For years, the Clearinghouse for Environmental Education, Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) did yeoman's work researching the financial ties and extremist rhetoric of the corporate-funded anti-environmental movement. Until recently a project of the Environmental Working Group, CLEAR recently spun off to become independent. It recently launched its own website, which includes reports on Bush administration officials, various anti-environmental think tanks, and archives of "A CLEAR View," their email news bulletin.

Conservative and right-leaning think tanks continue to get more mainstream media attention than centerist and progressive groups according to a new report by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. "The overall percentages for the year were consistent with findings for previous years, with conservative or right-leaning think tanks garnering 48 percent of the citations, centrists receiving 36 percent and progressive or left-leaning think tanks receiving 16 percent," FAIR writes. Also available on FAIR's website is a new report "Fear and Favor 2001: How Power Shapes the News." This is FAIR's 2nd annual review of pressures faced by reporters and editors that influence what gets on the airwaves and into the papers.

Paul Trummel, a 69-year-old former professor of journalism, has been jailed for more than a month with no end in sight, charged with "harassment" for creating what he asserts is a web-based investigative report into improprieties at a Seattle residence for senior citizens.

Thanks to Saudi Arabia's generous willingness to sell oil to the United States, politicians generally turn a blind eye to its repressive government and frequent anti-Semitism, which surfaced again recently when Al-Riyadh, the Saudi government's daily newspaper, published an article claiming that Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim by eating special pastries filled with "the blood of Christian and Muslim children under the age of 10" extracted using slow torture with sharp needles -- "torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight." After an outraged reaction from the international community, the newspaper's editor apologized for the piece, saying that he was away on vacation when it appeared and calling the article "silly and untrue."

"Wars often have had a profound impact on journalism," writes former journalism professor Betty Medsger. For example, the trend toward "news as entertainment" began with the war in the Persian Gulf in early 1991 when "the military, prepared by its 1980's marketing classes in how to sell a war, set new restrictions and higher levels of censorship that guaranteed coverage would be controlled by the military." That trend continues today, as "marketing practices honed by the Pentagon in the brief Gulf War now seem to be the standard M.O. of the military in this war." Those techniques include preventing reporters from seeing "the dark side of war -- such as the bodies of innocent civilians," and managing bad new "by at first denying it, then by restricting access to the truth, then by acknowledging that something slightly bad happened, then by describing it as an isolated and, therefore, unimportant incident that is inevitable 'in the fog of war,' then let it dribble out 'in controlled seepage' over days or weeks so the fullness of the bad news never appears in one big significant breaking news story."

Now that community radio advocates have regained control of the Pacifica Radio Network, they are discovering that the outgoing Pacifica managers "treated the network like a trough," in the words of current acting executive director Dan Coughlin. In addition to racking up huge personal expense bills and handing themselves "golden parachute" severance packages, the former managers ran up millions of dollars on attorneys and PR firms. "One firm, for instance, has billed Pacifica more than $500,000 for a few months work," Coughlin says. "Most alarmingly, I also want to report to you and the entire Pacifica community that the former administration apparently committed hundreds of thousands of listener dollars on an undercover intelligence operation targeting Pacifica staffers and listeners. Secret dossiers were apparently created on programmers, like Amy Goodman, on board members like Leslie Cagan, and on listener activists. Undercover agents were reportedly dispatched to spy on Local Advisory Board meetings and on community events. Internet newsgroups and web sites were closely monitored and liaisons were established with local police forces." As a result, Coughlin says, "The Pacifica Radio network is in far worse financial shape than any of us have imagined ... on the brink of financial collapse." facing a "$1.5 million budget gap for this calendar year and a $5 million working capital deficit." The Save Pacifica Campaign is seeking donations.

"Ethiopia spent a whopping $5.6 million in lobbying fees/expenses at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand during the firm's recent six-month reporting period," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "For Ethiopia, VLBM&H provided advice on the peace treaty with Eritrea, and explored commercial opportunities for Ethiopian businesses in the U.S." During that period VLBM&H also represented India, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mexico, China, Montenegro and Slovenia. "On the downside," O'Dwyer's writes, "VLBM&H was terminated by Yemen's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Bush plans to send a contingent of special forces to that Arab nation to wipe out suspected members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network."

The media's use of spokespeople as primary news sources has increased 81% between 1995 and 2000 according to a study by Bob Williams, an ethics fellow at the Poynter Institute. "As a reporter, you look around the newsroom, and the tendency has become to talk to spokespeople rather than to even try to get to the principals," Williams told PR Week. Council of PR Firms president Kathy Cripps suggests reporters and editors sit down with their PR contacts for interviews as a way to improve the relationship between the media and PR practitioners. "We're more likely to be candid with reporters if we can trust them to use the information we give them appropriately."

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has issued a special "RCFP White Paper" chronicling the effects the "war on terrorism" has had on media coverage. Available as a free PDF download, the 34-page report outlines actions taken over the last six months by state and federal government agencies that limit the ability of journalists to do their jobs. "The atmosphere of terror induced public officials to abandon this country's culture of openness and opt for secrecy as a way of ensuring safety and security," it states. "No one has demonstrated, however, that an ignorant society is a safe society. While some information logically should be withheld because it could pose a direct threat to American ground forces or tip off a terrorist that he is under surveillance, citizens are better able to protect themselves and take action when they know the dangers they are facing."

A flashy publicity stunt outside a Houston federal courthouse accompanied accounting firm Arthur Andersen's not guilty plea to Justice Department obstruction charges. "As Andersen pleaded not guilty inside the courtroom, outside the firm launched a public relations blitz designed to portray government prosecutors as overzealous and heartless to the plight of its 28,000 U.S. employees," USA Today's Greg Farrell reports. "Employees waving signs and wearing T-shirts that said 'I am Arthur Andersen' trooped outside the Houston courthouse, while the Chicago-based firm pleaded its case in full-page newspaper ads. ... Andersen spokesman Patrick Dorton says the rallies were not orchestrated but were 'a spontaneous outpouring of emotion from innocent people who feel they've been unfairly tarnished by this indictment.'" O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes, "Employees have held protest rallies in Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington, D.C. ... Julie Hallinan, an Andersen spokesperson, promised this website she would look into whether the auditor's PR firms--Omnicom's Ketchum and Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Assocs.--had anything to do with outfitting the workers in those shirts, or arranging to have the signs made."

"Saudi Arabia is paying Qorvis Communications a $200,000 monthly retainer, according to Scott Warner, spokesman for the Washington, D.C., firm that is affiliated with Patton Boggs," O'Dwyer's PR reports. "The firm is handling PA [public affairs] and media relations for the Kingdom, which has stepped into the spotlight following release of its so-called Middle East peace plan that Crown Prince Abdullah announced to New York Times foreign affairs op-ed writer Tom Friedman in February."

Today's Republican Party demonizes any criticism of President Bush on the grounds that it will "undermine the war effort," and journalists like Tom Gutting are learning the hard way that they can be fired if they question the president's leadership. Yet one of the GOP's most influential forebears, presidential nominee Thomas Dewey, openly criticized Franklin Roosevelt at the peak of the war against fascism. "He accused FDR of being responsible for the death of American soldiers because Roosevelt had not adequately prepared the country for the war, and he maintained that if FDR was reelected, America would be at risk of a communist takeover," writes David Corn. "Moreover, Dewey assailed Democrats who argued the debate over the communist threat should be suppressed because it undermined the war effort. (The United States and the Soviet Union were allies at the time.) ... By questioning the United States-Soviet alliance and FDR's commitment to freedom and liberty while war was raging and the final outcome uncertain, did Dewey and the Republican Party undermine FDR's management of the war? Republicans at the time were spreading gossip that FDR had sent a Navy destroyer to fetch Fala, his Scottish terrier, after the dog supposedly was left behind during a trip to Alaska. Was this attempt to weaken the national standing of a wartime president an action that could have hindered the war?"

"The Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative has filed a seven-page complaint on March 18 with the State Ethics Commission about the hardball lobbying tactics employed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and its grassroots firm, Bonner & Assocs.," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The non-profit group is an advocate of universal healthcare and a backer of a Maryland bill that would lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid patients and the uninsured. PhRMA opposes the bill. The complaint charges that PhRMA and B&A are in violation of the state's lobbying disclosure laws. B&A has been sending faxes to community groups claiming the measure would limit freedom of choice for patients, and make it harder for poor people to get the medicines they need. Those faxes carry the letterhead of the Consumer Alliance, which is a Michigan group. They have a 'grassroots mobilization hotline number' that connects with B&A's office."

Last year Jack Mongoven, founder of the secretive PR spy firm of Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, died of lung cancer, ironically becoming a victim himself of the very industry that helped make him wealthy. In its upcoming June issue, Tobacco Control Online, a scientific publication of the British Medical Journal Publishing Group, is publishing a detailed report by Stacy Carter on MBD's extensive work for the tobacco industry, which included spying on activists, nonprofit organizations and international health agencies to "gather intelligence and provide strategic advice to damage tobacco control efforts." Currently available online as a free PDF download, Carter's report offers information that has never previously been published from internal tobacco industry documents.

"In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing war on terrorism, the news hole for video public relations shrunk dramatically," writes Paul Holmes, editor of public relations trade newsletter The Holmes Report. "Most of the major production and distribution companies canceled projects in the wake of the terrorist attacks, but in the months since then, the business has been getting back to normal." Michael Santorelli, co-founder of the video production company Dogmatic, told Holmes: "News stations have come to depend on us for content. We are providing them with stories -- particularly in the entertainment arena, but anything involving the use of celebrities -- they could not otherwise get."

Fortune magazine recently spent six weeks investigating the Carlyle Group, the secretive investment firm with ties to the Bush administration that invests heavily in military contracting. Carlyle employs a raft of former government officials, including the Bush the senior as well as former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci and former British Prime Minister John Major. "While most of the conspiracy theories are amusingly overblown, this is a firm that's been built on the backs of Bush and other big shots who have lent Carlyle their names, their golden networks of friends in high places, and their insights into how government works," writes Melanie Warner. "The revolving door has long been a fact of life in Washington, but Carlyle has given it a new spin. Instead of toiling away for a trade organization or consulting firm for a measly $250,000 a year, former government officials can rake in serious cash by getting equity cuts on corporate deals. Several of the onetime government officials who have hooked up with Carlyle--Carlucci, Baker, and Darman, in particular--have made millions."

The shocking news that the deer and elk version of mad cow disease, called chronic wasting disease (CWD), is present in Wisconsin's wild white tail deer has meant business is busier than ever for a Montana PR firm. The Kriegel Group represents the North American Elk Breeders Association. The trafficking in farmed elk and deer has spread CWD to a number of states and Canada, and it has spread from farmed animals into wild herds. Wisconsin has hundreds of elk and deer farms, and they are the chief suspects in the spread of CWD to the wild. Another PR problem for the elk industry is in their lucrative business of manufacturing nutritional supplements from elk antlers. Researchers are worried that CWD could be spread from nutritional supplements to people. Henry Kriegel's PR firm is pushing the dubious claim that the real problem with the spread of CWD are wild populations, not farmed deer and elk.

President Bush's attempts to "rebrand" the United States are doomed, according to Naomi Klein. Klein analyzes of the strategy developed for the U.S. by Charlotte Beers, the advertising executive hired by the State Department as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. One of the problems, Klein notes, is that Beers' strategy of "branding" is itself in conflict with her attempt to equate Americanism with democracy and diversity. "In the corporate world," Klein writes, "once a 'brand identity' is settled upon, it is enforced with military precision throughout a company's operations. ... At its core, branding is about rigorously controlled one-way messages, sent out in their glossiest form, then sealed off from those who would turn corporate monologue into social dialogue." This approach may work for corporations, Klein says, but not for governments. "When companies try to implement global image consistency, they look like generic franchises. But when governments do the same, they can look distinctly authoritarian. It's no coincidence that the political leaders most preoccupied with branding themselves and their parties were also allergic to democracy and diversity. Historically, this has been the ugly flipside of politicians striving for consistency of brand: centralised information, state-controlled media, re-education camps, purging of dissidents and much worse."

Tobacco behemoth Philip Morris executives announced late last year that it was time for a full-scale corporate makeover centering on changing the company's name to Altria. "After spending the quarter billion dollars ceaselessly touting their philanthropic efforts, the tobacco giant still ranked second to last -- beating only exploding tire maker Bridgestone Firestone -- in a survey of corporate reputations, conducted by The Reputation Institute and Harris Interactive. Many observers believe the impetus behind the proposed change is to put distance between the company's lucrative stock and its unseemly tobacco image," CorpWatch's Tom Price writes. As with all good PR campaigns, only the public's perception of the company would be addressed and not the nature of Philip Morris' business. "Anti-smoking groups are crying foul, saying the name change is a cynical attempt to distance the company from its tobacco roots without changing its product lines," Price writes.

"Former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro is lobbying for the Alliance for Energy & Economic Growth, which defines itself as a 'broad-based coalition of over 1,300 members that develop, deliver and consume energy from all sources,'" O'Dwyer's PR Daily writes. "Her topic is the Alliance's Yucca Mountain Initiative. That's the plan to build a centralized national nuclear waste repository inside that Nevada mountain. That dump, which has been under review for years and has recently gotten the okay from the Bush Administration, is fiercely opposed by environmental groups, Las Vegas casino interests and the Nevada political establishment. ... The Alliance, an offshoot of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, counts CSX, Caterpillar Inc., Duke Energy, Edison Electric Institute, El Paso Energy, Florida Power Corp., Ingersoll-Rand, Inland Oil and Gas, National Mining Assn. and Shell Oil as members." In response to criticism of her work on behalf of Alliance, Ferraro said, "I've lost too many friends to terrorists."

"If you've ever given money to an environmental organization ... you might even be a terrorist, or at least an accomplice. At least that's what Nick Nichols seems to think. Nichols views wouldn't matter if he were just another backwoods loser. On the contrary, environmental watchdogs fear he's at the vanguard of efforts to exploit the nation's post-September 11th mood by tarring the entire green movement as extremists. ... Nichols is the CEO of "crisis communication" firm Nichols-Dezenhall. The firm doesn't reveal its clients, but they have reportedly included business pillars including Audi, Arco and the Society of the Plastics Industry. He's also popular on the nation's lecture circuit. At a March 7, 2002 conference on "Eco Extremism" co-sponsored by Nichols Dezenhall and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a 'free market' think tank) Nichols delivered a thinly-veiled marketing pitch for his firm, in an assembly room overlooking the U.S. Capitol grounds. Among the well-heeled, attentive audience members were journalists, think tankers and executives from the paper, forestry and plastics industries." For more information on Nichols' services to corporations, download his recent presentation to the National Pork Producers.

"A powerful group of neo-conservatives is launching a new public relations campaign in support of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism," AlterNet's Jim Lobe writes. The group of well connected Republicans is calling itself Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT). In an open letter published in a full-page New York Times ad, former Secretary of Education and drug czar William Bennett writes: "The threats we face today are both external and internal: external in that there are groups and states that want to attack the United States; internal in that there are those who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first.' Both threats stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their practice." Our goal is to address the present threats so as to eradicate future terrorism and defeat ideologies that support it." AVOT is a "project" of Empower.org, which is the "education and research arm" of the right-wing think tank Empower America. The leadership of Empower America includes Jack Kemp, William Bennett, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Trent Lott among others. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld formerly served as an Empower America director.

The release of President Bush's defense- and "homeland security"-heavy budget will generate plenty of work for PR agencies according to PR Week reporter Douglas Quenqua. "The trick in 2002, say public affairs and budget experts, will be to redefine your pet issue or product as a matter of homeland security," Quenqua writes. "If you can convince Congress that your company's widget will strengthen America's borders, or that funding your client's pet project will make America less dependent on foreign resources, you just might be able to get what you're looking for." As for domestic spending cuts, this year's Congressional elections may provide enough motivation for incumbents to engage in heated debates over programs that would affect their constituents. "As much opportunity as the election presents to turn around the President's domestic proposals, all agree it will be an uphill battle," Quenqua writes. "And at the end of the day, that's always good news for PR agencies."

Does the White House blacklist critical journalists? Nicholas Confessore examines the way journalists who flatter the Bush administration get treated compared to others. Bob Woodward got "the royal treatment: spoon-fed chronology, high-level interviews, and juicy anecdotes galore" as he worked on a breathless account of the days after September 11 in which "the president and his staff are always resolute, action is always decisive, and pressure is always met by grace." By contrast, Dana Milbank, who has uncovered a number of stories embarrassing to the administration, gets "angry calls to the boss, lack of cooperation on routine requests (such as travel schedules), and other petty -- and not so petty -- reprisals."

The Baltimore Sun reports that Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) hired Washington-based lobbying firm Bonner & Associates to kill legislation that would lower the cost of prescription drugs for Maryland's Medicaid program and for lower-income residents who have no medical insurance. According to the Sun, Bonner & Associates recruited a small Michigan-based nonprofit group called the Consumer Alliance to front for PhRMA. "By joining with Bonner & Associates, the Consumer Alliance gets money and organizational help to spread its message," the Sun writes. "In exchange, PhRMA gets to hide its agenda behind a group that legislators might think is made up solely of consumers."

Joshua Micah Marshall, a former Washington Editor of the American Prospect, has some good insider dirt on Washington politics. His "Talking Points" website examines "astroturf" organizing, "op-ed payola" and other schemes used to manipulate the media and elected officials. It also provides viewable access to actual strategy documents from PR firms and lobbyists, such as a 1991 plan developed by van Kloberg & Associates for then-Zairian dictator Mobutu, and a 1992 plan developed by Jefferson Waterman International to help the Republic of Croatia get away with ethnic cleansing.

When Marty Jezer got a letter and survey in the mail from "Citizens Against the Shutdown of Vermont Yankee," he guessed right away that the group was a front for his local nuclear power plant. "Vermont Yankee has always presented its side of the nuclear story with vigor," he says. "They have a public relations staff trained to do that job. So why the front group? Why the transparently ridiculous attempt to show grassroots support?"

National conferences of the media literacy movement have been funded by Channel One, AOL/Timer Warner, and other media giants trying to define, co-opt and profit from media literacy. Now, "a new, national organization is forming that will tackle the challenges brought on by our current global media system. ... Join other dedicated and passionate individuals that want to make an impact upon media education at the ACME Summit 2002." The summit will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 18-20th, and the Center for Media & Democracy is among the supporting organizations.

"Sadly, in the face of the grand spin machine, the nine American lives that were lost this week will just get caught up in the patriotic, hero-propping fervor that has seized the country ever since the World Trade Center bombings," writes Mark Brown. "Anyone who dies in the line of duty, especially servicemen and law enforcement officers, are instantly heroes. I don't think there is anything wrong with fallen soldiers receiving that treatment, for the record. But the greater tragedy here is when nobody asks the question: 'Why are those men there dying in the first place?' "

PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton will be speaking next week in several cities in the eastern U.S. as part of an authors' tour in connection with the paperback release of our book, Trust Us, We're Experts. Upcoming book appearances include:

• Tuesday, March 12, 4:00 PM: The Yale Bookstore, 77 Broadway at York Square, New Haven, CT 06511
• Thursday, March 14, 7:30 PM: Barnes & Noble, 267 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11215
• Friday, March 15, 12:30 PM: Borders, 10-24 School Street, Boston, MA 02108
• Sunday, March 17, 1:00-3:00 PM: Dartmouth Bookstore, 33 South Main Street, Hanover, NH 03755
• Monday, March 18, 7:30 PM: Barnes & Noble, 102 Dorset Street, S. Burlington, VT 05403

In December of 2000, journalist Hal Herring revealed in High Country News that "the sale of velvet antler from domestic elk in North America is estimated by its proponents to be a $3 billion industry. Korea is still the primary destination for most velvet products, but promoters have created a demand in the U.S. alternative medicine and nutritional supplement market." This lucrative business of grinding up elk antlers and selling them as nutritional supplements amounts to a world-wide uncontrolled experiment in transmitting CWD (also called 'mad deer' or 'mad elk' disease) to humans. Research scientist Dr. Bruce Chesebro told Herring that taking elk antler supplements is "playing with fire. ... It's basicaly the same thing we do in the lab with mice" to infect them experimentally. Yet no agency is warning consumers, much less banning such dangerous experimentation, and sales of velvet elk antler supplements are just a mouse click away.

In a new report, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council examine the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). "While ALEC purports to be a 'good-government' group operating in the public interest, its sole mission is to advance special-interest legislation across the nation on behalf of its corporate sponsors and funders," the report says. "The organization's behind-the-scenes advocacy has been surprisingly effective -- leading, according to ALEC material, to the enactment of more than 450 state laws during the 1999 and 2000 state legislative sessions. ALEC would have the public believe that it's an association of elected members of the 50 state legislatures with varying political and public policy philosophies. However, ALEC is nothing less than a tax-exempt facade for the country's largest corporations and kindred entities. Companies likes Enron, Amoco, Chevron, Shell, Texaco, Coors Brewing, Koch Industries, Nationwide Insurance, Pfizer, National Energy Group, Philip Morris, and R. J. Reynolds pay for essentially all of ALEC's expenses."

Since September 11 the FBI has issued 43 terrorism alerts, inducing feelings of fear, anxiety and helplessness in many Americans -- a condition that Washington, DC psychologist Rona Fields describes as Acute Prolonged Stress Syndrome. "After so many vague alerts, many based on uncorroborated evidence, it's fair to ask, What's the point? Why spook a country that's already spooked?" writes Geoffrey Gray. "The Bush administration likes to brand the fight against terrorism as a new kind of war, with new enemies and new rules, but using fear to push policy has been an actual play in the White House book since the Truman administration began commissioning behavioral studies on 'emotion management' during the early days of Cold War hysteria." The Bush administration's game plan, he says, mirror the Cold War strategies of the Truman administration's top-secret "Project East River," which "looked into ways of using paranoia to control behavior. " The Bush administration's PR initiatives -- Charlotte Beers, the Rendon Group, the Office of Strategic Influence, the Office of Homeland Security -- resemble the Truman administration's efforts at "calibrating the unease of the public by performing 'ritualized training behavior,' or civil defense. This meant duck-and-cover drills, bomb-shelter preparation, and asking citizens to keep a careful watch on others."

Ann Coulter's recent death threat against liberals is only the latest in a string of deliberate efforts by conservative propagandists to turn the "war on terrorism" into a domestic war against people who dissent from their conservative agenda. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a long-time foe of environmentalists, is working with the PR firm of Nichols-Dezenhall to sponsor a conference that attempts to equate environmental activists with Al Qaeda. Titled "Stopping Eco-Extremism: A Conference On Legislative, Legal And Communications Strategies To Protect Free Enterprise," it is schedule to be held March 7 in Washington, DC. The CEI website claims that the conference is free and open to the public, but when Dan Barry of the Clearinghouse for Environmental Education, Action and Research attempted to register, he was turned away. "We can only imagine that the security risk comes from us exposing the true nature of their specious campaign," Barry says. (For more on propaganda uses of the war on terrorism, read "Terrorism As Pretext" in the Fourth Quarter 2001 issue of PR Watch.)

"If there's anywhere anyone can advertise about anything, it's Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. ... But there's one ad neither of the Hollywood trades will run--the latest broadside from Smoke Free Movies, a health advocacy group that's been at the forefront of a no-holds-barred campaign against the proliferation of cigarette smoking in movies," writes Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times. The Smoke Free Movies campaign, led by UC San Francisco School of Medicine professor Stanton Glantz, places advertisements decrying Hollywood's glamorization of smoking and asks that movies with smoking be rated R. Their latest ad attacks Miramax's "In the Bedroom" for "gratuitously promoting Marlboro brand cigarettes." Glantz told the LA Times that Variety didn't have a problem with the ad until an ABC reporter called Miramax for comment. "'The next day Variety called and said they wouldn't run the ad,' says Glantz. 'It's so obvious--I have no doubt Miramax demanded that they pull the ads. People say that when we criticize smoking in movies that we're interfering with free speech, but then Miramax turns around and uses its economic muscle to basically shut me up,'" Goldstein writes.

"If a last-minute provision in the Senate farm bill becomes law, irradiated hamburger could become known by a more appealing name: pasteurized beef," New York Times reporter Elizabeth Becker writes. "Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who heads the Senate Agriculture Committee, said today that he had inserted the provision in an effort to 'more clearly define pasteurization,' the process by which disease-producing bacteria have long been destroyed in some foods through heating. But neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the Agriculture Department has yet to agree that meat treated by radiation, a process approved by the government two years ago, should qualify as pasteurized. Food safety advocates argue that the legislative provision is an effort to avoid F.D.A. regulatory procedures that would ordinarily be needed in order to define irradiation as a form of pasteurization for labeling purposes. Both the industry and Mr. Harkin deny any such end run. Mr. Harkin's home state is also home, in Sioux City, to the main plant of the SureBeam Corporation, the No. 1 irradiator of ground beef sold in the United States."

The shocking news that the US epidemic of 'mad deer' disease has jumped from the West to the Midwest and into the huge white tailed deer population in Wisconsin has all players scrambling and pointing fingers. States that depend on money from big game licenses are assuring the public that chronic wasting disease (CWD) cannot infect and kill humans, although there is no proof for that claim and some evidence to the contrary. The deer and game farm industry blames state wildlife agencies, claiming the disease came from wild animals, but in fact the evidence points to the game farm industry as the culprit, spreading the disease by the virtually unregulated trafficking in farmed deer and elk. And, the Colorado Division of Wildlife is calling on all states to test game farms for the disease, much too late into a disastrous epidemic.

In Trust Us, We're Experts, PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber examined the ways that industry PR manipulates science and gambles with your future. Now British science writer Colin Tudge is exploring similar themes. Whether the topic is pharmaceuticals or genetically modified foods, he says, "people distrust what scientists tell them. And they are perfectly right to do so. ... More broadly, it begins to seem that no expert of any kind, scientist or lawyer or auditor, is likely to be employed at all except by private companies; and their publicly expressed opinions are adjusted accordingly."

"How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy," observed the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft seems to have taken this to heart. Workers at the Department of Justice are complaining about being expected to sing a patriotic song written by Ashcroft himself. "Have you heard the song? It really sucks," said one department lawyer of "Let the Eagle Soar," which Ashcroft performed personally during a recent speech to a seminary in North Carolina.

NBC has hired a PR firm that specializes in crisis management to help deflect mounting criticism over its decision to carry hard-liquor ads. Shepardson, Stern & Kaminsky will help the network fend off criticism from groups like the American Medical Association, which recently ran a full-page ad in the New York Times, saying that NBC has "let down America's children."

The Rendon Group received close to $100-million dollars from the CIA for work it did in Iraq in the five years following the Gulf War according to reporter Seymour Hersh in a New Yorker article. Between 1991-96, The Rendon Group did "media relations" work for the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition opposition group supported at the time by the CIA. Hersh also reports that CIA clandestine service veteran Linda Flohr, who had worked for the "top-secret" Iraqi Operations Group, went to work for the Rendon Group in 1994 after her retirement from the CIA. "Recently, Flohr was named director of security for the Office of Homeland Security and director of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council," O'Dwyer's PR reports. In October 2001, The Rendon Group received a $100,000-a-month, no-bid contract from the Pentagon for assistance with the "war on terror." The Rendon Group also was to work for the Department of Defense's Office of Strategic Influence, until the Pentagon, responding to criticism about the possibility of OSI planting false news stories, said the office would be scrapped.

The Bush administration may be trying to "prepare us for a war without end," writes Ruth Rosen. "The political impetus for creating a state of perpetual war can't be ignored. George W. Bush has never forgotten his father's precipitous fall after the Persian Gulf War. Despite his currently high approval ratings, Bush also knows that a majority of Americans still favor the Democrats' domestic policies."

Dan Murphy, webmaster of meatingplace.com, blusters on today about how the General Accounting Office's warning that the US government is failing to adequately prevent an outbreak of British mad cow disease is "a bunch of BS." Says Murphy, "Could it happen here? ... It's possible. And it's also possible that a trainload of lagered-up losers could pull into Columbus, Ohio, the day before a Major League Soccer 'death match' between the Crew and the LA Galaxy and tear up the town during a night of wanton rioting." Ironically, Murphy's rant appears the day after newspapers announced that chronic wasting disease, a mad cow-type disease being spread across North America by deer and elk game farms, has been found for the first time east of the Mississippi in wild Wisconsin white tailed deer. Despite the meat industry's loud denials, the growing threat of mad cow-type diseases in the US is real. For more info on mad cow-type diseases,our 1997 book Mad Cow USA is available free on-line as a PDF download.

"Titled 'Rhode Island Positioning,' the memo distributed two weeks ago by public-relations consultant Jody Powell to the dozens of lawyers and consultants representing the nation's lead-paint companies was a straightforward exposition on how to spin public perceptions," writes the Providence Journal. "Unfortunately, it seems for Powell's firm, the memo actually became public." A former press secretary to President Jimmy Carter, Powell is now an executive with Weber Shandwick, where he is helping the lead-paint companies fight off a potentially massive product liability suit. Apparently he accidentally emailed his strategy memo to a reporter, who promptly published it in its entirety in the Feb. 15 Rhode Island Law Tribune. Result: Weber Shandwick was fired from the account, and the PR defense of lead has been handed to Robert Dilenschneider (whose previous projects include Three Mile Island and the war in the Persian Gulf). Dilenschneider's man in charge of the lead paint account is Matthew Swetonic, former director of the Asbestos Textile Institute.

In the wake of the Enron meltdown, Business 2.0 magazine is running several articles offering "free advice for the suddenly non-credible," in which PR gurus offer their recommendations for helping clients who have been caught lying, cheating or committing atrocities. Perhaps the most interesting comments appear in the reader response section, which invites people to comment on the financial status and standards of their own companies. Most of the responses suggest that Enron is not an isolated case. "Integrity is a handicap," comments one reader. Quips another: "My company juggles the books so much they should start a circus."