This mock commencement speech by Norman Solomon addresses the graduates of today's "communications" schools, which mingle training in journalism with training in public relations: "You have studied how to write news articles and contrive news releases; how to dig for truth and how to obscure it; how to produce journalistic sensations as well as public relations; in short, how to unspin and spin. Like many others around the country, this school of journalism imparts vital skills of reporting and distorting."

An Oregon law firm has created a new web site to assist people interested in accessing public records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or state public records laws. It has links to the public records laws of all 50 States as well as relevant branches of the federal government. It also has materials to assist in the making of initial document or fee waiver requests, their appeals, litigation and a discussion of the FOIA exemptions.

A new industry-sponsored cheering section for Bush/Cheney's energy policies has been formed, called the "Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth."

The Bulldog Reporter, a publication that specializes in compiling dossiers on journalists for corporate PR use, has given its "gold award" in "crisis communications" to Michael Fineman of Fineman Associates Public Relations for his work on behalf of the Pacifica radio network. Fineman was hired to help contain the image problems that arose when the Pacifica's management used armed guards to forcibly expel veteran broadcasters, arrested demonstrators, and shut down station KPFA in Berkeley, CA. For further details about the ongoing crisis at Pacifica, visit www.savepacifica.net.

Private foundations are using their tax-sheltered money to influence news and entertainment media according to a Poynter Institute study. Foundations like the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust have funded journalist and media outlet with the intention to "shape" policy. "

iDEFENSE, an internet intelligence gathering service, created this report on the use of the internet by anti-capitalist activists, including a summary of May Day organizing in the UK. They write in the report's introduction: "Over the past six years, anti-capitalist protests have reemerged as a threat to public order worldwide. Since 1999, this development has been greatly enhanced by the increased use of the Internet as a means of disseminating ideology, coordinating activity and as an offensive medium. Protests of this sort are generally geared around specific events, such as gatherings of organizations concerned with the maintenance of global capital and the symbolic May Day holiday. While last year's May Day protests were marked by a certain degree of Internet organization and street violence, preparations for protests on May 1, 2001, have seen far more activity and a growing awareness by activists that the soft underbelly of capitalism lies in corporate Internet infrastructure. "

Conservative PR pro Craig Shirley has created a new front group called "Disabled Americans for Death Tax Relief," which recently ran full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, urging Congress to abolish the federal estate tax. DADTR claims that millions of Americans would be adversely affected by the tax which the federal government places on estates over $650,000. This argument is absurd, as disabled activists Marta Russell and Andrew Batavia point out: "The claim is that millions of individuals have left major estates for the medical expenses of their children or relatives with disabilities, and these estates are being taxed away. This contention simply is not plausible. The estate tax is a tax imposed only on extremely wealthy individuals when they die -- less than 2% of taxpayers (representing fewer than 43,000 estates in 1997) pay this tax. And two-thirds of the estate tax is paid by the richest 0.2% of taxpayers. While it is true that many disabled persons have major health care expenses, the vast majority are from families of modest means. It is certain that a very small percentage of the disabled population receives inheritances from estates above the current $675,000 exclusion. ... Using disabled people to front for the interests of the wealthiest members of our society is an outrage and a disgrace."

The Burson-Marsteller PR form has established a partnership with Leeds Metropolitan University, the UK's largest university provider of public relations education. B-M will provide input into LMU's courses, share research, provide visiting lecturers and offer undergraduate and graduate training programmes, and LMU has also offered an honorary degree to company founder Harold Burson. Members of Leeds Globalise Resistance Collective have opposed the partnership, citing B-M's "particularly bad reputation for representing governments who repeatedly perpetrate human rights abuses" and its involvement in "crisis management" PR for a variety of corporate malefactors.

Supporters of genetically modified foods frequently claim that their position is based on "sound science," in contrast to the "junk science" practiced by anti-GM activists. Their definition of "sound science" is rooted in a set of norms for appropriate scientific behavior. A true scientist, the GM defenders say, would only argue his case with great care on the basis of sound, peer-reviewed data open to critical scrutiny. In reality, however, these standards of scientific probity are only demanded from perceived critics, while anything goes with scientists who support GM foods. This web page by the British Nofolk Genetic Information Network shows how pro-GM scientists have freely proferred statements that are unproven, comments on research that is still unpublished, even accounts of research that may be seriously misleading or entirely false.

Environmental activist Dave DeRosa snuck into the March 22, 2001 meeting of the Vinyl Formulators Environmental Forum and caught industry representatives discussing ways to limit bad publicity connected with Bill Moyers exposT of the chemical industry.

The Environmental Working Group has created an extensive, keyword-searchable archive of 37,000 pages of internal chemical industry documents, detailing what industry insiders knew but didn't tell us about topics such as arsenic, the dangers of hairspray and the active ingredient in Scotchgard, or about the severe contamination of a chemical company town in Alabama. Visit this site to find out how the chemical industry spins, distorts, and twists the facts to suit its purposes -- and to prevent the public from finding out how dangerous their products really are. "These Archives will do for public understanding of the chemical industry what the 'tobacco papers' did for the tobacco industry," said EWG president Kenneth Cook.

Veteran journalist Bill Moyers exposed decades of corruption of science and politics by companies, trade associations and PR firms defending the chemical industry in his March 26 documentary, Trade Secrets. In the week leading up to the actual broadcast, the chemical industry launched its own attack on Moyers, claiming that his documentary was unfair and biased. (For Moyers' response, click here.) In a speech at the National Press Club, Moyers gave additional details of the attacks that have attempted to dissuade PBS from airing the show. He also describes a previous and far more successful effort by chemical interests to suppress and falsely discredit a 1993 Moyers production about pesticides and children's health.

Agribusiness needs to use "attack technologies" against activists, according to Nick Nichols of the PR/crisis management firm Nichols-Dezenhall. Speaking to the annual business meeting of the National Pork Producers Council, Nichols quoted gangster Al Capone, who said: "You can get more with kind words and a smile and a gun than you get with kind words and a smile." (PR Watch has obtained a copy of Nichols' Powerpoint presentation to the pork producers. Click here if you want to download a PDF version.)

"The Korean War veteran stares out from the television screen, an American flag waving behind him. 'Environmentalists are telling us how to live our lives ... preventing us from driving cars, and forcing us to live downtown,' he says. 'In America, these are still personal choices. Tyranny didn't win in South Korea,' he concludes. 'Don't let it get a foothold here.' The message, brought to you by the Georgia Highway Contractors Association, began airing on metro Atlanta television stations last week. Similar messages have been airing for months across the country..."

A group called "Military Information Services" is offering its skills in "psychological warfare" to corporations and governments. A unit of MIS called "Behavior Modification Operations" calls itself "a unique international corporate advisory company ready to fulfill your specific behavior modification requirements in support of organizational objectives in unstable areas and nations of the world. BMO is staffed by psychological warfare and military operations professionals who specialize in developing regions of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. ... By means of specially designed crises communications programs, BMO personnel are thoroughly trained to facilitate local acceptance of your organization's objectives at all levels of a given society, from leaders of developing nations to hostile local groups and communities. Simply put, we will ensure your operations are sympathetically supported by both antagonistic and indifferent local populations groups. ... BMO will work with your organization to provide effective influence over a given local population's opinions, emotions and attitudes." BMO also promises to keep its activities secret through "secondment of our specialist to any of your departmental extensions overseas (be it PR, HR, Legal, etc.) so that the secondee will be veiled (hidden) in your organizational chart and will provide management information strictly to the designated executive for his/her discretionary use."

This article examines attempts in England to establish a "press council" that would control what reporters are allowed to write about issues involving science and product safety, particularly in regard to genetically modified foods. Mae-Wan Ho and Jonathan Mathews report on the seamless way in which the corporations, the state and the scientific establishment are co-ordinating their efforts to suppress scientific dissent and force feed the world with GM crops.

ExxonMobil's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the fact that burning fossil fuels has a role in global warming is creating a backlash against the world's biggest company. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People & Planet launched a campaign in the U.K. earlier this month to boycott Esso gasoline, supported by a variety of prominent politicians, celebrities and writers.

Like the old English "privateer" pirates of the Caribbean five hundred years ago, sailing under no national flag -- robbing and plundering Latin America's riches for the English Crown, Washington now employs hundreds of contract employees through U.S. corporations to carry out its policies in Colombia and other countries. Like the sixteenth century pirates, if they get caught in an embarrassing crime, or are killed, the U.S. government can deny responsibility for their actions. What's more only a select few in Congress know of their activities and their operations are not subject to public scrutiny, despite the fact that they are on the government payroll

WASHINGTON -- Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, a national environmental voice who served on the commission that studied the Three Mile Island accident more than 20 years ago, on Tuesday endorsed Yucca Mountain in Nevada as "safe and appropriate" to bury nuclear waste.

People join the American Automobile Association because they think it's a nice way to get Triptiks, traveler's checks and emergency towing, but what most members don't know is that AAA is a lobbyist for more roads, more pollution, and more gas guzzling vehicles. AAA weighs in on highway funding, suburban sprawl, mass transit, car design and safety, air pollution, and global warming. Almost without exception, critics say, it advocates policies that damage the environment and endanger health.

PR Seminar, a secretive spinoff of the National Association of Manufacturers, held its 50th annual meeting on June 6-9 of this year. "You have entered a very elite circle, you are the cream of the crop of the PR world," one of its members said in 1979. Not a word of the proceedings is supposed to escape although the O'Dwyer Co. has covered the event with varying degrees of completeness since 1970. In its heyday, PR Seminar brought together the PR heads of virtually every top 25 Fortune 500 company. Its secrecy, exclusivity and other rituals are "bonding techniques" through which Seminar participants "mimic the social lives of the corporate elite whom they serve."

In a recent Manilla Times article, Canadian timber industry apologist Patrick Moore, identified as a co-founder of Greenpeace and an ecologist, accuses Greenpeace of "abandoning science and following agendas that have little to do with saving the Earth." Is there really "trouble in the house of Greenpeace" as the Manilla Times headline suggests or are Moore's comments an industry supported attempt to undermine and discredit anti-biotech NGOs?

Dairy Management Inc., a trade association funded by dairy industry check-off money for building U.S. dairy product demand, awarded an issues management account to Weber Shandwick. The contract is believed to be around $2 million. Weber Shandwick won the account over top-tier agencies Fleishman-Hillard, Edelman PR Worldwide, Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli. Sara Galvin heads the DMI account from WSW's Minneapolis office. She is supported by staffers in Washington, D.C. The campaign had been expected to focus on concerns raised by foot-and-mouth and mad cow disease in Europe. According to the Holmes Report, however, DMI's executive v.p. of public and industry relations Jean Regalie says the campaign will be broader than that, taking a long term view of "the way people look at food." Dairy Management Inc. also has accounts with Golin/Harris International and BSMG Worldwide, creator of the ubiquitous "Got Milk?" campaign.

Keep America Beautiful is probably the best-known litter awareness group in the United States, yet they have flatly refused to touch the issue of cigarette litter, the most prolific form of litter in the world. KAB has a joint program in cooperation with Philip Morris that blames the cigarette litter problem on a lack of ashtrays -- a way of spinning the issue that Philip Morris favors. Some Philip Morris employees have even boasted that more public ashtrays serve as a subtle advertisement for the popularity of their product.

Emerging evidence suggests that media coverage of medicine is increasingly promotional in nature. Recent Australian examples include misleading newspaper articles on an experimental cancer vaccine and a high profile television current affairs segment on a new influenza drug, which failed to disclose the industry ties of a key expert featured in the report. There are widening concerns that this problem in medical journalism may be exacerbated by the growing commercialisation of medical and scientific research, and the increasing ties between researchers, doctors and pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies.

Macedonia, which is waging a war against ethnic Albanian rebels, has signed well-connected lobbyist Barbour Griffith & Rogers to a $30,000-a-month contract, plus $3,500 in expenses for government relations and trade promotion. The contract runs through the end of next year.

Burson-Marsteller has hired Jordana Friedman, a veteran of several non-governmental advocacy organizations, as a director in its U.S. corporate and financial practice. She joins B-M from the Council on Economic Priorities, a U.S.-based corporate social responsibility research organization, where she served as director of the London office.

John Graham, who has been nominated by President Bush to the top regulatory oversight position in the United States, is an an industry ally who has a long record of crusading against health, safety and environmental standards through the industry-funded Harvard Center for Risk Assessment. Public Citizen recently authored a 130-page report (available as a free PDF download) exposing his decade of efforts on behalf of the corporations that fund him. Putting him in charge of overseeing the regulatory agencies responsible for protecting the public "would truly be a case of the fox guarding the hen-house."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has posted on the Internet a database of more than 1,100 professors and scientists who consult for or have other affiliations with chemical, gas, oil, food, drug, and other companies. The web site also provides partial information about nonprofit and professional organizations that receive industry funding. The well-documented database is part of CSPI's Integrity in Science project and is designed for activists, journalists, policy makers, and others who are concerned about potential conflicts of interest. and who seek greater public disclosure of corporate sponsorship of science.

By understanding the interaction between news coverage and advertising on consumer perceptions, large companies hope to develop more effective and less costly communications plans. This report takes some first steps toward understanding that relationship. This paper is based upon research conducted in the late 1990's by AT&T's Public Relations research department.

Surveys of working journalists have found that they experience pressure from powerful interests to push some stories and ignore others, and to shape or slant news content. The sources of pressure include the government, corporate advertisers, and media owners themselves. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting prepared this special report.

Journalist Mike Reilley has put together his own website which contains hundreds of helpful research links for professional journalists, organized by topics such as federal and local government, business, science/environment, medical/health, sports, crime/courts, phone directories, finding expert sources, history, writing with numbers, journalism organizations, etc.

The Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, led by anti-environmental "Wise Use" organizers Alan Gottlieb and Ron Arnold, has created this website which claims to "unmask" the Rainforest Action Network for its "ties to other radical groups," "anti-capitalist ideology" and "lawless and dangerous activities." To "unmask" Gottlieb and Arnold themselves, read the Environmental Working Group's excellent backgrounder.

Spinsanity's mission is to "use rigorous, non-partisan analysis to expose the use and intent of the simulated reason and public relations techniques that dominate political discourse, and to document how they are disseminated through the media. By exposing these tactics and demonstrating their pervasiveness, we hope to create a greater awareness of how spin operates and corrupts, and contribute to a healthy and vibrant political discourse." It publishes weekly articles and short posts that dissect and analyze some of the most egregious examples of this "new jargon" as they are expressed by pundits, talk radio hosts, politicians and interest groups.

The diet drug craze of the mid-1990s was fueled by cover-ups, misinformation and a multi-million-dollar PR machine, according to Dispensing with the Truth, a new book by Mediaweek's Washington bureau chief, Alicia Mundy. Burson-Marsteller, Edelman Medical Communications, Ogilvy Adams & Reinhart and Ketchum were among firms identified as part of a nearly $100 million public relations spin campaign "that would put presidential consultants to shame," writes Mundy.

This essay looks at a conservative website called www.freerepublic.com, which uses grassroots internet organizing to "pervert public polls" and "call and email congressional representatives en masse, thus creating the illusion of massive public pressure that twists the actions of elected officials. ... Keep these things in mind when you find yourself shocked by the results of a poll on MSNBC, or when a Senator refuses to support reasonable gun control laws, or when the press decides to spend two years covering a consensual sex act between adults."

Serbia is looking to "establish friendly and constructive relations" with the U.S., and is using consultant Jim Denton, Alexandria, Va., to do so. He is receiving $120K from the "Serbian diaspora community," according to the one-year contract filed with the Justice Dept.