As Bob Burton revealed last year in PR Watch, the whaling industry is using "scientific research" as PR subterfuge to revive commercial whaling. Burton described the unethical work of one US-based PR flack, Alan Macnow, who has run a pro-whaling campaign called "Friends of the Whalers." Today the New York Times reports that "Japan plans to double the number of whales it kills in the North Pacific each year under a program that it describes as scientific research but that American and some European officials say is commercial whaling."

The Global Climate Coalition, a front group for the auto, oil, coal and other industries responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions that are changing the climate, recently announced that has disbanded, explaining that it "has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming. The Bush administration will soon announce a climate policy that is expected to rely on the development of new technologies to reduce greenhouse emissions, a concept strongly supported by the GCC." After years spent denying that greenhouse emissions were a serious environmental problem, the organization's parting shot at history makes a tacit admission that it was wrong all along, along with an endorsement of the Bush admistration's proposal for ineffective "voluntary" industry measures to address the problem. GCC's executive director, Glenn Kelly, has been hired by Qorvis Communications as managing director to head its energy, natural resources and environmental PR practice.

The "war on terrorism," writes historian Howard Zinn, has opened up the prospect of "a war without end." President Bush has already said that the war may not be finished during his administration. "He will pass on the war to the next president, and perhaps the next and the next," Zinn writes. "How useful to have an enemy who is so elusive, whose defeat will require an endless war. Because so long as the nation is in a state of war, it is possible to control the population by saying: we are at war, and this is no time for division, we must sacrifice our freedoms. But it is exactly when the nation is at war, when we are dealing with life and death matters, that freedom of speech is most necessary. ... Yes, we do have enemies in caves and compounds abroad, but perhaps our greatest danger comes from the corporate boardrooms and governmental offices where decisions are made that take away our tax dollars and satisfy the greed for profit and power. If that is so, we will need a resurgence of democracy, a revival of free speech, a new citizens movement, a mobilization of Americans to insist that the nation's wealth be used for human needs, not for war. Joined to similar movements abroad, it could be the beginning of global solidarity, looking to a long-delayed sharing of the fruits of the earth."

John Rendon of the Rendon Group likes to quote gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson's remark: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Jeff Stein thinks this is probably an apt characterization of Rendon's current PR work for the Pentagon. In a profile of Rendon's past work for clients such as the Kuwaiti Royal Family, the embattled Colombian Army and the CIA, Stein paints a picture of corruption and ineptitude. Accoding to a former CIA agent who worked with Rendon's effort to topple Saddam Hussein, the operation was "a $150 million rip-off," in which the money actually "went to consultants in Washington -- millions, and millions, and millions of dollars."

Last week, Spin of the Day mentioned a report on Australia's SBS television, which used clandestinely filmed footage provided by the Canadian PR firm of Dickens and Madson that claimed to show Zimbabwe's opposition presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, plotting in December to assassinate incumbent president Robert Mugabe. However, the Mass Media Project of Zimbabwe, an independent watchdog organization, has reviewed the footage and says that it appears to have been doctored. Meanwhile, the state-run media in Zimbabwe has been giving prominent play to the story, and Zimbabwe police have charged Tsvangirai with treason, a crime punishable by death. Tsvangirai admits meeting with Dickens & Madson, but says the PR firm manipulated the conversation in an attempt to entrap him. "Of course this is intended to divert people," Tsvangirai said. "If a crime was committed in December, why wait until three weeks before the election?" Since the SBS program aired, it has been learned that Dickens and Madson is now working as a consultant for the Zimbabwe government. But Australian journalist Mark Davis, who produced the SBS documentary, continues to stand by his story, saying he has seen the full, undoctored videotape along with other evidence of an assassination plot. The Guardian of London has also viewed the full videotape and found "no obvious sign that the sound or sequences have been tampered with."

Rick Berman started ConsumerFreedom.com with $900,000 from the Philip Morris tobacco company. He is waging a corporate-funded smear campaign against public health, environmental and animal welfare organizations and the non-profit foundations that fund them. Berman scored a PR coup today with a prominent ABCnews.com story casting him as a hero in the fight against "eco-terrorism." According to the ABC story, "What (Berman) came to the (Congressional) hearing advocating was that the government wage war against domestic terrorism the way the war has been waged against accused terror mastermind Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network not just by going after those who carry out illegal acts, but by trying to cut off financial support for organizations identified as being terrorist." ABC neglected to explain that Berman is a PR lobbyist who is paid a great deal of money to smear, attack and disrupt the funding of public interest groups disliked by his corporate clients in the food, tobacco and booze industries.

In the wake of the September 11, even PR Watch editors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton came under attack as "terrorists" from ConsumerFreedom.org, lobbyist Rick Berman's front group for the alcohol, tobacco and restaurant industries. ConsumerFreedom compared us to "international criminals" engaged in "extremist violence." Our 1997 book, Mad Cow U.S.A., is a terrorist document, they said, because "Words deployed with the intention of causing panic are a form of violence, too. The 'mad cow' scare campaign in the United States is intended to frighten consumers to avoid conventional meat supply and 'go organic.' " Well, now apparently the General Accounting Office of the U.S. Congress has joined our nefarious conspiracy. On Tuesday it issued a report warning that mad cow disease could slip into the country and infect cattle herds because of weaknesses in import controls and lax enforcement of animal feed rules. According to Associated Press reporter Philip Brasher in Salon.com, the GAO report "says the Food and Drug Administration failed to take action against feed mills and other firms that violate rules associated with the feed ban and has never identified all the businesses that should be inspected. Moreover, FDA's database of inspection records is so 'is so severely flawed' that 'it should not be used to assess compliance,' the investigators said."

Nearly 70 percent of Americans say they do not trust corporate America, according to a recent survey conducted for the Interpublic's Golin/Harris PR unit. According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, the surveys says that the Enron meltdown is only one of a number of recent events that have created "a crisis of confidence and trust in the way we do business in America." Industries that are especially mistrusted include: oil & gas; insurance; investment brokers; utilities; airlines; telecom; advertising; the media; PR; accounting; chemical; pharmaceuticals; and management/consulting. "Imagine," quips one O'Dwyer's reader, "if all the PR firms that were paid handsomely to create the positioning and hype that led to this mistrust, had to pay it all back."

A news release from the Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen organization notes that "for the past five years, the food irradiation industry has been attempting to ... change the current labeling requirements for irradiated foods so that they could be labeled as either 'cold pasteurized' or 'electronic pasteurized.' But public opposition has been stiff. Now, irradiated foods must be labeled as 'treated with radiation' or 'treated by irradiation.' The food irradiation industry has been advocating a change because consumers are reluctant to purchase irradiated foods." Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has come to the food and irradiation industry's rescue, quietly inserting language into the massive farm bill that allows the use of the deceptive euphemism.

In response to a website alleging that Enron owns the GOP, the Republican party of Texas threatened to sue for "copyright infringement." This is only one of hundreds of cases in which corporate and political heavyweights have used legal threats to intimidate legitimate speech on the Internet. Now the Electronic Freedom Foundation, in cooperation with several leading university law schools, has launched the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse to help online users know their rights and to expose efforts at chilling free speech.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and President Bush have backed away from the Pentagon's new propaganda arm, the Office of Strategic Influence. The administration is scrambling to deal with public backlash against the idea of a Pentagon propaganda office that would, among other actions, disseminate false and misleading information to US allies. Today's New York Times quotes "a senior Administration official" who said, "(Bush) specifically mentioned that the office would be shut down before it started or that its focus would be dramatically narrowed to obvious things like leaflet campaigns.'"

Literally before the dust had cleared at Ground Zero, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the city's news media rushed to assure people that the city's air was safe. Now evidence is accumulating that these reassurances may have been tragically wrong, as investigators find dangerous levels of PCBs, mercury and asbestos thrown into the air by the disaster. "Many people who live or work in lower Manhattan are convinced that they have not been told the truth," reports Alyssa Katz. "They say that they're sick--throats sore, lungs hacking. Cleanup workers, local residents, and, most of all, firefighters at ground zero attest to intense respiratory illnesses unlike anything they recall experiencing before." In a separate story for TomPaine.com, Kate Barnes reports that the New York Times has bent over backwards to ignore "the one story that most New Yorkers have worried about consistently. ... Downplaying the Ground Zero air story wasn't just an oversight. It may be the single biggest air pollution story ever missed."

"Newspapers may provide a rough draft of history, but archives are where the raw materials are stored," writes Celestine Bohlen. "And so when politicians start messing around with public archives, historians -- and, of course, archivists -- can be counted on to rise up in arms." She details the outrage of historians when former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in his final days in office decided to move the public records out of City Hall and into a private warehouse. And Giuliani isn't alone. President Bush has also taken controversial steps which limit public access to records from the presidential administration of his father as well as to records from his own term as governor of Texas.

The U.S. has imposed more restrictions on reporters in Afghanistan than in any previous U.S. war, but Hollywood has carte blanche to make feel-good "reality TV" shows about the adventure. Maureen Dowd notes that that the Pentagon is teaming with Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of "Top Gun," "Black Hawk Down," "Pearl Harbor" and "Coyote Ugly," along with Bertram van Munster of "Cops," to make a TV docudrama about the war on terrorism. "I'm outraged about the Hollywoodization of the military," says Dan Rather. "Somebody's got to question whether it's a good idea to limit independent reporting on the battlefield and access of journalists to U.S. military personnel and then conspire with Hollywood."

Following the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, Robert Fisk ponders "the slow, painful, dangerous erosion of respect" for journalists who cover international conflicts. "We used to risk our lives in wars -- we still do -- but journalists were rarely deliberate targets," he writes. One reason for the change, he says, is that journalists themselves have lost their status as impartial witnesses to war. "What on earth was CNN's Walter Rodgers doing in US Marine costume at the American camp outside Kandahar? Mercifully, someone told him to take it off after his first broadcast. Then Geraldo Rivera of Fox News arrived in Jalalabad with a gun. He fully intended, he said, to kill Osama bin Laden. It was the last straw. The reporter had now become combatant." Fisk warns that journalists who become partisans are "helping to erode the shield of neutrality and decency which saved our lives in the past."

More than 20 million documents related to the tobacco industry's scientific research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising and sales of cigarettes have entered the public domain thanks to lawsuits against tobacco companies. Now the Legacy National Tobacco Documents Library has made those documents easily searchable online. (Tobacco companies were ordered to put the documents online themselves, but their websites tend to be confusing and full of programming bugs.) If you want to know about the sleazy pro-tobacco activities of PR firms like Burson-Marsteller, APCO, Hill & Knowlton, Edelman or Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, the Legacy library is a great place to start your search.

"The Pentagon is giving two Hollywood producers access to troops in Afghanistan and around the world to promote its war effort through television's genre of the moment, the reality series. The result is expected to be a 13-part series shown in prime time by ABC entertainment division this year. The producers - Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the movies "Black Hawk Down' and 'Pearl Harbor,' and Bertram van Munster, whose credits include the reality series ... 'Cops' - intend to tell the 'compelling personal stories of the U.S. military men and women who bear the burden of this fighting,' according to an ABC news release. ... A senior ABC executive who declined to be identified said yesterday that the network's news division complained to top officials at its parent company, Walt Disney, several weeks ago about entertainment producers' handling a documentary series about the war for the network. These complaints, the executive said, were rebuffed."

On February 19 the New York Times reported that the Pentagon's new propaganda agency, the Office of Strategic Information, was planning unethical, possibly illegal activities such as misleading the press in friendly countries. The Pentagon and White House responded to the story by going into damage control mode with a flurry of "clarifications" and backpedalling. "What people have to understand about this is very clear," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said. "Number one, government officials, the Department of Defense, this secretary and the people that work with me tell the American people and the people of the world the truth." According to the Times, "The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group, a Washington-based global communications company, to assist the new office overseas. Executives with the Rendon Group say they are not allowed to discuss their contract. ... Even some top Bush aides expressed alarm today at the scope of the classified proposals that the Office of Strategic Influence had been circulating, and were taken aback by its Orwellian-sounding title. 'I wouldn't have picked that name,' a senior administration official said." Columnist Maureen Dowd remains unpersuaded by Rumsfeld's disavowals, referring to the OSI as an "Office of Strategic Mendacity."

The stranglehold that a dozen giant corporations now exert on media in the US will tighten even more in the wake of a federal court ruling. The ill effects of corporate media control such as mind numbing content, self-censorship to serve advertisers, neglect of minority opinions and dissent, sensationalized if-it-bleeds-it-leads news, plagiarism of PR as 'news,' are all set to worsen. Schiesel and Carter write in the New York Times, "Investment bankers, start your engines. That was essentially the message to Wall Street and the media industry yesterday as a federal appeals court in Washington unleashed what is expected to be a major wave of deal making, with the titans of the television business snapping up their smaller brethren."

"As the Enron scandal progresses, opportunistic politicians are trying their best to turn the company's name into political shorthand to discredit just about anything," writes Bryan Keefer. Terms like "Enronomics" and "Enronization" have entered the vocabulary as shorthand ways of discrediting political opponents. "In political parlance, 'Enron' has now become a verb and an adjective," Keefer writes.

The Lorillard Tobacco company doesn't want to be made to look like a villain, and so it is suing the American Legacy Foundation claiming that anti-smoking ads violate the historic 1998 settlement agreement that governs the industry. That agreement created the foundation and funded it with $1.5 billion dollars for PR, advertising and education to try to prevent smoking. The New York Times reports that "since the foundation first broadcast a TV commercial portraying piles of body bags in front of Philip Morris's headquarters in 2000, cigarette makers have complained that its anti-smoking campaign paints them as callous and deceitful," and that this violates terms of the agreement under which "the foundation is barred from conducting 'any personal attack on, or vilification of tobacco companies or their employees.'" William H. Sorrel, Vermont's attorney general, notes that "any industry that is responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 (Americans) a year is doing some pretty ugly things. And to point those out, is that vilification?"

PR Watch for the last quarter of 2001 is now available on-line. In "Terrorism as Pretext" we examine how corporations and corporate-funded lobbyists and PR front groups quickly exploited 911 for ideological, economic and political purposes. Other articles include: "The Junkman's Answer to Terrorism: Use More Asbestos," and "The Pentagon's Information Warrior: Rendon to the Rescue." Subscribers to PR Watch received this issue in the mail three months ago, but it is now on-line and archived free for the public.

"The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said. ... (The US military) recently created the Office of Strategic Influence, which is proposing to broaden that mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe. ... To help the new office, the Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group, a Washington-based international consulting firm run by John W. Rendon Jr., a former campaign aide to President Jimmy Carter. The firm, which is being paid about $100,000 a month, has done extensive work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Kuwaiti royal family and the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group seeking to oust President Saddam Hussein." According to the Secrecy News, "The new initiative builds on a substantial foundation of Pentagon interest in psychological operations."

"President Bush has decided to transform the administration's temporary wartime communications effort into a permanent office of global diplomacy to spread a positive image of the United States around the world and combat anti-Americanism, senior administration officials said today. ... While discussions are at a preliminary stage, officials said there was general agreement in the administration that the intense shaping of information and coordination of messages that occurred during the fighting in Afghanistan should become a permanent feature of national security policy. ... Officials said the new office would be entirely separate from a proposed Office of Strategic Influence at the Pentagon, which would use the media, the Internet and a range of covert operations to try to influence public opinion and government policy abroad, including in friendly nations."

The First Quarter 2002 issue of PR Watch has been sent to subscribers. It features several articles looking at the public relation's industry's use of the Internet, as PR pros continue to develop new cyber-techniques for spreading propaganda and for combatting activism. On the other hand, the Internet has opened new vistas to corporate PR specialists. Some PR firms now specialize in using the Internet to spy on activist groups so that they can figure out how to neutralize them early. The Internet is also an important organizing tool for right-wing political operatives as they experiment with new ways to raise money and mobilize their troops. On the other hand, companies fear that the Internet will "destabilize business and borders

The PBS NewsHour aired a report tonight titled "Public Diplomacy: U.S. Outreach to the Muslim World." 'Public diplomacy' is a euphemism for government propaganda, and this report is an overview of US efforts already reported elsewhere, with no new insights or perspectives.

The White House's failed prediction of a terrorist incident on February 13 may have had an ulterior motive. "The American population was instructed to panic," writes the Guardian of London. "Place themselves, that is, on a state of highest vigilance. Some cataclysmic act of terrorism would happen - within hours. But nothing terrible happened. Something creepy did. On Thursday there was an inconspicuous news item. John M. Poindexter had been appointed to head a new agency 'to counter attacks on the US.' " Poindexter will run the Information Awareness Office (IAO), which will help U.S. spy agencies such as the CIA, FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency to share information. The IAO will also act as a domestic Big Brother, overseeing domestic espionage and monitoring American's phones and emails. The Poindexter appointment is the latest of several Bush administration decisions to rehabilitate officials implicated in the Iran/Contra scandal. In his old job as Reagan's national security advisor, Poindexter helped mastermind arms sales to Iran, financial support for Iraq, illegal funding for the contras in Nicaragua, and efforts to cover up Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega's involvement in cocaine smuggling. In 1990, he was convicted on seven felony counts for activities that included obstruction of inquiries, illegal destruction of documents, and lying to Congress. (His conviction was later overturned on a technicality, and George H. Bush pardoned him in 1992, preventing a retrial.)

"Science has now become the leading edge of the [Bush Administration's] crackdown on public access to government information," according to the New York Times. The Administration has withdrawn from public access over 6,600 technical reports concerning biological and chemical weapons production on grounds that they might help terrorists or others develop weapons of mass destruction. The Bush Administration is also calling upon scientific societies to impose limits on their scientific publications. Critics warn that secrecy will undermine science by making it impossible to conduct peer review or independent replication of experimental results. According to the Secrecy News, "The Bush Administration's insistent efforts to expand the scope of official secrecy have now been widely noted as a defining characteristic of the Bush presidency, though these efforts are still only beginning to elicit a significant challenge in the form of litigation and mounting public skepticism."

"Just before the last presidential election, Bush campaign adviser Ralph Reed offered to help Enron Corp. deregulate the electricity industry by working his 'good friends' in Washington and by mobilizing religious leaders and pro-family groups for the cause. For a $380,000 fee, the conservative political strategist proposed a broad lobbying strategy that included using major campaign contributors, conservative talk shows and nonprofits to press Congress for favorable legislation. Reed said he could place letters from community leaders in the opinion pages of major newspapers, producing clips that Reed would 'blast fax' to Capitol Hill. ... The memo offers a glimpse into the relationship between Enron and the influential conservative, who was first recommended to the company in 1997 by Karl Rove, now a senior adviser to President Bush. Reed, head of the Atlanta-based consulting firm Century Strategies, is the former executive director of the Christian Coalition and current chairman of the Georgia Republican Party."

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has used President Bush's phrase about an "axis of evil" to make vicious attacks on the "evil axis" of Congressional Democrats.

"Sherron Watkins, Enron's VP of corporate development, who in August predicted accounting scandals would destroy the company, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Feb. 14 that she offered a PR campaign to former chairman Kenneth Lay," O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes. "In her Oct. 30 memo to Lay, the former accountant said she outlined for him ways to handle the PR crisis and urged him to lay the blame on the company's then CEO Jeffrey Skilling and CFO Andrew Fastow. 'I was providing this to Mr. Lay as a concept on PR; however, I felt it was a truthful PR strategy and it was something I felt should be said,' she testified."

PR trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports there is yet another firm representing Saudi Arabia. In addition to Burson-Marstellar, Qorvis Communications, and Patton Boggs, the Kingdom is using The Gallagher Group in its public affairs and lobbying campaign. The firm was hired by Qorvis, the Saudi's media relations firm, to do "government relations" work. O'Dwyer's reports the firm's president James Gallagher expects the $20,000 contract, which covered work between November 15 and February 15, to be renewed. "Gallagher said he was called in on the Saudi account because he represented the Kingdom while a staffer at Boland & Madigan. He also was a registered lobbyist for AT&T, Chevron, Ford Motor, General Dynamics, Playboy and Southwest Airlines," O'Dwyer's writes.

"Most people would be thrilled to be a real-life character in a movie. Not Frank Carlucci. Lawyers for the former U.S. Secretary of Defense have pressured the film's distributor to remove his character's identity from the showings of 'Lumumba' on HBO this month," Pacific News Service contributor Lucy Komisar writes. "Carlucci doesn't appreciate the attention. Maybe that's understandable. In 1960, he was the second secretary in the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, the Congo. That was the time when, according to declassified U.S. State Department cables and testimony to the Senate's Church committee on assassinations, the United States plotted with the incipient dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and the Belgians to bring down Patrice Lumumba, the popular nationalist leader. ... Lumumba's sin was that, when neither the Americans nor the United Nations would help him against Belgian-organized plots to destabilize his government, he turned to the Russians."

In a lengthy report on Zimbabwe's upcoming elections, Australia's SBS TV uses hidden surveillance videos to document an apparent plan by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to murder the country's sitting president, Robert Mugabe. According to the footage, money to pay for the killing was channeled through BSMG London, an affiliate of the Weber-Shandwick PR firm. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported last year that BSMG was hired to represent Tsvangirai's political party, the "Movement for Democratic Change." (Note: Since this program aired, further information has come to light suggesting that the alleged assassination plot may actually have been a frameup by Mugabe's supporters in an attempt to discredit Tsvangirai.)

In Afghanistan, where death is ubiquitous, killing a habit, and war has been a constant for an entire generation, few people are bothering to count the casualties mounting from more than four months of US action. "There are no official US figures, and nor have the dozens of non-governmental charities now operating in the country done any independent research," notes the Guardian. "Despite the manipulation of casualty figures for propaganda purposes by both pro-war apologists and anti-war activists, it is already clear that the number of civilian dead from the bombing vastly exceeds the estimated 500 killed by US air strikes during the 78-day Kosovo war, and may also be higher than the 3,200 Iraqi civilians believed killed during the Gulf war."

Last week, PR industry pundit Fraser Seitel opined that former Enron CEO Ken Lay made a PR blunder by refusing to testify before Congress. "You should answer every question squarely and straightforwardly. Duck nothing," he advised. This week he thinks that Lay's partner in crime, Jeff Skilling, also blundered by the way he did testify. "The Skilling testimony -- designed to showcase the former Enron executive as a candid, honest and willing witness -- boomeranged like a Mike Tyson social call to Lennox Lewis," Seitel writes. What should other scandal-ridden corporate executives do if called before Congress? Seitel offers advice on the best way to weasel through the ordeal: don't act arrogant, don't pick fights with the media, and don't invoke the "Sergeant Schultz" defense of "I see nothing."

The records of other Texas governors are stored at the Texas State Library and Archives, but George W. Bush has placed his papers at his father's presidential library at Texas A&M University, thereby "putting them in the hands of a federal institution that is not ordinarily bound by the state's tough Public Information Act," reports the New York Times. "That law, among other things, assures anyone who requests state records a reply within 10 days. Officials at the Bush library say the best they can do, given staffing and other priorities, is 90 days, and some requests have taken longer." Archivists who rely heavily on freedom-of-information requests, say Bush is deliberately making it difficult for the public to access records of his administration. "Who needs a shredder when you have Daddy's presidential library?" said James Newcomb, an official with the Better Government Association in Chicago.

"While the Bush administration was drafting its national energy policy, a leading lobbyist for Enron Corp. was plotting strategy to turn the plan into a political weapon against Democrats, according to a newly obtained memo," the Los Angeles Times writes. Washington-based lobbyist Edward Gillespie of Quinn Gillespie & Associates in a confidential April 2001 memo to energy companies and industry groups offered advise on how to paint a dour pictures of the Democrats and their energy policy. According to the LA Times, Gillespie wrote, "We need to make them [the Democrats] the 'eat your peas' party."

"They called it 'the matrix,' " writes Washington Post reporter Joe Stevens, "a computer program that brought a scientific dimension to Enron's effort to seduce politicians and sway bureaucrats. With each proposed change in federal regulations, lobbyists punched details into a computer, allowing Enron economists in Houston to calculate just how much a rule change would cost. If the final figure was too high, executives used it as the cue to stoke their vast influence machine, mobilizing lobbyists and dialing up politicians who had accepted some of Enron's millions in campaign contributions."

In response to reports of illegal shredding of documents related to the Enron collapse, the National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) (yes, it's a real organization) has issued a news release which says that "the overwhelming majority of document destruction that takes place on a daily basis is done so quite appropriately and for the cause of good." NAID, whose member companies are in the business of document destruction, characterizes the behavior of employees at Enron and Arthur Andersen as "unfortunate," but says that "the proper destruction and disposal of documents is a necessary and responsible business practice" because of the "inherent need to maintain confidentiality when dealing with records that contain personal or proprietary information."

"The Citizens for Liberty in Cuba is using Washington, D.C.-based Griesinger Assocs. to 'promote policies to aid in bringing democracy' to the island," reports O'Dwyer's PR Online. The CLC's former director is Otto Reich, a leading figure in the Iran/Contra scandal whose Office of Public Diplomacy ran the Reagan administration's covert disinformation campaign related to the war in Central America in the 1980s. Reich was recently sworn in as the Bush administration's assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs. According to Washington Representatives 2001, Reich is president of the Washington-based "strategic planning firm" RMA International, Inc. Working for RMA, Reich lobbied for Bacardi-Martini, Lockheed Martin, Marriott, Mobil Latin America & Caribbean, and Telegate. BATMark, British American Tobacco China, and Kellogg Brown and Root are also listed as RMA clients.

British professor Roger Scruton, a libertarian pundit and self-proclaimed ethicist, has been fired from his gig as a columnist for the Financial Times after a leaked copy of his e-mail to Japan Tobacco International revealed that the tobacco company was paying him

Robert Cribb, the president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, is calling for "a parliamentary inquiry into the effects of media concentration in this country," in response to efforts by the CanWest media empire to muzzle journalists who disagree with management views. "At issue is CanWest's decision to run 'national editorials' in its major dailies, limiting the diversity of viewpoints available to readers," Cribb writes. "CanWest has further decreed that on issues of 'overarching national importance,' local newspapers are forbidden from publishing local editorials that contradict the CanWest line. When journalists publicly complained at the Montreal Gazette (a CanWest newspaper) in December, a letter was circulated warning that public criticism of management was a potential firing offence."

"Scientists are accepting large sums of money from drug companies to put their names to articles endorsing new medicines that they have not written - a growing practice that some fear is putting scientific integrity in jeopardy," reports Sarah Bosely, health editor of the Guardian. Marilyn Larkin, a contributing editor to the Lancet, one of Britain's most prestigious medical journals, gives a first-hand account of the techniques that PR firms working for drug companies use to manipulate the scientific literature. Early in her career, she herself was hired to ghost-write a scientific paper. ""First I had to sign all kinds of forms not to tell anyone I was doing this," she said. "They gave you an outline, then provided tons of references you knew you had to use. ... After I sent it, I got the whole thing back from the company with a sample from another company which read like PR writing. It was just a really straight sell. I said, 'I'm sorry, I can't do this.'" Typically, a ghost-written article gets published under the name of a research scientist who is "a figurehead in the field. By that time, they don't care. They will take the money or pretend they didn't know they were taking the money for that reason." Some researchers, of course, object to this practice, such as Dr. David Healy, whose article on an antidepressant medication was altered by the manufacturer to say it "was the best thing since sliced bread. I would never have said that because I don't think it is."

Journalists and advocates of open govermment are dismayed as U.S. state governments weigh proposals to clamp down on the public's access to government documents and meetings, driven by worries that terrorists could use the information. States that have passed or are considering measures to limit public access include Florida, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee and Washington.

Advertising Age magazine has created a special section of its website devoted to stories about "Selling Brand USA to a Hostile World." Story titles include: White House Buys Anti-terror Super Bowl Spots, Should American Values Be Marketed to Muslim Nations?, Sony Products Take Center Stage in Coalition War Ad, and Humorous Ads That Aren't Funny Anymore.

When it comes to global warming, science writers seem to do a better job of getting the facts straight than editorial writers. University of Illinois scientists recently published research in Nature which shows a local pattern of cooling in parts of the Antarctic. The scientists' published research made it clear that this local cooling does not contradict the evidence of global warming. This fact was also clear in the university's news release about the study, which was titled "Antarctic Cooling Amid Global Warming." Science writers generally got the facts right when they reported on the study, but editorial writers were quick to pronounce judgment based on research which they had clearly not bothered to read. Columnist Joseph Perkins (a former aide to Dan Quayle) penned a piece titled "Scientific Findings Run Counter to Theory of Global Warming," while the Rocky Mountain News wondered, "Is Another Ice-Age on the Way?"

In what appears to be the US government's biggest single event advertising buy, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spent over $3.2 million for two 30-second ads aired during the Super Bowl. "It's one thing for Budweiser to spend a small fortune waving the flag; it's another for we taxpayers to foot the bill for ads touting controversial public policies," writes WorkingforChange columnist Geov Parrish. "And what did we get for our money? Blatant propaganda -- specifically, an argument closely linked to the Bush Administration. The Drug Czar's ads focused on the idea that fighting the War on Drugs also helps stop terrorism, because the money your local pusher makes eventually finds its way into the pockets of Osama bin Laden and his various terrorist colleagues."

With the words "corporate responsibility" finding their way into the mouths of more and more business leaders, PR giant Ketchum has launched a new corporate responsibility unit, promoting what Ketchum's Raymond Kotcher calls a "21st century management philosophy that advances commercial and financial success by demonstrating respect for ethical values, people, communities, and the physical and social environment." Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman PR Worldwide, is also leaping on the corporate responsibility bandwagon and urging clients to partner up with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings in New York, Edelman said his company has conducted a new poll showing that European opinion leaders trust NGOs more than corporations and governments.

An analysis of the rhetoric from presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer and Vice President Dick Cheney reveals a disturbing pattern of dissembling about the General Accounting Office request for information on the Vice President's energy task force. The two have consistently exaggerated the GAO's request to make it appear unreasonable and paint the administration as a victim.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's book, Trust Us, We're Experts, has just been released in a paperback edition. The authors will be speaking in dozens of U.S. cities in the months ahead. During the week of February 11, Stauber will be in California in Santa Monica on Monday (2/11), Del Mar on Tuesday (2/12), Santa Cruz on Wednesday (2/13), San Francisco on Thursday (2/14), and Berkeley on Friday (2/15). Each talk is in the evening, and the specific time and place is available on our Events Calendar.