Journalism professor Jay Rosen has written a commentary about Karen Ryan, the public relations consultant who got caught posing as a reporter in a video news release produced for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to praise the Bush administration's controversial new Medicare bill. "If Karen Ryan belonged to a real profession, responsible members of that fraternity would denounce her fakery, and renounce the practice of sticking simulated reporters into video clips so as to maximize the illusion of independent journalism and serious fact-finding," Rosen writes. "A real profession would be criticizing the government for abusing the practice of public relations. ... PR's 'just fake it' mentality has advanced so far into normal practice, all over our public culture, left, middle and right, that it usually seems pointless to object. Yet in the case of Ryan we find someone so saturated with the PR mentality, with fakery as a normal condition in life, that she cannot distinguish between criticism of her creepy practice, ('I'm Karen Ryan reporting') and the world shouting at her: you're such a horrible person, Karen! ... Could most Americans - Republicans, Democrats, Bush haters, Bush supporters, white collar, blue collar - even complete the kind of act in question, which involves lying with smooth demeanor about who you are, falsifying what you do for a living, tapping the remaining credibility of another profession to promote your own, and hoping you make it on the air to complete the government's deception?"

"The United States-led occupation in Iraq has enlisted a British public relations firm to help promote the establishment of democracy in the country. The firm, Bell Pottinger, based in London, is creating television and radio commercials that will explain to Iraqis how and why the United States is handing over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in June. The campaign will begin next week on local and satellite stations in Iraq. Bell Pottinger, a subsidiary of Chime Communications, has decades of political experience. The chairman, Lord Tim Bell, ran publicity campaigns for Margaret Thatcher. ... Some advertising experts said they were wary about the idea of using television spots to push political change and encourage the growth of democracy. ... 'I hope Bell Pottinger learns from the real fiasco that was Charlotte Beers' campaign,' said a London Business School professor, Patrick Barwise. Bell Pottinger should be sure to ask basic questions, he said, including 'Why are we here?' and 'Why is there a problem?' "

Seven nuclear power companies announced a joint effort to "apply for a license to build a new commercial power plant" -- the first in 30 years. The consortium will "test a simplified licensing system created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission... to help the industry go from reactor order to electricity production in 5 years, as opposed to the 10 or 12 years" it used to take. The consortium is integral to the Bush administration's "Nuclear Power 2010" program, a "joint government/industry cost-shared effort" hoping to "deploy" new plants "in the 2010 timeframe." In other news, a two-year study by 30 environmental, health and safety groups faulted the Energy Department for "the seepage of radioactive and toxic byproducts" from nuclear weapons complexes "into vital water resources."

"With the White House weathering allegations from its former anti-terrorism adviser, revelations about the health of Medicare and unrelenting turmoil in Iraq," George Bush is trying to recapture a "compassionate conservative" image to boost his campaign. Republican strategists say that "cozy voter forums" are the way to go, and Bush has in fact "appeared at least nine times in the past seven weeks at carefully staged meetings... in a half-dozen states, including crucial battlegrounds like Florida and Pennsylvania." Local news coverage featuring "a relaxed, smiling Bush... with ordinary Americans" is key to the "conversation formula." Recent campaign photo-ops include Bush "with black families in the Philadelphia suburbs and with manufacturing workers in Kentucky."

The secretive Washington-based PR firm the Rendon Group apparently dealt the Columbian Ministry of Defense a losing hand. According to its website, Rendon has been working closely with the Colombian Army, Navy, Air Force and National Police on "message development and dissemination, strategic communications planning, and media event planning." To those ends, Rendon created a deck of playing cards featuring Columbian "narco-terrorists" -- otherwise known as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and two other antigovernment groups. The Washington Times writes, "A State Department official ... said wanted posters in the form of playing cards are a poor fit in Colombia. In fact, he said, some diplomats were 'surprised' to find out last year that a defense contractor working in Colombia used its contract dollars to produce the decks." The State Department has blocked distribution of the decks. The Rendon Group gained notoriety for its work in Iraq -- it's credited with creating the Iraqi National Congress for the CIA in the early 90s -- and for its post-9/11 contract with the Pentagon.

"A quarter century ago this week, a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island [in Pennsylvania] underwent a partial meltdown... Since that time, no American utility has dared to build a brand new nuclear power plant... [But] power blackouts, rising natural-gas prices, and concerns about greenhouse gases have changed public attitudes," writes David Francis. An Associated Press story claims: "By most accounts, nuclear power is back in style." But nuclear power critics have planned 48 actions in 18 states marking the Three Mile Island anniversary. An alert about nuclear industry subsidies in the federal energy bill notes: "The industry trade and lobby organization, Nuclear Energy Institute, had contact with Vice-President Cheney's energy task force 19 times -- reportedly more than any other interest group or trade industry."

George W. Bush's long-time advisor Karen Hughes hits the book circuit promoting her new autobiography Ten Minutes From Normal. While she's plugging her book, she's also plugging the president's re-election. The New York Times writes, "Ms. Hughes is the smiling, media-savvy White House representative whose book now wraps her -- and, by implication, the president -- in the heroism of motherhood. Its theme is clear by the identifying lines under her name on the book's front jacket: 'Counselor to the President. Wife and Mother. The woman who left the White House to put family first, and moved back home to Texas.'" Hughes, however, won't be spending too much time in Texas once she steps full-time into her role as senior advisor to Bush's re-election campaign. She's already spreading "the message about Mr. Bush in her speeches around the country, for which she receives $50,000 each." Laura Flanders writes in her new book "Bushwomen," that Hughes is "a career woman, GOP leader and stay-out-of-the-home mom," who spent years massaging Bush's "compassionate conservative" message. Marvin Olasky who is credited with authoring the catch phrase, is hardly a friend to career women. According to Flanders, he's "a man who believes in his heart that success like [Hughes'] shames society."

Dave Lindorff calls it "a moment that spoke volumes last week about the spinelessness of American journalism." At Colin Powell's March 19 Baghdad press conference, "all of the Iraqi and other Arab journalists... got up and walked out, along with many reporters and camera crews from European and other countries," to protest the killing of two reporters for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiyya TV channel. "But the American reporters... [shunned the] act of professional solidarity in protest against rules of engagement that allow American troops to slaughter accredited journalists." In a letter to Donald Rumsfeld, the Committee to Protect Journalists asks "whether U.S forces are adequately taking into account the presence of journalists... and using appropriate measures to avoid endangering them."

Corporate lobby groups such as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) have launched a fierce counter-campaign against the proposed Norms on Business and Human Rights, which were developed by a subcommission of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The Norms oblige businesses internationally to refrain from activities that violate human rights. In addition to the ICC, the Norms have been vigorously opposed by the Shell oil company, a self-proclaimed leader in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement. "Is this not the kind of campaign one could expect only from companies lagging behind and from free-riders refusing to adapt to social and environmental concerns?" asks the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO). The motive behind Shell's opposition, CEO suggests, is that "the company generally gets away easily with its inflated claims concerning its social responsibility record. A recent report by Christian Aid documents that Shell's operations in the Niger Delta (Nigeria) are still causing serious problems for local communities. The report also highlights that most of the community development projects presented in various glossy Shell reports on CSR are in fact failing. Hospitals, schools and water supply systems are built but never start working, and roads are mainly used to boost oil production. But beyond the debate about the extent to which Shell's CSR claims are actually greenwash and poor-wash, it is clear that the company is determined to prevent the emergence of international mechanisms through which communities could hold it accountable to its pledges."

In a discussion with former U.S. propaganda Czar Charlotte Beers on whether U.S. efforts to sell America to Arabs and Muslims could create backlash, NPR's On the Media host Bob Garfield asks, "Given United States' policy with respect to Israel and the Palestinians, for example, or given the fact that the United States was invading Iraq, was there a chance that the very existence of the public diplomacy efforts were only going to harden opposition to everything that America stands for?" In her reply, Beers dissembles, comparing U.S. foreign policy to a poisoned painkiller: "Nothing would be more dangerous than silence. It's like asking Tylenol to be very quiet when people found out there was poison inadvertently put into their Tylenol packages. They went immediately to the air and every phase of communication to talk about what they were going to do, how it would be handled, and they won a huge round with the consumer groups. We do have some policies that are not popular, and that doesn't mean necessarily that we can make those popular, but we can certainly engage on many other fronts."

Former navy public affairs office Lt. John Oliveira told Democracy Now! that he didn't realize how stressful his military oath would be for him when aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt last year. "I had to get on television every day to talk to the American people and the international public and continue to sell them on the administration's policies, which I did not believe in," Oliveira said. He oversaw embedded journalists on the aircraft carrier, which at the time was in the eastern Mediterranean. "I'm [now] doing what I can to support our troops. Up until two months ago, I was one of those troops. I was unable to voice my opinion regarding the administration policies on how they were using our military. And one of the key things I say to Mr. Bush, 'support our troops and join us.' Because the way he's doing it is not supporting our troops, it's using them," Oliveira said.

"With corporate and union donations banned by a new law, lawmakers are pressing lobbyists to raise campaign money," reports AP. Lobbyist-organized fundraisers must raise at least $10,000 "to lure a freshman lawmaker to one of their events," at least $15,000 for veteran members, and $50,000 for committee chairs. "We raise money for members of Congress because they become familiar with us as individuals and when you ask for time from them, they're more inclined to give it to you," said lobbyist Louis Dupart. Robert Walker of the Wexler & Walker lobbying firm lamented that "fund-raisers are becoming one of few ways lobbyists can see members of Congress," due to increased security measures at the Capitol.

Condoleezza Rice is the White House official whose testimony is desired the most by the congressional panel probing the Bush administration's handling of Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, but the Bush administration refuses to have her testify publicly. She hasn't exactly been invisible, though. In response to criticisms of the White House by former anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, Rice has been "spending the week on television and in news media briefings," note Elizabeth Bumiller and Philip Shenon. "She has infuriated some members of the panel, who wonder why she has time for CNN but not for them. On Thursday they questioned again whether she should be subpoenaed to testify. ... 'My gosh, I think she was on every single network the day the commission opened its hearing this week, attacking our witnesses,' said former Senator Bob Kerrey, a commission member and a Democrat." Joshua Micah Marshall notes that Rice has even been eager to reveal classified information if it helps the administration's image. "She's a veritable information geyser, a one-woman-FOIA," Marshall quips. "She just won't answer questions under oath." The Washington Post notes, moreover, that Rice's "flurry of media interviews and statements" have "contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements."

"Company founders have long believed that placing their name on their company signals their willingness to stake their personal reputation and stand behind their products," observes the University of Pennsylvania's business school. "That's fine when things are going well and the company and the CEO whose name it bears are held in high regard. But what if the CEO falls from grace? What happens to a company if the CEO's name is in effect its brand o and then that name is tarnished? Rarely has that question come up more sharply than in the case of Martha Stewart, America's long-reigning diva of decor, who was recently convicted on conspiracy and other charges. ... When it is done right, brand personification can tap into the human desire to belong to a community. In the case of Martha Stewart ... customers could virtually lose their identity to that of the brand."

"From Alabama to Illinois, grass-roots groups have turned to the courts in an attempt to shut down industrial-style concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, or to keep them from being built," reports Andrew Martin. Last year, the General Accounting Office found that "loopholes in federal regulations and inconsistent enforcement leave an estimated 60 percent of the largest CAFOs unregulated." Large livestock operations are fighting back through state-level "Right to Farm" bills promoted by the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC's vaguely worded "Right to Farm" bill reads, in part: "A farm or farm operation shall not be found to be a public or private nuisance if [it]... conforms to generally accepted agriculture and management practices."

Army "situ-mercials" will air during the re-broadcast of a popular World War II HBO miniseries. "In one segment of the [Army] program, a modern soldier says, 'Once you put on this uniform, you feel like you are doing something that a lot of people can't do.' The program then shifts to a 'Band of Brothers' scene where one soldier asks another why he wanted to join the paratroopers. [Army public-affairs specialist Paul] Boyce says the effort is aimed at an older demographic that might influence younger people when they choose careers." The Army paid an estimated $800,000 to $1 million to air a special 22-minute show and shorter "situational" ads alongside "Band of Brothers" on the History Channel.

"St. Martin's Press has brought in Shirley & Banister Public Affairs to drum up conservative support for a new book accusing women's magazines of a liberal bend and constant focus on the 'woes of womanhood,'" reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "Former Ladies Home Journal editor-in-chief, Myrna Blyth, penned the tome, Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America. In it she charges the $7 billion industry and a 'Girls' Club' of female media elites are exploiting female emotions and hawking a left-of-center, do-gooder agenda to their audience." Shirley & Banister is a PR firm that "specializes in getting authors onto conservative talk-radio programs."

Shortly before former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke's testimony to the September 11th commission, "the White House violated its long-standing rules by authorizing Fox News to air remarks favorable to Bush that Clarke had made anonymously at an administration briefing in 2002. The White House press secretary read passages from the 2002 remarks at his televised briefing, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice... called reporters into her office to highlight the discrepancy. 'There are two very different stories here,' she said. 'These stories can't be reconciled.'" On Tuesday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan read from Clarke's January 2003 resignation letter and stated: "There was no mention of the grave concerns he claims to have had about the direction of the war on terrorism." As journalist Chris Albritton has noted, moreover, Fox News committed "a major journalistic no-no" by publicizing Clarke's off-the-record interview: "A news organization that was included in a briefing with the agreement that it was on background - that is, with no quotes and the briefer not be identified - approached a source's former employer and offered to give up apparently conflicting words that the employer could use against the source."

"Industry officials are expressing grave concern that a growing alliance between environmentalists and patient advocacy groups to link exposure to harmful pollution with chronic diseases and life-long disabilities could add credibility to activists' calls for stricter environmental requirements," Inside EPA reports. Bart Mongoven, who works for the private intelligence firm Stratfor, told petroleum industry officials, "In five years, the environmental community would like to see all debates [be about] the environment and health." He warned the audience at the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (NPRA) annual meeting that connecting environmental issues to public health "works here." He said that one way for industry to fight these new lobbying efforts, which expand public health concerns beyond pesticides to industrial emissions and effluent, is to paint the efforts as being "anti-chemical," rather than in favor of a public health goal.

"When they need people, they keep them. When they don't, they implement their policy of discrimination," said the director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The group found that "the number of gays dismissed from the military under the Pentagon's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy has dropped to its lowest level in nine years as U.S. forces fought in Afghanistan and Iraq." In related news, the Log Cabin Republicans protested the Office of Special Counsel's decision to remove "information about sexual-orientation discrimination" from federal websites. The websites were changed based on the new Special Counsel's interpretation of a 1978 law, which he believes bans discrimination based on homosexual conduct, but not homosexual status.

The Clear Channel radio network says it didn't have a political agenda for canning shock jock Howard Stern, who has become an outspoken critic of President Bush. But new political contribution data shows that the network has given "$42,200 to Bush, vs. $1,750 to likely Democratic nominee John Kerry in the 2004 race," reports Jim Hopkins. "What's more, the executives and Clear Channel's political action committee gave 77% of their $334,501 in federal contributions to Republicans. That's a bigger share than any other entertainment company, says the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics."

"Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming 'Doomsday!'" reads a leaked memo from the U.S. House of Representatives' Republican Conference communications office to GOP members. The memo isn't referring to the Middle East -- it's offering advice on how to dismiss environmental issues raised by Democratic challengers. Suggestions include: "Global warming is not a fact," "links between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy," and the Environmental Protection Agency is "exaggerating" water pollution claims. The House memo echoes an earlier warning from GOP pollster Frank Luntz that the party is "most vulnerable" on environmental issues.

Three federal appellate court judges have been urged to resign from the board of the Foundation for Research in Economics and Environment (FREE). FREE, which receives funding from companies including Texaco, ExxonMobil and Monsanto, says it "harmonizes environmental quality with responsible liberty and economic progress." FREE pays for judges to attend seminars and "visit resorts in the area around Yellowstone National Park" -- to the tune of $10,000 per person, according to tax records. The dean of New York University's law school remarked: "A judge should not sit on the board of a group like FREE or any other group with a strident ideological profile on isues of a kind that come before the court."

Web journalist and novelist Daniel Price points out that here at the Center for Media & Democracy we have been sounding the alarm on Video News Releases for over a decade. Price writes that "thanks to the Medicare fake news flap (see 3/22 'spin of the day' below) America has been formally introduced to the Video News Release. Except they've been around for twenty years and we've already seen thousands of them. You know life is getting strange when even Jon Stewart can't handle the irony. As host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, America's leading source of mock news and news-mocking, Stewart devoted a chunk of the March 17 broadcast to [the Karen Ryan VNR controversy.] ... The real humdinger -- as Stewart was quick to point out -- is that the entire news report was bogus; a slick video package commissioned by the government, produced by a media communications firm , performed by a PR consultant, and then distributed to newsrooms all across the country. Forty different stations had shuffled the story into their homegrown newscasts, never once attributing the source. Upon hearing this, the Daily Show studio audience vented their surprise through a procession of screams and jeers. Stewart himself seemed to have a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that out of TV's many journalistic outlets, it took a fake news show to expose a real news show for passing fake news off as real. ... Welcome to the strange and secret world of the Video News Release, where reality is bent in ways that even Jayson Blair couldn't imagine ... ."

Communications consultant Fraser Seitel says this year's presidential campaign "promises to be the filthiest, grimiest, most mean-spirited in the history of the Republic." He predicts: "the Karl Rovian/ Bob Shrumian mega-million dollar PR strategies" will have Bush slamming Kerry as a "position-hopping, tax-popping, liberal toady" and Kerry painting Bush as a "bible thumping, fat cat pumping, right wing wildman." Noting Bush's penchant for western ranch imagery and Kerry's motorcycle photo-ops, the Los Angeles Times asked whether the campaign has a "Who is more macho?" subtext. And a recent survey of cable TV viewers found that "people are really unhappy about their role, or lack of it, in the democratic process."

"Canadian investigators have identified... the probable source of recent cases of mad-cow disease in North America," reports the Wall Street Journal. Canada imported 192 cattle from Britain in the 1980s. After one of the British cows tested positive for mad cow disease in 1993, Canadian officials tried to "remove" them from domestic herds. But 68 cows were missing, "most likely because they already had been slaughtered." Canada's Food Inspection Agency concluded that "the infected U.S. dairy cow and a Canadian beef cow diagnosed" with mad cow disease last year "most likely" ate feed from at least two separate mills contaminated with rendered meat from the missing British cattle. If true, this scenario suggests more cases which "may just now be surfacing."

The General Accounting Office is investigating whether the Department of Health and Human Services' video news releases touting the new Medicare law constitute illegal "covert propaganda." Some PR pros think it's much ado about nothing: "VNRs have been around since the dawn of TV," said the CEO of Medialink. But the director of the National Association of Government Communicators warned that the VNR "Hollywood approach" could undermine public trust. Karen Ryan, the "reporter" in the Medicare spots, told the Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk she feels like "political roadkill." Ryan, a former journalist, heads her own PR firm. Karen Ryan Group Communications was hired by Home Front Communications, which was hired by Ketchum Advertising, which was hired by HHS to do the VNRs. According to Campaign Desk reporter Zachary Roth, "The real question, however, is: How did so many television stations end up running the segment? While taking ultimate responsibility for their error, many news directors pointed the finger at two other targets: the Bush administration and CNN," whose "CNN Newsource" service is a "sort of wire service for TV," but gets paid for mixing VNRs with genuine news stories. "It mixes in the client's material with legitimate, CNN-produced news stories to be used by local stations - acting as a paid 'news launderer' on behalf of the VNR producers," Roth writes.

Jerry M. Landay has written a detailed report, showing how "hundreds of tax-exempt organizations of the far right have been exploiting the twilight zone of campaign and IRS regulations for three decades -- receiving billions of dollars in grants and contributions to wage ideo-political warfare for far-right ideas, causes, and Republican candidates ... a vast machine that, in the judgment of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has 'played a critical role in helping the Republican Party to dominate state, local and national politics.' It is now operating at full throttle to keep Bush in office. ... The endgame for the apparat is a one-party state in which elections project only a vestigial appearance of democratic process."

When George W. Bush visited Fort Campbell as a warm up to the one-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion, he was met by happy soldiers waving flags and chanting "U.S.A!" "Bush outlined the triumphs of the 101st Airborne as a way to describe U.S. successes in Iraq over the past year. He celebrated the division's killing of Hussein's sons, the capture of various Iraqi cities, the construction of schools and medical clinics, and the preparation for Iraqi elections," the Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes. But the warm welcome wasn't exactly spontaneous. Soldiers on the base, which has lost 65 soldiers in Iraq and seven more in Afghanistan, were given small U.S. flags before Bush's arrival and told, "We're going to show him a lot of love by waving flags. ... You're going to wave and clap and make a lot of noise. ... You must smile. We are happy campers here."

"It's not in the budget, but we're doing what we have to do," said the senior vice-president for news at CBS. "Clearly, if and when Osama is found, having resources over there is going to be critical," said ABC's senior vice-president for international news. Thousands of Pakistani troops and "a dozen or so" American intelligence agents are carrying out an intensive raid against Al-Quaeda leaders believed to be in Pakistan's South Waziristan region. CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox are getting reporters in place. It's a ratings war: "From a financial standpoint, the capture of Bin Laden can't come soon enough for some network executives." On Thursday, Colin Powell accorded Pakistan "major non-NATO ally" status, which allows the country to buy depleted uranium weapons and receive U.S. financing for weapons purchases.

"A year after US-led forces launched war on Iraq, the promise of improved human rights for Iraqis remains far from realized," warns Amnesty International in a detailed new report. "Most Iraqis still feel unsafe in a country ravaged by violence," the report states. Moreover, "Coalition Forces appear in many cases to be using the climate of violence to justify violating the very human rights standards they are supposed to be upholding. They have shot Iraqis dead during demonstrations. They have tortured and ill-treated prisoners and detainees. They have arrested people arbitrarily and held them indefinitely without charge and without access to a lawyer. They have demolished houses and other property in acts of revenge and collective punishment. And they are operating in a legal framework that offers no mechanism in Iraq for bringing members of the Coalition Forces to justice for such acts."

"It allows people to exercise a kind of hour of hate, or whatever George Orwell called it," said the drama critic for Egypt's largest newspaper, explaining the popularity of "a harshly anti-American show" called "Messing with the Mind." The writer, director and star, Khaled al-Sawy, said: "Most plays just weep about our general situation... I felt people wanted a play that talks about resisting." The U.S. TV network broadcasting to the Middle East, Al-Hurra, is satirized in one scene where George Bush, on "Democracy Television," says: "We just want to clean you up, make you human beings." Another scene features a CNN reporter gushing: "Our boys have entered Umm Qasr, and everybody was hugging them and ululating."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released a report and database that identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq uttered by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Covering 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq, "Iraq on the Record" can be searched by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date. The Nation's David Corn writes, "If the commission Bush begrudgingly appointed to study the prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMDs is going to investigate whether Bush abused the intelligence, this website would be of tremendous value to it. ... But Waxman's report practically makes it unnecessary for the commissioners to worry if Bush falsely characterized the prewar intelligence. After all, why bother investigating a question with such an obvious answer?"

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has produced a detailed report on "The State of the News Media 2004." It points to eight major trends, including the following: "Much of the new investment in journalism today - much of the information revolution generally - is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom, both in terms of staff and in the time they have to gather and report the news. While there are exceptions, in general journalists face real pressures trying to maintain quality. In many parts of the news media, we are increasingly getting the raw elements of news as the end product. This is particularly true in the newer, 24-hour media. In cable and online, there is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, partial quality in some reports, without much synthesis or even the ordering of the information. There is also a great deal of effort, particularly on cable news, that is put into delivering essentially the same news repetitively without any meaningful updating." And there's good news for flacks: "Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them."

The U.S. Army is training Iraqis, many of them translators, to be journalists. In workshops taught by military public affairs officers, students learn "things like news gathering, writing fair and balanced stories, interviewing techniques, ethics, the Associated Press Style Guide, and the role of the press in a free society," according to the U.S. Army website "Soldier Stories." "[The students] met for six hours a day, six days a week for about five weeks. Since completing the workshop, the writers have produced stories geared toward Iraqi readers about how Soldiers are helping the Iraqi people, positive changes to the country's economy and the history of their culture. In addition to 'Baghdad Now' -- which is printed in English and Arabic -- their stories have appeared in the 1st AD's 'Ironside' Magazine and on several U.S. military Web sites."

"A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished," concludes a new international survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "Opinion of the United States in France and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war's conclusion, and British views are decidedly more critical. Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America's credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, "under fire for the way it has handled the discovery of mad cow disease" in the U.S., announced plans to test hundreds of thousands of cattle over a 12 to 18 month period. USDA Chief Veterinary Officer Ron DeHaven indicated the goal was 201,000 to 268,000 cattle, but later admitted: "For me to predict how many samples we will be able to collect in a new program that we don't have any experience from would simply be a wild guess." Japanese officials said the new testing was not sufficient to lift their ban on U.S. beef. In Britain, "a sensible precautionary measure" was passed blocking anyone who received a transfusion since 1980 from donating blood. In December, a death from vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease, was traced to an infected blood donor.

"The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia," Knight Ridder reports. "A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The Information Collection Program was financed out of the at least $18 million that the U.S. Congress approved for the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, from 1999 to 2003. The group remains on the Pentagon's payroll. The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons."

"We have won without lies," chanted the crowd outside the Madrid headquarters of Spain's socialist party, PSOE, which swept to victory in the country's March 14 elections. "Spin was indeed at the centre of PSOE's extraordinary, unexpected triumph," notes reporter David Mathieson. "There is no word in Spanish for 'spin,' but there has been no absence of the practice in Madrid over the last year - and especially in the past few days. The spectacular gains made by PSOE ... were in large part a result of the government's clumsy attempts at media manipulation following the Madrid bombs on Thursday." Anxious to avoid the impression that its support for the war in Iraq had attracted the terrorist attack, Spain's ruling Popular Party attempted to pin the bombings on Basque separatists in the face of mounting evidence that Al Qaeda was actually responsible. "On top of the agony of the bomb, people were furious at government attempts to hide the truth," Mathieson writes. "Yesterday, voters took their revenge."

Since the December passage of the Medicare bill, "there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." This is the suggested lead in for local stations running new video news releases prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services. The spots have aired in Okalahoma, Louisiana and other states, without any indication of their source or disclaimer that "reporter" Karen Ryan is actually a public relations consultant, contracted by Home Front Communications to read "a script prepared by the government." An HHS spokesperson correctly notes that VNRs are "a common, routine practice in government and the private sector"; studies have estimated that up to 40 percent of "the news" comes from VNRs and other forms of PR. VNRs "became more prominent in the 1980's, as more and more television stations cut news-gathering budgets."

The White House is marking "this Friday's first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with a week-long media blitz arguing that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was essential to combating global terrorism and making the United States safer." Another goal is to set "realistic expectations" for the rebuilding of Iraq. The media outreach includes "a show-and-tell" with Libyan centrifuge parts, TV coverage marking the 1988 gassing of Kurds in Halabja on two U.S. government stations broadcasting to the Middle East, and a four hour debate on a resolution before the House of Representatives saying "that the world is better off without Hussein in power."

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has selected British PR firm Bell Pottinger Communications to promote the establishment of democracy, according to PR trade publication the Holmes Report. The large-scale $5.8 million PR campaign will precede the transition of government to Iraqis in June. The firm is headed by Lord Bell, a Conservative who masterminded Margaret Thatcher's rise to power in 1979. Lord Bell told the UK's Independent that the message would be that democracy was "the route to peace and prosperity," adding, "There's no Arab word for democracy. That's one of the difficulties. If you say, 'Isn't democracy wonderful?' and they don't have a word for it, then it is not surprising that they do not have the same view." The campaign will use TV, print, outdoor posters, leaflets and town hall meetings to get its message out. The Dubai-based advertising agency Bates PanGulf and the media services company Balloch & Roe, which already has offices in Baghdad, will also be working on the account.

Documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that, in 2002, the U.S. gave more than a million dollars to Venezuelan political groups opposing President Hugo Chavez, via the National Endowment for Democracy. Jeremy Bigwood, a freelance reporter who obtained the documents, remarked: "This repeats a pattern started in Nicaragua in the election of 1990 when [the U.S.] spent $20 per voter to get rid of [Sandinista President Daniel] Ortega. It's done in the name of democracy but it's rather hypocritical." In April 2002, Chavez was briefly ousted by his U.S.-supported opponents. He now faces a possible recall referendum and violent street demonstrations, in which at least eight people have died.

Declaring a "radio jihad" against President Bush, radio shock jock Howard Stern "has emerged almost overnight as the most influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting," writes Eric Boehlert, "as he rails against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president come under such withering attack from a radio talk-show host with the influence and national reach Stern has."

"It is the not-so-secret secret of every presidential campaign that most crowds at most campaign stops are so much stage prop," writes Paul Vitello. Case in point: George Bush's visit to U.S.A. Industries in Bay Shore, Long Island, NY on Thursday. Bush "gave his speech... in front of a sign that said 'Strengthening America's Economy'." It was only after Bush left that reporters could interview the audience -- many of whom spoke little or no English -- "the work force of a small auto parts factory whose owner has received tax breaks from the Republican-run state and town governments, and who employs large numbers of non-English speaking immigrants happy to work for $6 to $9 an hour with few benefits."

Not unexpectedly, months of high-profile Bush-bashing by Democratic presidential contenders haven't helped the Bush campaign. "On the Democratic side, you saw pictures of their campaigns busy with guys out in their shirt-sleeves, yelling and screaming and working hard. Our guys were Bush and Cheney going to hotel dining rooms [for fundraisers]," observed a "prominent Republican in one swing state." Eric Dezenhall, a Reagan administration PR person and President of Dezenhall Resources, a PR firm specializing in countering activist groups, is concerned about the Bush campaign's use of 9/11 imagery. "There is a tissue-thin line that separates braggadocio from appropriate sentimentality," warned Dezenhall. And if Bush appears to be on the wrong side of that line? "Backlash."

California legislators want to stop the use of all paperless electronic voting machines in the state, fearing the same type of fiasco that plagued Florida in the 2000 election. State Sens. Don Perata (D-Oakland) and Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate election committee, have written a letter to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, urging him to decertify all paperless touch-screen voting machines before the general election. The March 2 primary "was a test-flight of widespread use of these machines. I think it's fair to say the test flight crashed and burned," said Perata. The senators cited malfunctions in e-voting machines that resulted in voters being turned away from the polls, ballots being cast for the wrong legislative districts, and numerous delays. "The existing generation of machines are no better than beta test machines," said Tom Stanionis, data processing manager for Yolo County's election division, adding that elections should not be a test-bed for vendors to work out problems with their machines.

It's "not outsourcing... it's simply moving the work" explained Reuters' global managing editor about the news service's hiring six reporters in Bangalore, India to cover small and mid-size U.S. companies. In Congress, Republicans are touting "insourcing," or foreign companies hiring U.S. citizens. "You can't get upset about outsourcing without considering the benefits of insourcing," said the director of the Organization for International Investment (OFII), a trade group representing the U.S. subsidiaries of large international companies like Toyota, Nestle and Siemens. OFII coined the term "insourcing" after considering alternatives like "onshoring." And the Bush administration's leading candidate for manufacturing czar, Tony Raimondo, withdrew from consideration after it was revealed he had outsourced, offshored, or simply moved some of his company's manufacturing jobs to China.

"Witeck-Combs Communications is helping the Log Cabin Republicans, a band of GOP members who support gay rights, with a wide-reaching PR and ad campaign to fight their own party on a constitutional amendment which would ban gay marriage," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The Log Cabiners will kick off a $1 million ad campaign -- the first ad blitz in the group's 27-years -- March 11 across the Washington, D.C., area and several swing states like Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin. The overall campaign begins today with lobbying and PR efforts in D.C., along with grassroots work and the revamp of the group's website, logcabin.org. A print ad campaign is also planned. Colleen Dermody, VP at W-C, said her firm has specialized in gay and lesbian marketing and PR work, advising companies like IBM and Ford on issues related to that group. She noted that W-C has generally been associated with left-of-center groups in the past and the current work for the Log Cabiners is its first for that group."

In an "unusual, if not unprecedented" move, the U.S. Forest Service paid the San Francisco-based PR firm OneWorld Communications $90,000 to promote its controversial Sierra Nevada forest management plan. In a leaked memo, OneWorld suggested the slogan "Forests With A Future" to promote the plan, which will triple commercial logging and allow larger trees to be cut. A Forest Service spokesperson said the PR firm was hired to help "convey the enormous dangers California faces if our current inability to reduce forest fuels continues." The director of the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign commented: "They can't defend their work, so they had to hire a bunch of spin doctors to do it."

"When David Kay, the CIA's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, announced earlier this year that his team had found no stockpiled weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he touched off an explosion of blame, finger-pointing, denial, and hasty 'clarifications' about the extent and accuracy of the intelligence that the Bush Administration used to buttress its decision to invade Iraq. Kay's startling conclusion, though, came as no surprise to many analysts in the U.S. intelligence community -- particularly the members of a self-described 'movement' of some 35 retired and resigned high-level U.S. intelligence operatives. The group, 'Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,' has produced some of the most credible, and critical, analyses of the Bush Administration's handling of intelligence data in the run-up to the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq."

The Third Quarter and Fourth Quarter 2003 issues of PR Watch are now available free online in the PR Watch Archives section of our website. Highlights of the Third Quarter issue include Sharon Beder's "The Electricity Deregulation Con Game," which looks at how companies like Enron used PR to sell the idea of energy deregulation to the public, with disastrous consequences; and Paul Goldberg's "Cancer PR Firms Still Addicted to Tobacco," which shows how the Shandwick and Edelman PR firms have worked on the U.S. National Dialogue on Cancer, despite a history of representing tobacco industry clients. In the Fourth Quarter 2003 issue, Laura Miller explains our Disinfopedia - a free, online "encyclopedia of propaganda" to which anyone - including you - can contribute research and information.

The "mystery of the United States," writes Tom Frank, is that "wealth is today concentrated in fewer hands than it has been since the 1920s; workers have less power over the conditions under which they toil than ever before in our lifetimes; and the corporation has become the most powerful actor in our world. Yet that rightward shift - still going strong to this day - sells itself as a war against elites, a righteous uprising of the little guy against an obnoxious upper class." Nevertheless, he adds, "There is a grain of truth in the backlash stereotype of liberalism. Certain kinds of leftists really do vacation in Europe and drive Volvos and drink lattes. ... And there is a small but very vocal part of the Left that has nothing but contempt for the working class. ... Until the American Left decides to take a long, unprejudiced look at deepest America, at the kind of people who think voting for George Bush constitutes a blow against the elite, they are fated to continue their slide to oblivion."

The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland has published a new study on "Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction," and the picture isn't pretty. "Most media outlets represented WMD as a monolithic menace, failing to adequately distinguish between weapons programs and actual weapons or to address the real differences among chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons," the report states. "Most journalists accepted the Bush administration's formulation of the 'War on Terror' as a campaign against WMD, in contrast to coverage during the Clinton era, when many journalists made careful distinctions between acts of terrorism and the acquisition and use of WMD. Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspective on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats, and policy options. Too few stories proffered alternative perspectives to official line, a problem exacerbated by the journalistic prioritizing of breaking-news stories and the 'inverted pyramid' style of storytelling." Nevertheless, it says, "Poor coverage of WMD resulted less from political bias on the part of journalists, editors, and producers than from tired journalistic conventions."

"Halliburton, which according to its just-released 10-K report has earned $85 million on $3.6 billion in Iraqi work last year, has not yet paid the subcontractor that prepared the Thanksgiving Day photo-op of President George Bush serving the troops dinner in Baghdad International Airport," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. NBC News reports Event Source, which serves 100,000 meals a day to soldiers in Iraq, says Halliburton owes it $87 million. Event Source CEO Phil Morrell told NBC news that the company has already laid off U.S. employees and may have to stop serving hot meals to troops because the company's short on money. Morrell also said that he believes Halliburton and its other food service contractors did overcharge, billing the government not for meals actually served, but for meals a facility could have served. Halliburton's Wendy Hall told O'Dwyer's that she cannot comment on PR firms used by Dick Cheney's former company because of "competitive" reasons. Hall did say that Halliburton "from time to time" hires outside PR firms for specific projects.

Ivan Rogers, the principal private secretary to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "tried to muzzle the Government's top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more serious threat than international terrorism," report Steve Connor and Andrew Grice. In a leaked memo, Rogers ordered Sir David King - a scientist at Cambridge University - to decline any interview requests from British and American newspapers and BBC Radio. The memo and other documents related to the controversy came to light after Sir David's personal press secretary, Lucy Brunt-Jenner, inadvertently left a computer disk in the press room at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle, where Sir David gave a lecture. "The disk was lying on the top of a computer in the press room and I popped it into the machine to see what was on it," said freelance journalist, Mike Martin. Documents on the disk included scripted answers from Rogers, instructing the scientist how to answer a list of 136 questions that reporters might ask him.

Two Saudi clerics have said that Muslims should not watch, work for, or advertise on the new U.S. funded Al-Hurra satellite channel. In a written fatwa, Sheik Ibrahim al-Khudairi said the channel was "founded by America to fight Islam, and to propagate massive decay to Americanise the world." Al-Hurra, which means the free one, is the latest Arabic-language media project run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors. According to U.S. officials, the channel, which will cost U.S. taxpayers about $62 million this year, seeks to counter the anti-American "hateful propaganda" seen in the Muslim world.

"Two scientists from President Bush's top advisory board on cutting-edge medical research yesterday published a detailed criticism of the board's own reports, and said the board skewed scientific facts in service of a political and ideological cause," reports Gareth Cook. One of the scientists, Janet Rowley, is a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. The other Elizabeth H. Blackburn, is a highly regarded biologist who was fired from the panel last Friday. Their critique charges that reports issued by the council have played down the potential of embryonic stem cell research, which is opposed by fundamentalist anti-abortion groups and by the Bush administration.

"If we start losing small, independent broadcasters because they can't afford the risk of getting fined on some arbitrary application of a vague standard, all we'll have left are a few big media companies." So reads a letter from the Public Relations Society of America to Federal Communications Commission Chair Michael Powell. The PRSA opposes large increases in the FCC's maximum indecency fine; legislation just passed by House subcommittee would hike the current $27,500 limit to $500,000. The "widening and increasingly polarized campaign to clean up the nation's airwaves" makes strange political bedfellows; one of PRSA President Del Galloway's specialties is "employee communications during a downsizing."