Writing for the New Republic, Jonathan Chait humorously deconstructs White House spokesman Ari Fleischer's spin tactics, which he first encountered when Fleischer represented Republicans on he House Ways and Means Committee. "Fleischer has a way of blindsiding you, leaving you disoriented and awestruck," he writes. "Much of the time Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises - or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether."

From sinking ships to pedophile priests, stories uncovered by investigative reporters have served as catalysts for change. Steve Weinberg, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors, reviews two new books, Robert Frump's Until the Sea Shall Free Them and William and Judith Serrin's Muckraking! The Journalism that Changed America, which show how crusading journalists have been able to bring about beneficial social change by searching beyond the spin to expose corruption.

"Lauri Fitz-Pegado, the former Hill and Knowlton staffer who promoted the story about armed Iraqi troops tossing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators - one of the biggest PR stories of the `90s - is now handling PR for the Cayman Island Cultural Center in New York," noted O'Dwyer's PR Daily on May 28. "H&K, on behalf of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait front group of exiled royals, produced a 15-year-old girl 'Nayirah' who testified that she saw Iraqi troops committing the atrocity in a Kuwaiti hospital. She testified before the Congressional Human Rights caucus in Oct. 1990 that Iraqis took 15 babies from incubators, which they then stole, and left premature infants 'on the cold floor to die.' ... Fitz-Pegado provided media coaching skills to Nayirah, who as it turned out, was the daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to the U.S., and had never visited the hospital." The O'Dwyer's story includes Fitz-Pegado's angry attempt to refute charges that she coached Nayirah to lie, followed by a critique of Fitz-Pegado's response by PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton.

"A mall (development) war ... has heated up after one developer secretly launched a hard-hitting public relations strike against a competitor, warning that the rival's plan could lead to traffic gridlock and adult businesses. ... After The Cincinnati Enquirer obtained a plan that outlined part of the campaign, David Kass, Continental Retail Development's president, admitted Wednesday to unleashing it against (competitor) Steiner. But he said it was a legal effort similar to development campaigns elsewhere in the country. ... 'We're coming clean,' Mr. Kass said in a phone interview from Columbus, after initially denying involvement in the campaign. ... Since the weekend, Continental has had thousands of brochures mailed to homes while pollsters called citizens asking for their input ... . An Internet site also was launched Wednesday; all of the activities have been done in the name a group called 'West Chester Watch.' That group, Mr. Kass conceded Wednesday, is mostly Continental."

"After months of headlines about abusive priests, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has engaged Sitrick & Co., a prominent and expensive public relations firm specializing in high-profile clients with big troubles," reports the Los Angeles Times. "Known for navigating clients through bad publicity, Sitrick has represented Enron after the energy giant's fall, talk show host Laura Schlessinger after her negative comments about gays, actress Halle Berry after her traffic accident, comedian Paula Poundstone after her child-endangerment case and Orange County during its 1995 bankruptcy." "We're really proud to be involved in this," says Sitrick.

Tobacco, booze and food lobbyist Rick Berman has mastered the art of lining his own pockets running his non-profit industry-funded front groups . And now there he goes again, attacking us for a quote of John Stauber's in a recent Wall Street Journal article on the mad deer epidemic . Berman is the master of the smear campaign and constantly misrepresents the individuals and groups he attacks. He imagines a giant conspiracy of anti-meat eco-terrorists dedicated to frightening the public into vegetarianism. (Apparently now the Wall Street Journal is part of Berman's conspiracy fantasies.) Contrary to Berman's false statements, we have never claimed that British mad cow disease exists in the US. What we have shown in our book Mad Cow USA is that strains of mad cow-type disease are in US deer and elk, sheep, and suspected in pigs and cattle. Furthermore, the dangerous ongoing practice of feeding billions of pounds of slaughterhouse waste back to livestock risks spreading such diseases through livestock to people. Mad Cow USA is available as a free dowload.

Stan Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who researches the lobbying and PR tricks of the tobacco industry, has just published two new papers on the topic in leading medical journals.

• In the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, Glantz joins Pamela M. Ling, MD and Anne Landman of the American Lung Association in examining the tobacco industry's advertising campaigns which purport to discourage children from smoking. In reality, the tobacco industry's own documents show that most youth smoking prevention programs it has supported are designed to promote industry political and marketing aims. "The tobacco industry is aggressively expanding similar programs worldwide," Glantz stressed. "No health department or school should be fooled by the tobacco industry's 'youth smoking prevention programs,'" which "do not prevent and may even encourage youth smoking."
• The June issue of Tobacco Control, a specialist publication of the British Medical Journal, features an article looking at tobacco industry funding of the hospitality industry -- restaurants, taverns and hotels. Glantz cites internal industry documents which show that tobacco manufacturers gave donations to more than 65 hospitality groups in the USA alone as part of an "aggressive and effective worldwide campaign to recruit hospitality associations, such as restaurant associations, to serve as the tobacco industry's surrogate in fighting against smoke-free environments. ... The tobacco industry, led by Philip Morris, made financial contributions to existing hospitality associations or, when it did not find an association willing to work for tobacco interests, created its own 'association' in order to prevent the growth of smoke-free environments. ... Through the myth of lost profits, the tobacco industry has fooled the hospitality industry into embracing expensive ventilation equipment, while in reality 100% smoke-free laws have been shown to have no effect on business revenues, or even to improve them. The tobacco industry has effectively turned the hospitality industry into its de facto lobbying arm on clean indoor air."

Two weeks ago, Guardian columnist George Monbiot described how the Bivings Group, a PR company contracted to Monsanto, invented fake citizens to post messages on internet listservers. "These phantoms had launched a campaign to force Nature magazine to retract a paper it had published, alleging that native corn in Mexico had been contaminated with GM pollen," Monbiot writes in today's column. "But this, it now seems, is just one of hundreds of critical interventions with which PR companies hired by big business have secretly guided the biotech debate over the past few years. ... Bivings is the secret author of several of the websites and bogus citizens' movements which have been coordinating campaigns against environmentalists. One is a fake scientific institute called the 'Centre for Food and Agricultural Research.' Bivings has also set up the 'Alliance for Environmental Technology,' a chlorine industry lobby group. Most importantly, Bivings appears to be connected with AgBioWorld, the genuine website run by CS Prakash, a plant geneticist at Tuskegee University, Alabama. ... He set up AgBioWorld with Greg Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the far-right libertarian lobby group funded by such companies as Philip Morris, Pfizer and Dow Chemical. ... Another US company, Berman & Co, runs a fake public interest site called ActivistCash.com ... The marketing firm Nichols Dezenhall set up a site called StopEcoViolence, another 'citizens' initiative,' demonizing activists. ... The hatred directed at activists over the past few years is, in other words, nothing of the kind. In truth, we have been confronted by the crafted response of an industry without emotional attachment."

The Village Voice has compiled a special section devoted to the Bush administration's attack on civil liberties, which may prove useful in the wake of recent revelations that the Bush administration had forewarnings of September 11. Meanwhile, Peter Erlinder of the National Lawyers Guild has called for a re-examination of "the lies that were told to Congress and the American people after Sept. 11 to justify the administration's war on civil liberties." In the name of the "war on terrorism," the Bush administration demanded and got what it called new "tools" to prevent unexpected terrorist attacks, including new wiretap authority, secret searches, the use of secret evidence, secret immigration hearings, and taping lawyers' conversations. "All of this has been justified in the name of preventing another 'surprise attack,'" Erlinder says. "The administration, however, had the right 'tools' in place before Sept. 11. Those tools would have proved effective, if the administration had known how to use them."

The Mountain Citizen, a weekly Kentucky newspaper, is defying a court order to stop publishing under its name, which has been legally acquired by the head of a water board that has been the subject of several critical stories. Judge Daniel Sparks issued the restraining order against Mountain Citizen Inc., when its name was acquired by Martin County Water Board Chairman John Triplett after the paper inadvertently allowed incorporation papers to lapse. In a blistering editorial response, Mountain Press editor Gary Ball described the "serious health threats" posed by his county's "dilapidated water treatment" and the "nasty, brown water coming through faucets." Ball vowed that the paper will continue to arrive "on our community's doorsteps ... this week and next. And our coverage, especially of threats to our natural resources, will continue aspiring to its traditional standards of accuracy and fairness. Why? Because the people of Martin County face a potential crisis - the total lack of safe drinking water - and for us to ignore it is to abandon the trust placed in us by the public."

The much-hyped Segway Human Transporter is "quietly racing through America's state legislatures at a pace that belies its 12mph top speed," writes PR Week. In the five months since its unveiling, 23 states have passed laws allowing the computerized scooter to roll down sidewalks, among other things. "The routine is simple and oft-repeated," PR Weeks reports. "Matthew Dailida, Segway's manager of state government affairs, travels state to state with his ready-made legislation and, often, a Segway in tow. Through the help of a local government-relations shop -- and a few joy rides for elected officials -- the legislation is put into play, usually overcoming the resistance of safety advocates with ease." Segway says it has spent less than $1 million on the campaign.

The Food and Drug Administration has been leaderless since George W. Bush took office 16 months ago. The Boston Globe reports that Bush administration's latest pick for FDA commissioner, Dr. Alastair J. J. Wood, was derailed by the pharmaceutical industry. "If Wood became commissioner, one influential industry ally wrote in a conservative online magazine, the FDA's message to patients wanting life-saving drugs would be: 'Drop dead.' The article said Wood was obsessed with drug-safety review and, applying the coup de grace, announced that he was 'a buddy of Senator Ted Kennedy' -- even though Wood had never met or spoken to the Massachusetts Democrat. Within days, the White House dumped Wood," the Globe's Michael Kranish writes.

More and more corporations are catching the corporate social responsibility (CSR) wave, promoting themselves as good global corporate citizens. The PR industry has taken note observes PR Week. "Many [PR firms] have identified CSR as a major growth area for their business, and an opportunity to operate at the highest levels, counseling board members and even CEOs, rather than just focusing on more junior employees," PR Week writes. "All these agencies see CSR and PR not only as a natural fit for one another, but almost as one and the same. 'This is classic, substantive issues management,' says [Burson-Marsteller's Jordana] Friedman. 'We are being issues management experts first, and communicating the stories second, which is really where PR should be anyway. We bring to the table an exceptional combination of our expertise in having dialogue with NGOs, policy makers, and social investment funds.'" Ketchum Chairman David Drobis writes in Public Relations Strategist, "Given the link between corporate social responsibility and reputation, PR practitioners, as communications counselors, are in a unique position to help companies develop, institutionalize and communicate their corporate social responsibility practices."

A year after the Canadian Supreme Court's landmark ruling allowing municipalities to ban the use of lawn pesticides, the chemical industry is fighting back. "In many cases they have been successful in out-organizing the local communities," says Alex Cullen, a member of the Ottawa City Council. In Toronto, for example, public meetings last week on a proposed pesticide ban were overwhelmed by representatives from lawn-care companies sporting T-shirts, handing out pamphlets and offering quick comebacks to any question. "The chemical companies are using the same template across Ontario," said Cullen. "They've taken on pro-environment names like the Ontario Environmental Coalition, hired lobbyists, written letters, made presentations and packed meetings."

"An NBC-owned talk show is offering marketers the chance to buy guest spots for their products and executives, further blurring the line between programming and advertising. The sponsored segments were included in about two dozen shows appearing during the 2001-02 season of the entertainment program "The Other Half," which is owned, produced and distributed by the NBC Enterprises division of NBC, part of General Electric. ... During the Clorox-sponsored segment, for example, the hosts, who also include the actors Danny Bonaduce and Mario Lopez, faced off against members of the studio audience in a make-believe game show about housekeeping. And on the segments paid for by Hyundai, a company marketing executive offered tips on buying and leasing cars. ... While the executives were identified as being from Clorox and Hyundai, the hosts made no mention that the visits were part of an advertising arrangement or that the segments were of a different nature than the show's usual fare... 'It's very alarming advertisers are allowed to have so much control over the content of programming,' said Jeff Chester, executive director at the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington, an advocacy organization."

As we report in our book Mad Cow USA (available on this website as a free PDF download), the British and US governments' mishandling of the threat of mad cow-type diseases is a case study in how "PR crisis management" protects industry at the expense of human and environmental health. Now that Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), dubbed 'mad deer disease,' is spreading across North America and tens of thousands of wild deer and elk are being slaughtered to desperately slow it down, the issue is finally getting some serious media attention such as today's excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal. Of course, increased media attention also is bringing atrocious and misleading reporting such as a recent article in National Review Online claiming that when "300 mg of supplemental copper" was used to treat CWD, it was cured. In reality, no such study exists and this National Review piece reads like bad fiction. How do they get away with publishing such inaccurate, undocumented claims? Web readers, beware.

Activists looking for alternatives to the seemingly overwhelming power of corporate PR may find some useful guidance from tthe SPIN (Strategic Press Information Network) Project. SPIN provides training, media strategizing, and resources to help grassroots activists expand their capacity to influence public opinion and garner positive media attention. "We believe there is a direct correlation between a communityis improved media skills and its ability to get good press," states the SPIN websitel A little training, strategizing and media planning goes a long way in changing how advocates relate to the media and the type of press they receive.

"Full page ads in the May 22nd issues of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal tell us that Merrill Lynch now offers 'A new standard for investment research. A new level of confidence for investors,'" James Welborn writes for TomPaine.com. As a result of an investigation by the New York Attorney General, Merrill Lynch is apologizing and paying a $100 million penalty for failing to address past conflicts of interest. "High-profile corporate apologies are back in the news. A day after Merrill's mea culpa, Salomon Smith Barney announced it was following Merrill's lead, saying such moves will 'further enhance the quality and integrity' of their products. It's apparent that upper management at these firms believes that they can get away with just about anything, providing they manage to put the right spin on it. What's even more daunting is that they're probably right."

"The widely publicized and highly orchestrated public relations campaign adopted by the Bush administration in this 'war on terrorism' is eerily reminiscent of the propaganda war waged during World War II," says Frank Mankiewicz, vice chairman of Hill and Knowlton (the PR firm that orchestrated the campaign to win public support for the war in the Persian Gulf). Mankiewicz is concerned that these "dated strategies" are "encouraging the public to adopt a World War II mindset - a precarious posture as the nature of this conflict is nothing like that of the Second World War or any other war, or even war at all."

The recent disclosure that President Bush received a general warning before Sept. 11 of possible hijackings prompted a firestorm of spin. Conservative pundits and politicians fought back on cue, showing impressive message-discipline as they argued in unison that criticism of the president amounts to treason in the face of terrorism. Democrats "need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions," said Vice President Dick Cheney (without specifying any "incendiary suggestions" that any Democrats had actually made). On Fox News, Fred Barnes said that Democrats "looked like not a loyal opposition but a disloyal opposition." White House communications director Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that Democrats are doing "exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do." As Spinsanity.org points out, "This is the most direct statement by an administration official to date suggesting that dissent aids the enemy. ... The prevailing GOP/conservative strategy is to try to shut down debate over the war before it even starts. Any questioning of the administration's handling of the war on terror is immediately mischaracterized and attacked as unpatriotic. This bullying makes actual dissent from the president's policies nearly impossible -- and it appears to be working yet again. And every time it does, our democracy is debased just a little bit more."

The First Quarter 2002 issue of PR Watch, which examines the ways that PR firms and activists are using the Internet, is now available online as a free download. Stories in this issue include "Spinning the Web," which shows how PR firms view the web as a two-way street, using it themselves to flog their causes and market clients' products, while simultaneously PR pros are becoming increasingly alarmed at the growth of online activism. In "Digital Marketing: Old Hacks Learn New Tricks," we look at ways that PR pros and political campaigners are adapting old techniques for manipulating the masses by replacing traditional junk mail with cyber-spam and web-driven endorsements for hire.

The recent ruling by California's Supreme Court that Nike's PR efforts to defend itself against sweatshop labor charges are considered commercial speech has some PR professionals worried that the ruling will have a "chilling effect" on other PR campaigns. "The reaction we have is of great concern over the impact that the ruling has on our ability to be engaged in the discussion about what is going on in our business," Nike's US general counsel Jim Carter told PR Week. The suit brought by Marc Kasky charged that Nike violated a California law that restricts false and misleading statements in commercial speech. "For consumers it means a lot," Kasky's lawyer Alan Caplan said. "Now if a company is going to offer up any information regarding specifics of their product, they have to tell the truth." Activist groups like Corpwatch have welcomed the court's decision, because a ruling in favor of Kasky could reduce corporate whitewashing.

"Aided by the Internet and personal-computer software, online communities with their own publishing tools and networks are redefining news in the 21st Century," writes Paul Andrews as he examines the growth of alternative journalism on the Internet. Webloggers like Rusty Foster's Kuro5hin are transcending the traditional barriers between "reporter" and "audience." Kuro5hin offers "the ultimate democratic editorial process: Impromptu discussion groups form around thoughtful postings mostly spun off the news. Regulars rate postings for quality, accuracy and depth. The site draws 100,000 regular readers." According to Foster, "The end result is an understanding and depth that just is not possible in traditional one-direction journalism."

Advertising Age's Bob Garfield in his Ad Review column gives the ad campaign created by Qorvis Communications for the Embassy of Saudi Arabia zero stars. "The ads are signed 'The People of Saudi Arabia,' but that's a lie," Garfield writes. "And so is the premise. For decades, the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and other so-called 'moderate' Arab states has been a deal with the devil. We sponsor their corrupt, repressive, authoritarian regimes with cash and weaponry. They sell us oil. Such unholy alliances, dictated by Cold War realpolitik, were bound to create backlash .... The results: A Saudi regime that pays protection money to radical fundamentalists by underwriting hate-spewing madrassas around the Muslim world, spreading the virus of radical Islam while inoculating itself from revolutionary threats within its kingdom."

"In the eight months since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, the Bush administration has moved more quickly than any administration since World War II to make government activities, documents and other information secret," reports USA Today. "Hundreds of thousands of public documents have been removed from government Web sites. Other public information has been edited, and access to some materials has been made more difficult. Some government materials yanked from the Internet, such as EPA reports on the consequences of industrial accidents at chemical plants, may be viewed only in government reading rooms. Visitors must have an appointment and have to be accompanied by a government escort. ... A growing number of critics, including several federal judges, say the administration's secrecy effort is beginning to look more like opportunism than enhanced security."

Tobacco PR lobbyist Rick Berman runs a lucrative business smearing public interest groups through his industry-funded fronts such as ConsumerFreedom.com and Activistcash.com. Berman can dish it out, but apparently he can't take it, nor stand the truth. He is threatening to sue food safety activist Jeff Nelson of VegSource for revealing that Berman lines his own pockets from his "non-profit" enterprises. According to Nelson, "Berman claims he wants to 'expose' funding sources of non-profit activist organizations. But his enthusiasm for drawing aside the veil seems to wane when the focus is turned on him. ... Berman was recently exposed for funneling millions of corporate dollars donated to non-profit organizations he runs right into his own bank accounts." Rather than back down, Nelson's group VegSource is turning up the heat on Berman's scam.

Franklin Foer looks at the rise of John Rendon, whose PR firm is working for the Pentagon in the "war on terrorism." Using techniques that he learned running U.S. election campaigns, Rendon focuses on media strategies (as opposed to "grassroots PR," which Foer suggests would be more effective at combatting Muslim fundamentalism). He has a reputation for overcharging for his services, which are sometimes shockingly inept. So why does the government keep hiring him to run propaganda campaigns in places like Panama, Kuwait, the Balkans and Afghanistan? Answer: Rendon has friends at at all of the government agencies that do the hiring. "He is, after all, nothing if not superbly networked," Foer writes. According to political consultant Joel McCleary, Rendon has "developed a niche. Nobody else does what he does. Nobody else has mastered the complexities of government contracting or knows the people with power. He's all alone."

U.S. network newscasts, which collectively commanded 84 percent of the viewing audience in 1981, now attract only 43 percent of the pie, observes the New York Times. The news anchors themselves - Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Dan Brokaw - are all aging dinosaurs, and some are predicting that when they're gone, the evening news as we know it today will become extinct, succumbing to "the 500-channel cable-satellite media universe; the fierce and ever-expanding competition of cable news"; and "the postmodern news-grazing habits of the young, who turn to such antiestablishment sources as the Internet and Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' for their information fix. ... For some, the idea of the anchor -- an omniscient father figure decreeing 'that's the way it was' from behind an imposing desk -- has itself become a relic of an American hierarchy that will soon be gone with the wind."

The Independent of England has obtained a copy of a secret internal memorandum circulating in the UK's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which proposes an "urgent" change in the law by November to crack down on objections to the genetically modified crops. The document urges the Government to "proceed rapidly" to change the law, noting that the plans 'will be criticized because it will seem we are trying to silence GM objections.'" Similar proposals have arisen in the past to stop the public from challenging the need for nuclear waste dumps and other controversial projects at public inquiries.

A Turkish court has sentenced a journalist to a suspended prison term of 20 months for writing that ordinary Turks have litle hope for a fair trial. Meanwhile, the head of the international journalist group Reporters Without Borders has been banned from entering Turkey, after the group called Turkey's top general a "predator of press freedom."

CBS news anchor Dan Rather said in an interview with British television that "patriotism run amok" was keeping American journalists from ask tough questions about the "war on terrorism." Rather even admitted that he himself had participated in self-censorship following September 11. "You know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," he said. "Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions."

"In a single day, the capital's media climate has been transformed," writes Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz. Reporters are outraged by recent revelations that President Bush received warnings prior to Sepember 11 of possible terrorist hijackings -- warnings which he has previously denied receiving.

• "Why didn't he level with the American people about what he knew?" asked ABC correspondent Terry Moran in a blunt exchange with White House spokesman Ari Fleisher. "These questions were asked after September 11th of the president, of the vice president, of you, yourself. And no one in the White House said, yes, the information had come in that al Qaeda was planning hijackings."
• A 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might crash an airplane into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.
• A top-secret briefing presented to President Bush on August 6 carried the title, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
• Struck by the revelations, Ron Fournier of the Associated Press asked: "Shouldn't the American public have known these facts before they got on planes in the summer and fall of last year?"
• "Within hours of the attack we had names of the hijackers and that we needed to focus on flight schools," says one federal investigator assigned to the hijacker detail after Sept. 11. "It was clear how the information quickly flowed down that someone in Washington must have had previous knowledge. They sat on this and they blew it and it's finally coming out."

"The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia has paid Qorvis Communications $3.8 million since it signed a one-year $200,000 a-month contract on Nov. 14 with the 15 percent Patton Boggs-owned PA shop," trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The bulk of those outlays ($2.9 million) were for advertising services to position the Kingdom as a trusted ally of the U.S. and a partner in President Bush's 'war on terror.' QC, in turn, paid its advertising contractor Sandler-Innocenzi $2.5 million for work on the ads. Qorvis' representation agreement that it filed with Ambassador Prince Bandar has an interesting wrinkle. The firm agrees to tell the Saudis about any foreign client that approaches it for representation during the contract period. QC also agrees that for two years following termination of the Arab account, QC 'will not accept any engagement with any client that would be deemed adverse to the interests of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.'"

Much of the Internet stock boom was a fiction, "written to script by Wall Street fixers who stood to collect, and did collect, buckets of money by duping the investing public," says Gregg Wirth, a freelance writer who has covered Wall Street for most of the past decade. "Americans were deluged with media sound bites and commercials portraying stock market trading as a virtual free ride on the gravy train. High priests in the Church of Adam Smith were offering their free-market mantra as a solution to every social and economic ill (works great on rheumatism, too)." Now that the party's over, Wirth notes, investment banks have announced a few superficial reforms which "smack of PR-consultant 'crisis management' -- just enough mea culpa and 'voluntary action' to sooth public opinion and cool the ire of regulators." According to Philip Mattera of the Corporate Research Project, glaring conflicts of interest on the part of stock analysts. The dot-com bubble was created by "transforming analysts into salesmen, whose main job was to tout stocks of companies with which their firm already had an investment banking relationship. Analysts once advised investors to buy certain stocks and sell others. By the end of the 1990s 'sell' recommendations were virtually extinct." Mattera's report also provides a useful list of information resources that you can use to find out who Wall Street analysts are really representing.

In exchange for money, some physicians have allowed pharmaceutical sales representatives into their examining rooms to meet with patients, review medical charts and recommend what medicines to prescribe. "And some of those salespeople tried to influence doctors to prescribe drugs for uses that were not approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration," reports the New York Times. A lawsuit brought by Dr. David P. Franklin, a former Warner-Lambert employee turned whistleblower, accuses the drug company's sales representatives of encouraging doctors to experiment by prescribing the drug Neurontin for unapproved uses including pain, bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder in children. Doctors "who were considered high-volume prescribers" were rewarded "by paying them as speakers and consultants and also paying them to enter patients in clinical trials. Warner-Lambert also tried to influence doctors who wrote medical journal articles about Neurontin by paying them, sometimes secretly, and even hiring a marketing company to write first drafts."

Argentina's Ministry of Economy is paying Zemi Communications $300,000 a year for media relations, reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Meanwhile, current President Eduardo Duhalde asked the World Bank to let it delay repaying $800 million in loans that come due this week according to a New York Times article. "Zemi Communication's job is to pitch the Ministry's revitalization efforts with financial institutions and the international press," O'Dwyer's writes. Zemi Communications president and founder Alan Stoga used to work at former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's firm Kissinger Associates, where he did economic and global privatization consulting.

"In Food Politics, Marion Nestle's telling book on the food industry's influence on nutrition and health, she asserts that one of the ways the industry intimidates its critics is by suing them," writes New York Times reporter Marian Burros. "As if on cue, the Sugar Association has threatened to sue Dr. Nestle, professor and chairwoman of the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University." Nestle's book looks at the millions of dollars spent by the food industry in their behind-the-scenes effort to influence elected officials, regulatory agencies, universities, professional organizations, and ultimately, the consuming public.

"Persuasion works best when it's invisible. The most effective marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices independently," writes Guardian columnist George Monbiot. "As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called 'viral marketing'. Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host. One of the world's foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something it had never done before, and retract a paper it had published." Monbiot is referring to an article published by the journal Nature and an anti-biotech campaign financed by Monsanto and coordinated by a PR firm called the Bivings Group. Monsanto and Bivings are exposed in two recent articles detailing Monsanto's dirty tricks.

Johnnie Thomas, a seventy-year-old African-American woman, can't board an airplane these days without a lengthy hassle. Her name appears on a "master terrorist list" because it happens to resemble one of the aliases used by a blond, blue-eyed man accused of murdering his wife who has already been captured and is sitting in jail. She has spoken with the FBI, FAA and other government acronyms, and no one knows how to take her name off the terrorist list.

Stephen J. Hedges profiles the Rendon Group, the PR firm now working for the Pentagon in the "war on terrorism." Company owner John Rendon, who calls himself "an information warrior and a perception manager," has gotten rich working in places like Panama, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the secrecy surrounding his work makes it difficult to assess what, if anything, Rendon is actually accomplishing. "They're very closemouthed about what they do," says Kevin McCauley, an editor at O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "They do media monitoring, getting an image of how the U.S. is perceived in the Muslim world. And they're big into video news releases. It's all cloak-and-dagger stuff."

In mid-April, Citigroup launched a $100 million global ad campaign titled "This is Citigroup." Using images of elderly people, and people from Hong Kong to Brazil, the ads portray a caring bank, committed to local communities. But the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which has waged a boycott against Citigroup for the past two years, says the bank completely ignores environmental and social concerns and is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. RAN recently launched a counter campaign featuring photos that document destructive Citigroup-funded projects. "The new ad campaign is so out of touch with reality that Rainforest Action Network is concerned that critical levels of psychological denial have taken hold of the executive suite," states a RAN news release. According to RAN's Ilyse Hogue, "The new ad campaign almost seems like a cry for help. It's such a violation of truth in advertising that we felt we had no choice but to intervene."

William Nash, a retired U.S. Army major general, was one of the members of the United Nations fact-finding mission assigned to investigate what happened in Jenin during the Israeli incursion into the Palestinian refugee camp last month. Unfortunately, the team never got a chance to do its work. "Israel's need for clarification turned to obstruction and then to blockage. Our mood in turn changed from bemusement to frustration to anger," Nash writes. "There was so much misinformation about our intentions, about who we were and about whether our backgrounds predisposed us to misunderstand military necessities or the tragic circumstances of urban warfare. ... It soon became clear that the Israelis were fundamentally hostile to the very concept of finding out what had happened in Jenin. ... After our fact-finding mission was finally abandoned at the beginning of this month, we sat at the airport with a feeling of overwhelming frustration. We had the leadership, the experience and the right plan. But rather than having helped in uncovering the facts that could have dampened emotions, our thwarted mission only added to the controversy."

When KENS-TV in San Antonio, Texas aired a glowing story about a "miracle wrinkle cream," it failed to mention that the product's sole distributor in San Antonio is Jennifer McCabe, an employee of the TV station who also happens to be engaged to the station's executive producer. Moreover, the KENS story contained "neither an interview with an expert from the Health Science Center or any other objective source, nor any details about the product that weren't provided by Jennifer McCabe," notes local newspaper reporter Rick Casey, who describes the story as "more of an 'infomercial' than a news piece."

The Enron scandal and the declining stock market have left more people worried about the Bush administration's plan to convert Social Security funds into private investment accounts, so Republicans are using focus groups and pollsters to help them finesse the issue. "Key House Republicans now are moving toward declaring themselves against complete privatization -- a deliberate exaggeration of what Bush proposed -- so they can say in campaign ads they oppose the idea and perhaps even sue opponents who accuse them of it," report Mike Allen and Julie Eilperin. "Don't say 'privatization.' Instead say 'personal retirement accounts,' " advises Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says it's "virtually a certainty" that terrorists will inflict "a major nuclear event" on the United States sometime soon - probably in New York or Washington. "What makes Buffett so pessimistic?" askes commentator James Pinkerton. "Maybe he read the Capitol Hill testimony of Undersecretary of State Charlotte Beers before the House Appropriations Committee on April 23." Beers wants to spend $595 million on public relations to address seething anti-U.S. resentments in the Muslim word, while the Bush administration seems determined to expand its list of potential enemies in the war on terrorism. Pinkerton warns that this behavior "could become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ) has developed a set of principles outlining a "consensus about what journalists must offer and what citizens should expect." Its principles include "above all, truthfulness. ... proof that the journalists' first loyalty is to citizens. ... We should expect journalists to maintain independence from those they cover," to "monitor power and give voice to the voiceless," provide a "forum for public criticism and problem solving," and offer "news that is proportional and relevant." CCJ also offers recommendations for ways that citizens can influence journalists to improve the quality of their coverage.

Last year ABC-TV's John Stossel got caught inventing nonexistent scientific studies so he could pretend that organic foods contain as many pesticides as conventionally-grown produce. Now Consumers Union has done a real scientific study, published in a peer-reviewed journal, which shows (surprise, surprise) that Stossel was dead wrong and organic foods contain substantially fewer pesticide residues. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a long-time apologist for agribusiness, is pooh-poohing the result. "So what?" says ACSH's Gilbert Ross. "The health risks associated with pesticide residues on food are not at all established." The Associated Press put its own bizarre spin on the story, headlining its report, "One-quarter of organic produce contains pesticides". AP's lead paragraph warns, "Think organic fruits and vegetables are free of pesticides? Think again." The story waits until the third paragraph before mentioning that 75 percent of conventionally-grown produce contain pesticide residues, as compared to only 23 percent for organic produce.

The Center for Public Integrity has released a new study of political lobbying at the state level which reveals that lobbyists spent at least $570 million impacting legislation in states across the country in 2000. The study's release coincides with the publication of the Center's latest book, Capitol Offenders: How Private Interests Govern Our States. CPI has also launched a new online database with state-by-state information on registered lobbyists, special interests, and outside interests of state legislators, showing how "personal financial concerns of lawmakers and special interest lobbying mute the voices of average Americans."

While government regulators turned a blind eye, electricity traders at Enron (under the leadership of current U.S. Army Secretary Thomas White) drove up prices during the California power crisis using manipulations that may have contributed to severe power shortages in the state, according to internal Enron documents released today by federal regulators. In one strategy described in the memos, Enron would buy power from a state-run exchange and resell it outside California for almost five times as much. "Thus, traders could buy power at $250 [per megawatt-hour] and sell it for $1,200," according to one memo. "This strategy appears not to present any problems," the memo stated, "other than a public relations risk arising from the fact that such exports may have contributed to California's declaration of a Stage 2 Emergency yesterday."

With obesity a national crisis in the United States and hunger a national crisis in many parts of the Third World, the food industry is struggling with declining sales. "A recently as a decade ago, Campbell Soup Co. was posting tidy volume gains for its ubiquitous red-and-white label soups. Today, company watchers doubt Campbell can even stabilize declining sales of its condensed soup," notes Advertising Age in a story titled "Food Industry Growth Stalls." To reverse the trend, the food industry is looking for ways to get Americans to eat more. One strategy is to sell so-called "nutraceuticals" or "functional" foods that are marketed as solutions to obesity, aging or other health problems (even though Ad Age admits that "functional" foods are "defined by little more than the addition of calcium to existing products"). Simultaneously, companies are pushing convenience and snack foods. Ad Age notes impressive strides in the sale of Mini Oreos, Single Serve Oreo Packs and Chocolate Creme Oreos.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, a right-wing think tank, has launched a new website, envirotruth.org, to attack what it calls the "jihad" that environmental activists are waging against corporations. The NCPPR, which was formed in the 1980s to support terrorism by the Contras in Nicaragua, now says it has a mission to combat "ecoterrorism." By the way, NCPPR also sells its services to the tobacco industry. (Now isn't that a surprise!)

The Free Expression Policy Project has produced a 56-page report "which surveys the history and current state of media literacy education and illustrates why it is far preferable to TV ratings, Internet filters, 'indecency' laws, and other efforts to censor the ideas and information available to the young."

Inspired by recent public revelations about pundits who took large consulting fees from Enron, Robert W. Hahn ponders the financial conflicts of interest that pervade the world of Washington think tanks (including his own outfit, the heavily corporate-funded American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies). Hahn's essay, "The False Promise of 'Full Disclosure'," combines some fairly frank admissions with rationalizations about the "impracticality" of full disclosure. "I am aware of many people who write opinion pieces on a particular subject for direct compensation. Some disclose that information while many others do not," Hahn writes. In fact, "we are all walking conflicts of interest because most of us have to work for a living. And in exchange for money, most of us make compromises." Yet he concludes that stricter standards for full disclosure "would actually do more harm than good by reducing the pool of experts and encouraging people to circumvent the system. ... Indeed, if disclosure requirements are enforced more rigorously, I would expect more think tanks to emerge that serve as fronts for all sorts of preferred interest group policies."

If you can dismiss someone as "crazy," you don't have to address the substance of what they're saying, which is why dime-store psychoanalysis is a frequent propaganda tactic used by political pundits. Spinsanity.org, a website that analyzes manipulative rhetoric in politics, examines National Review's use of this tactic to disparage critics of Israel in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Nike is "extremely disappointed" in a California supreme court ruling which says the company can be sued for fraud for claiming that its overseas workers received adequate wages and that its working conditions complied with safety regulations - assertions contradicted by an audit commissioned by Nike itself. The court 's decision states that when a company "makes factual representations about its own products or its own operations, it must speak truthfully." Nike responded that the court's decision "sets a dangerous precedent." Liberal New York Times columnist Bob Herbert agrees. "Now there is no doubt that Nike has wrung billions and billions of dollars from the toil and the sweat and in some cases the physical abuse of impoverished workers - mostly women - in places like China and Vietnam and Indonesia," he writes. But Herbert worries that the ruling will "make some companies reluctant to vigorously defend themselves in the court of public opinion. That is not a good thing."

Rick Berman, the tobacco lobbyist who runs Consumer Freedom.com (which he started with $900,000 from Philip Morris) condemns us for "fearmongering" about the dangers of mad cow-type diseases in the US. Berman uses a combination of false claims and misinformation to smear us and our 1997 book Mad Cow USA. Berman's operation is funded by food and booze interests such as Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company and the largest food conglomerate in the US. Maybe Berman's clients believe his propaganda, but the spread of mad cow-like Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk across the US, and a growing number of young human CJD deaths, is raising serious concerns within the mainstream medical community, as UPI reports today. Our book Mad Cow USA is available free online as a PDF download.

"The Philippines Dept. of National Defense is relying on Weber Shandwick to keep in touch with the Pentagon, White House, Congress and various federal agencies under a two-year contract worth $20,000 a month," reports PR trade publication O'Dwyer's. "The Philippines has the second biggest deployment of U.S. forces--after Afghanistan--in President Bush's 'war on terror.' The Washington Post reported on April 30 that the 1,000 American troops have fallen behind in their plan to conduct joint exercises with Philippine soldiers to fight Abu Sayyaf rebels who want to establish a Muslim state in the southern part of the country."

U.S. Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs chief Charlotte Beers told a House subcommittee she needs $595 million to "improve and magnify the ways in which we are addressing people of the world--not necessarily other world governments--but people," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. Her request represents a five percent increase for the public diplomacy budget. "That outreach is especially targeted at 'disaffected populations' in the Middle East and South Asia, where a poor perception of the U.S. 'leads to unrest, an unrest that has proven to be a threat to our national and international security,' she said during her April 24 testimony," O'Dwyer's writes. Beers is proposing increased polling, opinion research, and focus groups on various topics from democracy to the economy to anti-American sentiment not only in Muslim and Arab countries, but in sub-Sahara Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, the Caribbean, Russia, the former Soviet states and Europe. Beers also says her office will work with foreign broadcasters to produce and distribute "documentaries that highlight positive aspects of American life, culture or community."

Journalists are being far too timid in reporting the news, and the public is poorly informed about the media's role in democracy, veteran journalist Bill Kovach told media ombudsmen on Tuesday. "An awful lot of news organizations are far, far more timid than I would like them to be ... far, far more timid than they have any right to be," said Kovach, a former editor for The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Media hoax artist Joey Skaggs has gotten reporters to fall for fake stories including a cemetery amusement park, a robbery at a celebrity sperm bank, and a canine brothel. (Skaggs called it a "cathouse for dogs.") Skaggs says his success at hoodwinking journalists shows how little effort they put into checking their facts. "They are the status quo with capped teeth and hair spray," he says. "They are the puppet presenters of misinformation, propaganda, lies, deceit and commercialism.