The Globe, a tabloid newspaper, is running a titillating photograph of alleged rapist Kobe Bryant's accuser at her high school prom. "In it, the woman is lifting up her prom dress to reveal a garter belt," notes Rebecca Traister. "The headline reads: 'Kobe Bryant's Accuser: Did she really say no?' Next to the photo, in half-inch type, is the 19-year-old woman's name." Traister interviewed journalism professors and magazine editors who are shocked by the Globe's decision. "It is misogynistic and truly exploitative to try to get big sales off of identifying an alleged rape victim," said Us Weekly's editor in chief Janice Min. "Was a woman dressed inappropriately? Did she ask for it? Is a sexy woman more likely to get raped than a non-sexy woman? These are the anachronistic, horrible ideas that come up because of a cover like that. Morally, it's wrong."

A gay-bashing, right wing student newspaper at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island offers a fresh example of the conservative media's strategy of "publicizing censorship of their papers" so they can "cast themselves as the little guy up against the leftist establishment." The Hawk's Right Eye provoked the university administration into clamping down by running nasty attacks on Judy Shepard, whose son was beaten to death in Wyoming for being gay. After Shepard spoke on campus, HRE accused her of "preying on students' emotions and naivety" [sic] so that she could become "a mascot for the homosexual agenda." Now that the university has established a "publications and broadcast review committee" and is considering revoking HRE's funding, national conservative groups have swarmed to its defense, complaining of "harassment" and "a heavy-handed approach to silencing ideas that oppose the leftist orthodoxy so prevalent on college campuses."

Monique Harden and Nathalie Walker, two public interest lawyers, report that they attended "the recent conference of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), called 'Communicating in a Volatile World.' ACC is the trade association for the 180 largest manufacturers of chemicals in the U.S. Until recently, ACC was known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association. The ACC conference was a real eye-opener. It revealed the ACC's genuine fears about the accomplishments of environmental health activists. In particular, ACC communications staff and presenters at the conference conceded that the work of coalitions like the Collaborative on Health and the Environment and Health Care Without Harm has effectively raised public awareness about the health dangers of toxic chemicals in the environment and in consumer products. They also concluded that the success of these coalitions is due to their diversity of members and supporters who include community groups, environmental justice organizations, health professionals, and researchers who focus on body burden and low-dose chemical exposures, shareholder/investment institutions, and consumers. Here are the salient details of the various presentations at the conference..."

Dan Klores Communications, a PR firm that specializes in "crisis communications" for clients embroiled in scandals, is representing Sean ("P. Diddy") Combs, the artist formerly known as "Puff Daddy," as he faces criticism for the use of sweatshop labor to manufacture his clothing line. "The National Labor Committee, the organization which targeted Kathy Lee Gifford with similar charges eight years ago, this week released a report detailing forced overtime without pay, mandatory pregnancy tests and other 'systematic human and worker rights violations' at a factory which producesarticles for Combs' 'Sean John' line," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Combs has been a long-time client of Klores, which encouraged him to carry a Bible to court during his 2001 trial for illegal gun possession in connection with a nightclub shooting. The PR firm has also represented Combs at other embarrassing moments such as his 2002 legal battle with an ex-girlfriend over child support for their infant son. Other Klores clients have included Britney Spears, Mike Tyson and Lizzie Grubman.

Cindy Hunter and her husband, Sam Nickels, opposed Bush's war against Iraq and put a sign on their front porch showing the number of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers who have been wounded or killed thus far in the war. An anonymous arson responded by setting fire to the sign, endangering their lives and causing an estimated $50,000 in damages to their home. This incident is only one of dozens that the Progressive magazine lists on its "McCarthyism Watch," which monitors "the New McCarthyism that is sweeping the country."

Charlie Reina, a former producer for Fox News, has posted a letter to the Poynter Institute's online journalism forum, explaining how the network deliberately slants the news. "Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of management," he writes. "The pressure ranges from subtle to direct. First of all, it's a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. ... The roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it."

As the propaganda that led America to attack Iraq continues to fall apart, President Bush is looking for scapegoats for his own PR stunts. "The triumphal 'Mission Accomplished' banner was the pride of the White House advance team, the image makers who set the stage for the president's close-ups. On May 1, on a golden Pacific evening aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, they made sure that the banner was perfectly captured in the camera shots of President Bush's speech declaring major combat in Iraq at an end. But on Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush publicly disavowed the banner... 'I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff. They weren't that ingenious, by the way.' ... The banner 'was suggested by those on the ship,' [Bush press secretary Scotty McClellan] said. 'They asked us to do the production of the banner, and we did. They're the ones who put it up.' The man responsible for the banner, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer now with the White House communications office, was traveling overseas on Tuesday and declined to answer questions. He is known for the production of the sophisticated backdrops that appear behind Mr. Bush with the White House message of the day, like 'Helping Small Business,' repeated over and over." On May 16th the New York Times reported that "White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president" came up with the carrier landing stunt. We wonder, is that super-sexy flight suit President Bush wore on its way to the Smithsonian, or the shredder?

Even Advertising Age can't stomach the latest commercials from KFC, which attempt to position the company's grease-dipped chicken as a healthier fast-food alternative. In an editorial, Ad Age says the ads are "as laughable, and damaging, as any imagined or recalled." A separate Ad Age news story notes the absurdity of attempting to make its products sound healthy by comparing a single piece of chicken to an entire Burger King Whopper, which "is considered one of the most fat- and calorie-laden burgers in the fast-food category, making it an easy comparison for KFC to beat." Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield weighs in as well, calling the new ads "desperate and sleazy ... How dare they? Fried chicken is not, never has been and never will be health food. On the contrary, it is a nearly perfect fat conveyance, a sort of poultry Jiffy Lube."

The Environmental Working Group has obtained and analyzed documents from a briefing book assembled by Frank Luntz, a top public opinion researcher for corporate lobbyists. The briefing book offers a PR playbook on how to frame the current wholesale rollback of environmental and public health protections while avoiding a stinging public backlash. "It can be helpful to think of environmental and other issues in terms of 'story,'" Luntz advises. "A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. ... The facts are beside the point. It's all in how you frame your argument."

"The caller to Joanne Doroshow's office last month described himself as working for Sky Radio Network, a company that produces programming for Forbes Radio, one of the audio channels available to passengers on American Airlines. As the executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that casts itself as a champion of consumer rights, Ms. Doroshow was asked if she would be interviewed for a talk show examining the issue of tort reform. When Ms. Doroshow agreed, she said, the caller informed her that it would cost her organization $5,900 to have its point of view heard. When Ms. Doroshow balked, she said, the caller offered to see if it could be reduced to $3,500. 'I was furious,' Ms. Doroshow said. 'I thought this was another way corporations are dominating what people hear, and are getting only their side presented because they're willing to pay for it.' "

The student editor of the California Patriot, a right-wing student newspaper at the University of California-Berkeley, claims that conservatives are the true heirs to the university's free speech movement of the 1960s. "The conservatives on Berkeley's campus have employed various strategies in order to insert their views -- whether they're wanted or not -- into campus debates," writes Michael Gaworecki. "They feel that linking themselves to the Free Speech Movement is key to their cause, and employ leftist rhetoric accordingly." But unlike the movement of the 1960s, which was homegrown, "here is a large network of well-entrenched, well-funded, national foundations and organizations sponsoring publications like the Patriot." Organizations like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's Collegiate Network, the Leadership Institute, Young America's Foundation, and Young Americans for Freedom offer training, financial subsidies, assistance with public relations on campus, and even editing stories if they need it to neo-conservative campus journalists, along with a network for getting jobs after they graduate.

Three years ago, a crew of four people quietly launched the South Korean "citizen journalism" Web site OhmyNews. Since then, its staff has grown to 53, and the number of "citizen reporters" writing for the site has grown from 700 to about 26,700, with about 1 million readers each day. Its experiment with grassroots-led journalism has transformed Korean politics. "OhmyNews is transforming the 20th century's journalism-as-lecture model—where organizations tell the audience what the news is and the audience either buys it or doesn't—into something vastly more bottom-up, interactive and democratic," says San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor. In an interview with the Japan Media Review, OhmyNews founder Oh Yeon-Ho explains how he got started. "I had confidence that citizen participation in journalism was something that citizens currently desired. But I could not imagine that the fire would spring into a blaze in such a short time," he says.

The Internet Archive has unearthed a U.S. military training film from 1968 showing psychological operations (psyops) in a mythical country called "Hostland," where U.S. advisors want help the host government gain the support of its population. "Psychologically, the military in every country in the world represents government authority," it explains as it shows images of a gray-haired diplomat meeting with generals. "As promised by the ambassador, a team of military advisors arrives in Hostland," the film continues. The psyops expert "reviews the psychological objectives the United States hopes to achieve," studies the population, identifies target audiences, and plans a combination of media, cultural, and economic development initiatives. "Prisoners are interrogated with special questionnaires that give clues toward their reaction to the psychological effort directed toward them," continues the second part of the film. "The psychological program must be constantly updated. As the people are affected by the program, so the program is affected by their changes in attitudes. A successful psyop program will make them perceive things from the desired viewpoint."

"Denouncing bias in the media has become a dumb instrument. The cases keep coming. The charges keep flying. Often the subject - journalism - disappears," NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. Rosen poses six questions about the bias question, and two answers. "Liberal spin. Corporate spin. Texas spin. Zionist spin. Republican spin. Hollywood spin. American spin. Anti-American spin. We want it out, out, out. Spin, that's bad," Rosen writes. " But critics smart enough to detect spin are smart enough to see--and in fact, they do see--that claiming, 'they're spinning!' has itself become a form of spin, a popular one, which would seem to throw spin detection, never a clear cut thing, into total incoherence. Does that bother you, or is it only my spin?"

"To draw attention to the troubling trend of corporate 'pinkwashing,' Breast Cancer Action, a national grassroots breast cancer advocacy organization, is running an ad in the national edition of the New York Times questioning some high-profile corporate marketing campaigns launched in connection with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. 'We're not opposed to companies raising money for the cause,' said Barbara Brenner, Breast Cancer Action's executive director. 'We're concerned about companies claiming to support the fight against breast cancer while manufacturing products that may be contributing to rising rates of the disease. They can't have it both ways.' Breast Cancer Action offers examples of corporate 'pinkwashers': Cosmetics companies such as Avon, Revlon, Estee Lauder, and Mary Kay all direct a percentage of their profits toward efforts against breast cancer. They also manufacture products containing phthalates and/or parabens, hormone-disrupting chemicals that may affect the development of cancer. 'As long as we believe we're doing something meaningful about breast cancer by buying into these corporate marketing schemes, the real work that needs to be done around treatment, access to care, and true prevention will continue to be under-funded and ignored,' said Brenner."

In Britain "Burson-Marsteller, the public relations agency used by the oil, GM, tobacco and chemical industries, is to represent the government's pollution watchdog, in a move that environmentalists yesterday described as 'barmy'." B-M's clients have included biotech behemoth Monsanto, and B-M's spying on food activists in the US in 1990 inspired the founding of PR Watch. Green activists in Britain are also blowing the whistle on the PR strategies of BP -- British Petroleum -- the oil giant that has marketed itself as "Beyond Petroleum." Activists in the group Rising Tide are demonstrating and leafleting, noting that "BP invests less than 1% of its annual budget on solar and other renewable energy sources, a great deal less than they spend on advertising and public relations." B-M, BP and other greenwashing corporations have long been pursuing a strategy of co-opting UK environmental activists, as Andy Rowell has reported in PR Watch. In 2002 Lord Peter Melchett, former head of Greenpeace UK, joined B-M.

White House advisor Karl Rove has selected Jim Wilkinson, the 33-year-old Texan who headed communications and press relations for the U.S. Central Command in Qatar during the Iraq invasion, as communications director for the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. A profile of Wilkinson in the New York Observer notes that he previously worked for Republican Congressman Dick Armey under Ed Gillespie, now chairman of the Republican National Committee. During the last presidential election, Wilkinson helped package and promote the false notion that Al Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet," and later helped Republican protesters shut down the vote recount in Florida.

"A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency biologist has resigned in protest of his agency's acceptance of a developer-financed study concluding that wetlands discharge more pollutants than they absorb, according to a statement released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). EPA's approval of the study gives developers credit for improving water quality by replacing natural wetlands with golf courses and other developments. ... Bruce Boler, a former state water quality specialist, resigned after three years with EPA. ... PEER is leading a coalition of environmental groups seeking to stop ten projects in the Western Everglades that would destroy more than 2,000 acres of wetlands. 'EPA's new position that wetlands pollute stands the Clean Water Act on its head and sends the all-clear signal to developers that no project is out of bounds.' "

Alicia Mundy writes that "I was about to go live on the Today show to discuss my book on the fen-phen scandal when the host, Maria Shriver, leaned forward and very kindly said, 'I'm really sorry about the way we're doing this interview and the questions I have to ask. You understand, don't you?' ... It seems that the pharmaceutical company, Wyeth-Ayerst, had been calling. Wyeth, a major conglomerate, makes Dimetapp and Robitussin, as well as hormone replacement products and other drugs, and was a huge advertiser with NBC. They'd apparently been in negotiations with NBC's counsel over my pending appearance. ... I left satisfied, but remained curious about the dynamics behind the scenes. The answer came this summer in an extraordinarily revealing panel at the annual convention of Investigative Reporters and Editor,, in Washington. ... The panel, titled 'PR Attacks and Counterattacks,' was moderated by Mark Feldstein of George Washington University. With him was a former local TV news colleague, Kent Jarrell, who went over to the dark side to P.R. and 'crisis management' in 1996, and is now a senior vice president for litigation communications at APCO Worldwide. Jarrell was joined by Don Goldberg, a survivor of the Clinton White House, who toils for the government relations firm Navigant Consulting."

"Sesame Street's Big Bird is hoping to triumph where George Bush, Tony Blair and numerous heads of state have failed, by bringing peace to the Middle East," reports Julia Day. The children's TV show is preparing a series of programs for broadcast in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, promoting cooperation, respect for others and self-esteem.

"Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets," writes Dana Milbank. "To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases." Commenting on this and other recent administration efforts to spin the war, Molly Ivins suggests that "sometimes it is actually smarter to attack the problem itself than the public relations surrounding it. I suspect that's where we are with the situation in Iraq."

"As TV and movies embrace a Madison & Vine ethos of blending entertainment with marketers' products and messages, magazine editors and publishers find themselves trying to pull off a tricky balancing act of maintaining the 'church and state' wall between editorial and advertising," writes Jon Fine. Recent examples include: a cover photo of Angelina Jolie on Rolling Stone that opened to a three-page ad featuring the sexy Ms. Jolie shilling for Jeep; and an editorial supplement in Prevention magazine that promoted "Pfizer's Alzheimer's medication Aricept, which was the sole advertiser of that section." According to Rolling Stone's Rob Gregory, "marketers expect more from magazines in general now. And magazines have to give them more."

The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published its second annual world press freedom ranking, criticizing Israel and the United States for unacceptable behavior toward journalists in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Iraq. RSF also criticized Arab countries for cracking down on media freedoms, but said standards were worst in Asia. Its worst ranking went to North Korea, followed by Cuba, which it said is "today the world's biggest prison for journalists."

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, a war gamer who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, has produced an analysis which suggests that the White House and Pentagon made up or distorted more than 50 news stories related to the war in Iraq. "It was not bad intelligence," Gardiner says. "It was much more. It was an orchestrated effort. It began before the war, was a major effort during the war and continues as post-conflict distortions. ... It was not just the Pentagon. It was the White House, and it was Number 10 Downing Street. It was more than spin. ... In the most basic sense, Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to right decisions. Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage."

"The U.S. government has launched a 'good news' offensive in Iraq, and a couple of Baghdad street kids, peddlers of soda pop, have been recruited for the first wave of attack," reports Charles J. Hanley. "On a two-day visit, U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans said thousands of new businesses have sprung up here since the war, and gave an example of new entrepreneurship: two boys he spotted by the road selling soft drinks to Baghdad's parched drivers." As in past wars, "the government has unleashed a flood of news releases promoting the U.S. Army's good deeds in an occupied countryside." But in Iraq, even the "positive" stories mask "negative" sides unseen by senators on "tours closely guided by American occupation authorities."

"Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he's in charge - told his top officials to 'stop the leaks' to the media, or else," report Joseph L. Galloway and James Kuhnhenn. "News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately. Bush told his senior aides on Tuesday that he 'didn't want to see any stories' quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and if he did, there would be consequences, a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used told Knight Ridder."

David Morgan, a morning show staffer at the NBC affiliate in Tampa, minced no words when a public relations agent asked how he could get his client interviewed on the program. "You pay us and we do what you want us to do," Morgan said. "Twenty-five hundred bucks for four to six minutes." Howard Kurtz notes that most networks and local TV stations "have strict rules against pay-for-play journalism. But at WFLA-TV, in the nation's 14th-largest market, producers on 'Daytime' are not shy about asking guests to pony up. They have turned the routine daily booking of guests into a commercial transaction." While the station's manager "likened the paid segments to an 'infomercial,' the slickly produced 'Daytime' looks like a regular local morning show, with NBC's peacock logo and a 'News Channel 8' insignia at the bottom of the screen."

Advertisers are "livid," says Tessa Wegert, over an FCC petition filed recently by Commercial Alert that could make TV product placement advertising a thing of the past. If the petition succeeds, Wegert frets, it would "ensure brands like Doritos and Mountain Dew never again appear on an episode of 'Survivor' without a conspicuous accompanying message disclosing their nature and origin. ... Media buyers fear Commercial Alert's recommendation will diminish the effectiveness of placements. One media buyer, who requested to remain anonymous, was quoted as saying product placement disclosures would, 'diminish the very reason why we do product placement deals -- to integrate products into a show without calling attention to them as commercials.'"

Expect lots of media hype soon over the first Jessica Lynch-related book by Iraqi Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief. According to some reports he told U.S. Marines the location of the captured Private Lynch. He and his family were then granted U.S. asylum. Along with the chance for U.S. citizenship, al-Rehaief received $300,000 from Rupert Murdoch's Harper Collins for his new book about the Lynch rescue. He also was given a job at the Livingston Group, a high-powered D.C. lobby firm. His book "Because Each Life Is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Came to Risk Everything for Pvt. Jessica Lynch" is being promoted by his Livingston Group colleague Lauri Fitz-Pegado. She is infamous for her work at Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990 coaching the Kuwaiti girl called "Nayirah" in her shocking but phony testimony on Congressional hill that she'd seen Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwaiti babies. That stunt helped propel the U.S. to war against Iraq in 1991. Fitz-Pegado's client was the ruling family of Kuwait and the baby-killing claims were later shown to be false. The new book is well timed since it will precede by a few weeks Jessica Lynch's own book, half-a-million copies of which will hit bookstores on Veterans Day, November 11th.

"The Bush administration, displeased with the news coverage of the war in Iraq, has accelerated efforts to bypass the national media by telling the administration's story directly to the American public," the Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes. In an "unprecedented effort to reach news organizations that do not regularly cover the White House," Bush did five eight-minute interviews with regional broadcasters yesterday. Mentioning improvements to Iraq's hospitals and schools, Milbank reports, "he said that 'there's a great deal of consistency' in the administration's actions and 'a very clear strategy' while expressing "'a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth.' In one interview, with Hearst-Argyle, he said, 'I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people.'"

The NATO Review has published an essay by Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Collins, the chief of PSYOPS (psychological operations) in NATO's Operations Division at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Titled "Mind Games," the essay examines the use of "perception-management operations before, during and after Operation Iraqi Freedom. Collins defines perception management to mean "all actions used to influence the attitudes and objective reasoning of foreign audiences and consists of Public Diplomacy, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), Public Information, Deception and Covert Action." He adds, "It was surprising, even to PSYOPS practitioners, how often the term 'PSYOPS' was used in military briefings and by the press during Iraqi Freedom. In recent military operations, there has been a tendency to blur connotations and meanings by using fuzzier terminology, avoiding terms like psychological operations and opting for what is deemed by some to be more acceptable expressions like 'Information Operations' (INFO OPS)." However, Collins continues, "This can lead to embarrassing consequences. ... [T]he press and the public have caught on to this word game, expressing concern about how the use of the term INFO OPS seems to be a deliberate attempt to allow PSYOPS to be used by politicians in order to manipulate domestic audiences to support weak, unpopular policies."

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has aired a glowing memorial to Paul Moran, its cameraman who was killed in March by a suicide bomber while filming the war in Iraq. The broadcast features fond recollections from Moran's colleagues, friends and family, while glossing over and rationalizing Moran's work for the Rendon Group, the secretive PR firm that has worked behind the scenes to promote the U.S. foreign interventions in Iraq and elsewhere. "It's true that he was unwittingly involved in, I guess what could be called a propaganda operation in the early 90's, but people must remember he didn't know that," says Zaab Sethna, Moran's colleague at the Iraqi National Congress. But Sethna's comments contradict his own statements made during a previous interview. For the rest of the story, PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton has summarized Back to Iraqsome of the concerns about Moran's relationship with the INC and the Rendon Group on the "Back to Iraq" weblog.

ExxonMobil, which has a reputation as the least socially responsible oil country in the world (no small feat), has been holding "a series of secret meetings with environmental and human rights groups worldwide in an effort to change its hard-nosed public image," reports Terry Macalister. But critics such as Cindy Baxter, a spokeswoman for the Stop Esso campaign, remain unconvinced. "This looks like PR. They need to stop funding rightwing groups and climate change sceptics if they want to convince anyone they are really changing," Baxter said.

The Los Angeles Times is facing a firestorm of criticism from supporters of Arnold Schwarzenegger who have accused the newspaper of showing bias against their candidate by publishing women's complaints that Schwarzenegger sexually harassed them. "Regrets? Not one," responds Times editor John Carroll. "Personally, I knew the stories were solid as Gibraltar. ... Among those employees whose misfortune it is to answer the phones at The Times, there is a consensus that our angriest critics haven't actually read the stories. Instead, they've heard about them secondhand."

"Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours," reports Ledyard King. "And all the letters are the same." A newspaper in Olympia, Washington noticed the pattern after receiving identically-worded letters from two different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment. A subsequent search found the same letter, over different signatures, in 11 different newspapers, including the Charleston Daily Mail; Mountain View Telegraph of Moriarty, NM; Observer-Dispatch of Utica, NY; and the Boston Globe. When contacted, none of the soldiers whose names appear on the letters said they actually wrote it, and one said he didn't even know about the letter until his father congratulated him for getting it published.

Faced with falling poll numbers and domestic unease with the Iraq situation, the White House is again attempting to polish its image. "The Bush administration is undertaking a campaign to regenerate public support for its policies in Iraq, dispatching officials across the country to promote White House strategy and build momentum for its $87 billion proposal to rebuild the war-torn nation," Capitol Hill Blue reports. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice kicked the campaign off Wednesday, addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in Chicago. George W. Bush spoke Thursday in in Portsmouth, N.H., where he "praised military reservists and family members who gathered for his speech, asserting that the United States is 'meeting the test of history' as a result of its involvement in Iraq, which he described as the 'central front' in the war on terrorism." Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Cheney delivered "a blistering rebuttal yesterday to critics of the administration's foreign policy and arguing that a consensus-based foreign policy is obsolete. ... Cheney blasted the criticism 'that the United States, when its security is threatened, may not act without unanimous international consent,'" the Washington Post reports.

"The most obvious proof that Bush officials hyped and distorted evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the past is that they continue to hype and distort that evidence today, with a shamelessness that is stunning," writes Jay Bookman. "If you believe their version of the story, the fact that we have found no WMD in Iraq - and no WMD programs - is of little or no importance. ... To justify their bizarre claim, Bush officials have pounced upon a handful of minor finds by [David] Kay's group, in particular the discovery of a biological agent in the possession of an Iraqi scientist. What they found, of course, was not the tons of weaponry that [Colin] Powell so famously promised in his speech to the United Nations. It was not pounds or even ounces of the material. It was one small vial. That vial contained the B strain of botulinum, not the more deadly A strain. It did not contain botulinum toxin, the actual nerve agent known in this country as Botox, only the fairly common botulinum bacteria that can produce the toxin."

"It may have been Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory celebration, but the crowd around him at the Century Plaza Hotel on Tuesday night easily could have been the receiving line at an NBC stars' picnic," notes Greg Braxton. Prominent faces at the celebration included his wife, "Dateline NBC" correspondent Maria Shriver; actor Rob Lowe of NBC's "Lyon's Den"; Pat O'Brien of NBC's "Access Hollywood"; and "Tonight Show" Host Jay Leno. According to Marty Kaplan, associate dean of the of University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, Schwarzenneger so blurs the line between politics and Hollywood that no one seems to notice when the media becomes blatantly partisan. As Nikki Finke observes, this isn't the first example of Leno's oh-so-obvious partisanship.

One of America's leading newspaper executives took the Bush administration to task Wednesday for what he termed an "unsettling trend toward governmental secrecy." Tony Ridder is chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, the industry's largest and most important trade organization. Speaking at an October 8 luncheon at the National Press Club, Ridder said the current fear, frustration and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's capital is "unprecedented, even going back to the dark days of Watergate."

The PBS program Frontline has produced an excellent documentary tracing the roots of the Iraqi war back to the days immediately following Sept. 11, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the creation of a special intelligence operation to quietly begin looking for evidence that would justify the war. The intelligence reports soon became a part of a continuing struggle between civilians in the Pentagon on one side and the CIA, State Department, and uniformed military on the other -- a struggle that led to inadequate planning for the aftermath of the war, continuing violence, and mounting political problems for the president. Although White House officials refused to be interviewed for the program, other key players were interviewed including Ahmad Chalabi, Paul Bremer, Jay Garner, Richard Perle, Greg Thielmann and Joseph C. Wilson.

Brent Bozell, whose Media Research Center spends its days looking for "liberal bias" in the media, has decided to take on the Justice League of America. "Comic-book superheroes have gone into the liberal political-indoctrination business," he complains, referring to JLA Issue #83, in which arch-villain Lex Luthor, standing in as president for George Bush, orders the invasion of a country called "Qurac," while "Superman finds himself in a living nightmare as his fellow Leaguers fall one by one to Lex's executive order: support the war or be 'neutralized!'" DC Comics writer Joe Kelly defends the controversial comic in an interview with a pro-war critic.

"The right wing talk media empire is taking some hits," observes Anthony Violanti. Rush Limbaugh got the boot from ESPN last week after making racially charged comments about "black quarterbacks." Michael Savage was fired by MSNBC after saying he wished a gay caller would "get AIDS and die." Bill O'Reilly at Fox News has made himself a laughingstock with his temper tantrums and attempt to sue satirist Al Franken. Columnist Robert Novak is in the center of a controversy about his role in publishing a White House leak that outed an undercover CIA officer. (Yeah, but who hired these guys in the first place?)

Bookstore display tables give the distinct impression there is a lot of lying going on in America these days, with President George W. Bush and his top advisers portrayed as the main culprits. Bestsellers include The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, by David Corn; Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, by Joe Conason; Bushwhacked, by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose; Thieves in High Places, by Jim Hightower; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast; Paul Krugman's The Great Unravelling; Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country?; and, of course, Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Oh, yeah ... almost forgot one: Weapons of Mass Deception, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber.

"Throughout his career as a bodybuilder and action-movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger has shaped his public persona much as he once sought to sculpt his champion muscles - with a domineering determination," write Dion Nissenbaum and Eric Nalder. His obsession with controlling his image goes even beyond the practices of other Hollywood celebrities. "Arnold's entire career has been manufactured," said Arthur Seidelman, who directed Schwarzenegger in his first action film. "He is very much in control of his image and has shaped that image every step of the way. He's a very controlling, powerful force." During his campaign for public office, his aides have been required to sign a five-page confidentiality agreement and have run his electoral race like a Hollywood publicity campaign, courting sycophantic interviews while avoiding tough questions from journalists - even as questions mount about the 15 women who have accused him of sexually harassing behavior, former associates have said he admired Hitler's skills as a propagandist, and journalist Greg Palast reports on a sweetheart deal between the Governator and California's scandal-ridden utility companies.

"The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation started with a small promise, but became a giant in the battle against breast cancer with a corporate approach to PR," PR Week reports. Part of that approach is consistency of message. "Making sure the logo and brand message are used properly by volunteer affiliates and corporate partners can be a challenge," PR Week writes. "The foundation currently is working on a perception benchmarking project to gauge consumer awareness and the brand's strengths and weaknesses, [the foundation's communications director Susan] Carter says. 'Branding manager' may be a relatively new job title at the foundation, but Komen takes great pains to protect its brand, says Joy Rich, philanthropy specialist at Pier 1 Imports. The retailer selected Komen as its national CSR partner, and sells pink candles each fall. Pier 1 receives branding packets from the foundation, complete with logos and press-release boilerplates, Rich says. 'They just give us the tools that we need to make sure we're getting the message out correctly,' she notes."

"A severe lack of funding, convoluted bureaucracy, and a near-total absence of research and measurability are badly undermining US attempts to bolster its image via public diplomacy in Muslim countries, according to a report released last week by the Advisory Group on Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua writes. The report, "Changing Minds, Winning Peace," recommendations include creating a cabinet-level foreign policy PR advisor to the President and an independent Corporation for Public Diplomacy to increase private-sector involvement. While touring Arab countries, advisory panel members were repeatedly told that "we like Americans but not what the American government is doing." Nancy Snow, assistant professor of communications at California State University - Fullerton, writes for O'Dwyer's PR, "This distinction between people and policy was deemed 'unrealistic, since Americans elect their government and broadly support its foreign policy.' Wasn't it President Bush who made just that distinction when he said in his 48-hour ultimatum speech that military action was solely directed at Saddam Hussein's regime, not the Iraqi people?"

The White House official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame did more than attack a political enemy, writes Shaun Waterman. Plame worked for the CIA "on the very issue the Bush administration says was at the heart of its decision to go to war with Iraq: weapons of mass destruction. ... Plame's outing, whomever did it, has damaged the very effort the White House said it was pursuing in going to war in the first place. A very important line has been crossed here. The integrity of the policy goals - non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction - is now seen by at least some in the White House as less important than the integrity of the message - we didn't exaggerate the case against Iraq. ... The message seems to have trumped everything, even the need to get it right in the war on terror." And as Walter Shapiro notes in USA Today, the Plame flap is only one of several scandalous recent developments related to the war in Iraq. "In the past week, three major Iraq-related developments should have, in theory, caused lasting embarrassment to the Bush administration," Shapiro writes. "But because none of these flaps touched on illegality, they have been treated as one-day stories."

A specter is haunting American politics: the specter of Richard Nixon, whose career as a politician created the image-drenched, spin-ridden political culture that now dominates elections and daily governance. David Greenberg, the author of Nixon's Shadow, notes that he came from California, "where Hollywood's influence and the rise of professional consultants first made 'image' central to campaigns." Embracing the new techniques of TV and public relations, Nixon "recruited aides from public relations (William Safire), advertising (H.R. Haldeman) and television (Roger Ailes). In 1968, he won the presidency as a 'New Nixon,' through a strategy designed to control his image. When journalist Joe McGinniss detailed this strategy the next year in The Selling of the President, shamefaced reporters vowed to get wise to such manipulation. ... Since Nixon, we have grown wise to the sleights of modern politics - and politicians have reacted by devising craftier methods."

The U.S. State Department has launched Hi, a glossy, Arabic-language magazine intended to "build bridges of communication" between Arabs and the United States. Described by its editors as a non-political, lifestyle magazine, "Hi" features happy talk about topics such as sand-surfing, Internet dating, rock climbing and yoga. Elliott Cola and Chris Toensing point out, however, that "Hi's process of presenting its content as non-political involves a significant amount of repression and revision." For example, its stories on collaborations between Western and Middle Eastern musicians have omitted mention of the political messages included in many of those musicians' song lyrics. Likewise, its version of a poem by Palestinian-American Suheir Hammad actually rewrote Hammad's poem, deleting more than half of it to eliminate its forthright anti-racist, feminist politics.

"British Prime Minister Tony Blair privately admitted before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction that could be used within 45 minutes, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has claimed," CNN International reports. Cook resigned his government post in protest of British involvement in Iraq. The Sunday Times of London published excerpts of Cook's new book, "Point of Departure," based on his diaries kept during the run-up to war. Cook wrote in February that Blair "deliberately crafted a suggestive phrasing which in the minds of many views must have created an impression, and was designed to create the impression, that British troops were going to Iraq to fight a threat from al Qaeda."

"On Sept. 29, a remarkable story appeared on the front page of The New York Times," William E. Jackson, Jr. writes in Editor & Publisher. Far down in the story there is a mea culpa for reporting by the Times' Judith Miller on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Miller's stories relied heavily on information and defectors provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Ahmad Chalabi. "Miller is not a neutral, nor an objective journalist," Jackson writes. "This can be acceptable, if you're a great reporter, "but she ain't, and that's why she's a propagandist,'" a former Times employee told Jackson. "One major rule that she consistently violates, when she is not sharing a byline, is that of 'protecting the paper's neutrality.' The editors know, of course, that she is an ideological neo-conservative, close to the Bush administration neo-cons, and thoroughly identified with them. She had called for the overthrow of Saddam's regime in non-Times publications and had also spoken out before the war in public speeches for which she was paid," Jackson writes.

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows that a majority of Americans have held at least one of three mistaken impressions about the U.S.-led war in Iraq and those misperceptions contributed to much of the popular support for the war. The three common mistaken impressions are that: (1) U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; (2) there's clear evidence that Saddam Hussein worked closely with the 9/11 terrorists; and (3) people in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it. The analysis released Thursday also correlated the misperceptions with the primary news source of the mistaken respondents and found that people who relied on television were more likely than other respondents to believe at least one of the three misperceptions - especially if their main news source was Fox.

"Bush administration officials and U.S. news media chiefs met on a rain-swept Civil War battlefield on Wednesday to honor four American journalists who died in Iraq and Pakistan while reporting on the U.S. war on terrorism. ... Honored were Daniel Pearl ... and three journalists who traveled with U.S. fighting units in Iraq this year -- Michael Kelly of the Atlantic Monthly and Washington Post, David Bloom of NBC and Elizabeth Neuffer of the Boston Globe. ... Not mentioned were the five journalists killed by U.S. forces in Iraq, or the Pentagon's unwillingness to release details about its shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad that killed two reporters and the Aug. 17 death of a Reuters TV cameraman, Mazen Dana. (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul) Wolfowitz declined to comment. 'I suspect what's happening here is that the Pentagon wants very much to continue its successful cultivation of U.S. journalists that began with the embeds,' John Stauber, co-author of the book Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq, told Reuters in a telephone interview. ... Last month, top U.S. Army officers admitted using news coverage by embeds to achieve military goals in Iraq. A day before the April 8 shelling of the Palestine Hotel, tanks from the same unit carried embedded reporters on a "thunder run" through Baghdad to show the world that the city was under U.S. control."

The United States must drastically increase and overhaul its public relations efforts to salvage its plummeting image among Muslims and Arabs abroad, says a panel chosen by the Bush administration. "Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," states a new report by the United States Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World. The report recommends a new White House office for foreign propaganda. In our book Weapons of Mass Deception we examine the failure of such efforts, which were predicted by observers such as Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, who two years ago said "the United States lost the public relations war in the Muslim world a long time ago. They could have the prophet Muhammad doing public relations and it wouldn't help."