's latest feeding frenzy over singer Michael Jackson -- until now, that is. The filing of nine felony counts against Jackson "was orchestrated by a Hollywood public relations company, Tellem Worldwide," reports Tim Rutten. Tellem "is providing pro bono services to the Santa Barbara prosecutors. As special correspondent Linda Deutsch and reporter Tim Molloy of Associated Press reported last week, the company's other clients include the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. The company will be handling all media inquiries during the case." According to District Attorney Thomas Sneddon Jr., the unusually long interval between Jackson's arrest and the formal filing of charges was necessary, "so that the county could set up a Web site to release information to hundreds of news organizations following the case."

"Every holiday season, the Toy Guy, aka Christopher Byrne, appears on scores of local and national television and radio shows with his selections of the best and hottest toys," reports William Sherman. ""But what the parents and children don't know, and are not told by anchors and reporters, is that Byrne is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by those toy manufacturers to hawk their products." Byrne is an employee of Litsky Public Relations, which charges $10,000 per product mention.

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth," wrote H.L. Mencken. Heather Havrilesky updates Mencken's thesis by examining some of the big liars of the year -- Stephen Glass, "reality TV," Jayson Blair, and of course George W. Bush.

Conservative columnist George Will doesn't think it's anybody's business that he's been paid $25,000 a year by scandal-plagued media magnate Conrad Black. Will is one of several mostly conservative pundits and politicians who got paid to sit on the advisory board of Black's company, Hollinger International. Others included William F. Buckley, Jr., Margaret Thatcher, ValEry Giscard d'Estaing, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard N. Perle and Dwayne O. Andreas. Buckley, who has pocketed an estimated $200,000 from Black over the years, recently defended him publicly while claiming that Black "has never donated a nickel to any of my enterprises."

"For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government - cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters," report Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound. "The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis." Schmitt and Pound have compiled a detailed report on the extent of the new secrecy and the impact it is having on Americans' right to know. Health and environmental activists are raising public awareness about the dangers of secrecy surrounding chemical sites with a new TV advertisement that concludes, "President Bush, don't let a Chemical 911 happen on your watch.

A Los Angeles woman who came forward during the California gubernatorial campaign to accuse Arnold Schwarzenegger of previous instances of sexual harassment has sued the former star of "True Lies" and "Conan the Barbarian," claiming that he and his campaign smeared her as a convicted felon when she made her charges. Former stuntwoman Rhonda Miller charges that the Schwarzenegger camp told reporters she had an extensive rap sheet for theft, forgery, drugs and prostitution, a dirty trick meant to discount her credibility when it came to the harassment charges. Miller claims that the Schwarzenegger smear began an hour after she made her charges public, with campaign spokesman Sean Walsh sending journalists an e-mail directing them to the Superior Court's web site, where they could access Miller's lengthy criminal history. The felon in question, however, was a different Rhonda Miller.

Consider this holiday gift suggestion from Bushwacked author Molly Ivins. She writes in her current column, "We can knock off our entire Christmas or Hanukkah gift lists without ever going near a mall. The perfect answer is to give money to a worthy cause in the name of your friends and loved ones. ... Two outfits I especially like that watch the media are the Center for Media and Democracy, which specializes in analyzing public relations and propaganda campaigns, and FAIR, the overworked folks trying to keep up with right-wing lies in the corporate media. The Center can be reached through prwatch.org [or 520 University Ave. #227, Madison, WI 53703] and FAIR is FAIR.org (or 112 W. 27th St., New York, NY 10001.) This should be our shining hour." Thanks so much Molly, and we sure hope folks will follow your wonderful suggestion!

A new global directory on the massive and deceptive PR push behind genetically engineered food is now available free online from the British organization GM Watch. The directory examines many of the key PR operators, front groups, corporate-friendly scientists, lobbyists, media scams and and political networks that are active in this field. The directory provides extensive information on professional media manipulators, many of whom are active over a wide range of environmental, agricultural and trade issues. Writer George Monbiot recently drew on the new directory for an article exposing how a far right network had infiltrated a whole series of science-media related groups.

Brandy Anderson, a former director of public policy for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), has gone to work for the Century Council, a nonprofit organization founded and funded by major liquor distillers including Allied Domecq Spirits, Bacardi and Pernod Ricard. Anderson has also worked as a senior manager at the Washington, D.C., PR firm Blakey & Agnew.

A new annual journalism award has been created in honor of Michael Kelly, who edited publications including The New Republic, National Journal, Atlantic Monthly before he was killed while covering the war in Iraq. The Michael Kelly Award will recognize a journalist "whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Michael Kelly's own career: the fearless expression and pursuit of truth." It's rather ironic, since Kelly is the guy who nurtured the embarrassing career of Stephen Glass, one of the most notorious journalistic frauds of the past century. The Daily Howler has taken a genuinely fearless look at Kelly's career, calling him "a relentless dissembler and the equivalent of a loud, angry drunk. He did deep damage to his country's discourse - and as such, he harmed the public interest."

"It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history," writes Dana Milbank. "White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend. Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site." Moreover, Milbank adds, "This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites."

"The man leading the US hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction [David Kay] will leave his post prematurely in the next few months amid dwindling expectations that there is anything to be found. ... 'This is a big blow to the administration and it will signal the effective end of the search for weapons of mass destruction,' said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment Institute for Peace in Washington. 'Some will continue looking but very, very few expect there to be any significant finds at this point.' ... But the White House has not mentioned weapons of mass destruction as a justification for the war in recent months, stressing the removal of Saddam instead. In a television interview this week, President George Bush appeared to deny there was a distinction between his pre-war claims that Saddam had an arsenal of non-conventional weapons, and his administration's current argument that the regime was planning to restart its weapons programmes. When an interviewer for ABC television, Diane Sawyer, reminded him of claims of the "hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons", Mr Bush asked: "What's the difference?"

The Center for Media and Democracy is offering teachers and students free classroom copies of our acclaimed best-selling book, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq. This book is perfect for journalism, current events, political science and communications classes. We're able to make this free offer thanks to the generosity and commitment of an anonymous donor who feels it imperative that this book reach America's young people. If you are a high school or college instructor who would like free classroom copies to use with your students, please email us the following information: Your name, title, and daytime phone number; your school's name and class title; the number of books you need, where to ship them, and the date you need them. These books are available on a first come, first serve basis, so contact us now.

Mad Magazine features a satirical "George W. Bush G.I. Joke Action Figure" in its list of the "dumbest people, events and things of 2003." The product package says that G.I. Joke "comes with an extra pair of blood-stained hands" and is "fully posable-move and manipulate him just like big oil and the extreme right wing do."

"Comcast Corporation, the largest cable TV company in the U.S., announced that Victoria (Torie) Clarke will join the company as Senior Advisor for Communications and Government Affairs. She served most recently as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Clarke previously served as Press Secretary for former President Bush's 1992 re-election campaign, as a close advisor to Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative during former President Bush's administration. Clarke has also advised many of the nation's best-known executives, has served as President of Bozell Eskew advertising and served as Vice President of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association."

"Tyson Foods has opened an office of Animal Well-Being, seeking to assure retail and food-service customers as well as consumers that it takes humane animal handling seriously," PR Week reports. "Animal-rights groups fault large American meat and poultry processors for what they see as inhumane handling of animals. These groups have protested in public for years about the plight of animals raised by companies like Tyson. ... The new office will oversee audits of animal-handling practices and make them available to customers on request, but likely wouldn't publicly disclose audit results. The office will also oversee training and records keeping regarding handling techniques at the company. Veterinarian Dr. Kellye Pfalzgraf, who oversaw a similar office for IBP, a major meat processor Tyson bought in 2001, will head the new office."

The standard treatment for sepsis, an infection of the blood, costs $50 per day, but Eli Lilly has a new drug out called Xigris, which may not be any better than older treatments but costs $6,800 per treatment. That's not exactly an easy sell, but Lilly has hired a PR firm to launch a campaign called "The Ethics, the Urgency and the Potential," whose premise is that it is "unethical not to use the drug." "To reinforce the point," writes Carl Elliott, "Lilly has funded a $1.8 million project called the 'Values, Ethics & Rationing in Critical Care Task Force,' in which bioethicists and physicians from various American medical schools will examine the ethics of rationing certain drugs and services. It is a brilliant strategy. There is no better way to enlist bioethicists in the cause of consumer capitalism than to convince them they are working for social justice. ... It's no mystery, then, why pharmaceutical companies want to brand themselves with bioethics. But do bioethicists really want to brand themselves with Pharma? To take only one example: The pharmaceutical sponsors of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and its faculty's projects are now facing multimillion dollar fraud sanctions (AstraZeneca), a Nigerian lawsuit for research abuse (Pfizer), massive class-action payouts (Wyeth-Ayerst), a criminal probe into obstruction of justice (Schering Plough), an ongoing fraud lawsuit (Merck and Medco), and allegations of suppressing research data on suicide in children (GlaxoSmithKline)."

Newt Gingrich, who has been advising the Bush Administration as a member of the Defense Policy Board, has gone public with his worries about the shortcomings of administration policy in Iraq, arguing that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. "The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow," he said. "And that is a very important metric that they just don't get." As a result, U.S. policy has gone "off a cliff" and is repeating the army's mistakes in Vietnam. (Of course, some people in the military might bristle at this kind of advice coming from Gingrich, who dodged military service in Vietnam but was a vocal advocate for war in Iraq.)

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, America's longtime ally and the world's largest oil producer, is "the epicenter" of terrorist financing, according to a new report by David E. Kaplan. Prior to 9/11, moreover, "moves by counterterrorism officials to act against the Saudis were repeatedly rebuffed by senior staff at the State Department and elsewhere who felt that other foreign policy interests outweighed fighting terrorism."

Norman Solomon writes that "few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the Official Secrets Act. So far, the American press has ignored her. But the case raises profound questions about democracy and the public's right to know on both sides of the Atlantic. Ms. Gun's legal peril began in Britain on March 2, when the Observer newspaper exposed a highly secret memorandum by a top U.S. National Security Agency official. ... The NSA memo said that the agency had started a 'surge' of spying on diplomats at the United Nations in New York. ... In this case, Ms. Gun's conscience fully intersected with the needs of democracy and a free press. The British and American people had every right to know that their governments were involved in a high-stakes dirty tricks campaign at the United Nations. For democratic societies, a timely flow of information is the lifeblood of the body politic."

"Pharmaceutical companies are pouring millions of dollars into patient advocacy groups and medical organisations to help expand markets for their products. They are also using sponsorships and educational grants to fund disease-awareness campaigns that urge people to see their doctors. Many groups have become largely or totally reliant on pharmaceutical industry money, prompting concerns they are open to pressure from companies pushing their products. An investigation by The Age newspaper has found: An awareness campaign run by the National Asthma Council was spearheaded by a cartoon dragon that was the registered trademark of a drug company used to promote one individual asthma medication. A drug company used a public relations firm to set up an expert medical board to persuade people they needed hepatitis A and B vaccinations. The company was not interested in raising awareness about hepatitis C because it did not sell a vaccine for the disease."

Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is blowing the whistle on Bush's Thanksgiving photo op in Iraq. The soldiers who cheered Bush were pre-screened before his arrival, and others showing up for turkey were turned away. In a separate letter to Stars and Stripes, Sgt. Loren Russell sticks up for his soldiers, who weren't on the invited list. "Imagine their dismay when they walked 15 minutes to the Bob Hope Dining Facility," Russell writes, "only to find that they were turned away from their evening meal because they were in the wrong unit."

In Weapons of Mass Deception, we showed how the U.S. news media virtually ignored the use in Iraq of cluster bombs -- anti-personnel devices like land mines that leave behind a deadly litter of unexploded "bomblets." Now Paul Wiseman has written a major report in which he concludes, "The Pentagon presented a misleading picture during the war of the extent to which cluster weapons were being used and of the civilian casualties they were causing. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on April 25, six days before President Bush declared major combat operations over, that the United States had used 1,500 cluster weapons and caused one civilian casualty. ... In fact, the United States used 10,782 cluster weapons, according to the declassified executive summary of a report compiled by U.S. Central Command."

"The Rendon Group is part of a nine-member consortium that has made a $98 million bid to rebuild the Iraqi Media Network. WorldSpace Corp., the Washington, D.C.-based satellite broadcaster, leads the group," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The Coalition Provisional Authority is awarding the contract to repair the infrastructure, provide programming and train workers for Iraq's national TV, radio networks and Al-Sabbah newspaper. Al-Sabbah is Iraq's largest paper with a daily circulation of more than 60,000. One of its two printing presses was bombed during the Iraqi invasion. The contract also calls for development of an 'exit strategy' to pave the way to the privatization of IMN. The one-year pact, which is supposed to go into effect on Jan. 1, has two six-month extension options. WorldSpace's satellite radio service has been broadcasting into the Middle East since 1999. It provides entertainment content to XM Satellite Radio in the U.S."

"Shirley & Banister Public Affairs is supporting a $100K ad campaign with a PR push for the conservative-backed Club for Growth, which is attacking Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean in key primary states," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The firm's national PR support to secure free media play for the ad comes as Dean today struck a blow to his opponents by locking up the endorsement of former Vice President and 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore. The CFG ad likens Dean to failed Democratic presidential contenders George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. 'For three decades, Democratic presidential candidates have supported huge tax increases,' a voice over begins, over images of the three former nominees, which are later slapped with the word 'Rejected' beside their pictures. 'This year they're back,' it continues. The spot contends Dean says he'll raise taxes on the average family by more than nineteen hundred dollars a year, apparently through his pledge to repeal President George Bush's two major tax cuts since 2001." The ad began running Dec. 4 in Des Moines, Iowa, and Manchester, New Hampshire.

"Dan Klores Communications is helping to introduce Progress Media's plans for a liberal radio network to an intensely interested, but highly skeptical press," PR Week reports. The agency has been helping shape Progress Media's communications strategy. "The network has been billed as a way of balancing the strong influence of conservative talk radio, but so far media reporters have been wondering aloud why this would be different than other less-than-successful attempts at left-of-center radio programming, such as journalist Jim Hightower's show," PR Week writes. DKC's Matthew Traub explains that Progress Media would provide "programming 24/7" that aims to be, above all, "entertaining, rather than didactic." DKC's list of recent high-profile clients includes Paris Hilton, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Mike Tyson and Lizzie Grubman. According to PR Week, Progress Media is presently in talks with comedians Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo to host programs.

"Jim Wilkinson, the well-traveled utility man for the Bush administration's PR team, is returning to the White House," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua writes. "Wilkinson will craft long-term messaging strategy for the National Security Council in the role of deputy national security advisor for communications. He will report to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and White House communications director Dan Bartlett. Most recently, Wilkinson served as communications director for the 2004 Republican Convention, which will take place in New York this August. Prior to that Wilkinson ran communications strategy for General Tommy Franks at US Central Command in Qatar."

"Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies," the Observer reports. "The journals, bibles of the profession, have huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe and the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered evidence that many articles written by so-called independent academics may have been penned by writers working for agencies which receive huge sums from drug companies to plug their products. Estimates suggest that almost half of all articles published in journals are by ghostwriters. While doctors who have put their names to the papers can be paid handsomely for 'lending' their reputations, the ghostwriters remain hidden. They, and the involvement of the pharmaceutical firms, are rarely revealed."

Radio listeners tuning into disk jockey Jeff Kovarsky on Dallas, Texas radio station KKMR in late 2000 could hear him extolling a magical weight-loss remedy. iIt helped me lose 36 pounds," Kovarsky said. iI ate so much over Thanksgiving, I still have turkey burps. But thanks to Body Solutions, I keep the weight off and now I'm ready for Christmas. So, bring it on, Grandma. The honey-baked ham, the apple pie, the Christmas cookies. I'm not afraid because I've got Body Solutions Evening Weight Loss Formula." Kovarsky was one of the radio personalities at 755 stations across the country who received millions of dollars in undisclosed payments to hawk the products of Mark Nutritionals, which was shut down finally for fraud by the Federal Trade Commission in 2002. "Devoid of pictures or fine print, radio was the ideal medium," observes Andrew Wheat. "Millions of faithful listeners heard personal pitches from familiar voices, yet they could not see if the announcer plugging the product really had lost weight."

"Hoping to spend as much as it wants on next year's elections, the National Rifle Association is looking to buy a television or radio station and declare that it should be treated as a news organization, exempt from spending limits in the campaign finance law."

"Corporate social responsibility [CSR], and the role that communications plays within it, is a controversial subject. ... So when CSR agency Futerra Sustainability Communications teamed up with communications agency CTN, PRWeek and the IPR to run an online discussion on the issue on 12 November, more than 200 CSR practitioners and communication professionals signed in to express their opinions. ... The irony that one part of a communications business could pronounce on CSR while another division represented Third World dictators [See for example Burson-Marsteller.] was not lost on participants. 'Like all good CSR, it starts internally,' said one debater. 'It's very difficult to have a robust, defensible and enforceable CSR policy in PR if your job is to make big dirty, corporate cock-ups look less bad,' another added. [See for example Ketchum.] A further question was whether CSR was merely a fashion or whether a strong business case had been made that would ensure the field would continue to develop. Sceptics were concerned that companies might soon move onto a new fashion, leaving specialist practitioners looking at an unfriendly job market."

"Federal officials have softened a national advertising campaign to promote breastfeeding after complaints from two companies that make infant formula, according to several doctors and nurses who are helping the government with the effort. After the two companies [Mead Johnson and Abbott] and the top officials of the American Academy of Pediatrics complained to federal health officials, the government decided to eliminate spots discussing the risk of leukemia and diabetes in babies not breastfed, said Amy Spangler, the chairwoman of the United States Breastfeeding Committee, a group that promotes breastfeeding. According to the Ad Council newsletter, those ads said that babies not breastfed had a 30 percent increased risk of developing leukemia and up to a 40 percent increased risk of developing diabetes. ... Marsha Walker, who sits on the leadership team of the United States Breastfeeding Committee with Ms. Spangler, said that the information on leukemia and diabetes should be left in the ads. ... 'This is being shot down by an industry that has no business interfering. Ultimately it hurts the health of our babies and our moms.' "

The Washington Post reports the picture-perfect turkey George W. Bush held in front-page photos of his Thanksgiving jaunt to Baghdad was actually a decoration. Instead of being served slices of the golden-brown bird by the President, troops were served from cafeteria steam trays. "White House officials do not deny that they craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real," the Post writes. "This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him." In a related development, the White House has changed its story that there had been an exchange between a British Airways pilot and Air Force One as it flew to Baghdad. British Airways denied that its pilots had contacted Air Force One. In response, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said he'd left the wrong impression, telling reporters that the British Airways pilot had actually radioed the tower in London. British Airways again denied the story, telling media "that none of its pilots has come forward to acknowledge either making or overhearing the purported conversation."

"In the first case of its kind since the Nuremberg trials, an international court [convened in Tanzania] convicted three Rwandans of genocide for media reports that fostered the killing of about 800,000 Rwandans, mostly of the Tutsi minority, over several months in 1994. A three-judge panel said the three men had used a radio station and a newspaper published twice a month to mobilize Rwanda's Hutu majority against the Tutsi, who were massacred at churches, schools, hospitals and roadblocks. The court said the newspaper "poisoned the minds" of readers against the Tutsi, while the radio station openly called for their extermination, luring victims to killing grounds and broadcasting the names of people to be singled out."

Hollinger International Inc., a newspaper publisher caught up in a widening financial scandal, is looking into an investment the company made to a venture capital fund with links to neoconservative defense adviser Richard Perle and Henry Kissinger, both directors of the company. The investigation is part of a wider probe at the company which has already resulted in the resignation of several senior executives, including Canadian-born press baron Conrad Black as Hollinger International's CEO. However, Black remains chairman and controlling shareholder of the Chicago-based company, which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Telegraph in London and The Jerusalem Post. Hollinger International is also reviewing its annual contribution of some $200,000 to The National Interest, a conservative quarterly magazine that also has links to Perle and Kissinger. According to PR Week, Hollinger has hired Bell Pottinger Communications in the UK and Kekst and Company in New York to handle the public relations fallout from the scandal.

Democracy Now! featured a debate between Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the account supervisor for Hill & Knowlton's PR campaign on behalf of "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," and John Stauber, co-author of Weapons Of Mass Deception and Toxic Sludge Is Good For You. Citizens for a Free Kuwait was a front group for the Kuwaiti government and royal family. Hill & Knowlton's received over ten million dollars to organize a massive PR campaign to make sure the US went to war in 1991 to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Democracy Now! notes that "on October 10, 1990, a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl, identified simply as Nayirah testified in front of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she had personally witnessed 15 infants taken from incubators by Iraqi forces who she said, 'left the babies on the cold floor to die.' What was not said at the time is that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, Saud Nasir al-Sabah." This sensational baby-killing claim was echoed by politicians and the media to justify the US war against Iraq, and is credited as turning the US Senate debate in favor of war. Later investigations by Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Fifth Estate, authors John MacArthur (Second Front), Randal Marlin (Propaganda & the Ethics of Persuasions) and others found that the baby killing claims could not be documented and were likely concocted for propaganda purposes.

Commercial Alert and prominent psychology experts sent a letter today to Emory University President James Wagner, requesting that Emory stop conducting neuromarketing experiments on human subjects. Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing that maps the brain's activation responses in order prod desires for particular products. It seeks, in the words of Forbes magazine, to "find a buy button inside the skull." According to the Commercial Alert letter, this marketing technique "sounds like something that could have happened in the former Soviet Union, for the purposes of behavior control. Yet it is happening right here in America."