Corporations

A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has identified at least 90 private military companies worldwide that intervene on behalf of governments in military conflicts. The ICIJ investigation shows how profits from war commerce have gone to a small group of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

"The Internet's promise as a new medium -- where text, audio, video and data can be freely exchanged -- is under attack by the corporations that control the public's access to the 'Net, as they see opportunities to monitor and charge for the content people seek and send," writes Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. "The industry's vision is the online equivalent of seizing the taxpayer-owned airways, as radio and television conglomerates did over the course of the 20th century.

Congressional Democrats accuse the Bush Administration of stacking the Center for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention with "individuals who are affiliated or openly sympathetic with the views of the lead industry." Their report "Turning Lead Into Gold: How the Bush Administration is Poisoning the Lead Advisory Committee at the CDC" details recent changes to the panel, noting the removal or rejection of several academic experts on lead poisoning.

"Pick up The Wall Street Journal today, and the business pages are full of stories about the men and women who built the stock market bubble," writes business journalist Philip Longman. "But there's another sector of the economy, deeply implicated in the collapse, whose conflicts of interest, ethical lapses and naive enthusiasms have so far received little press attention: business journalism itself." Longman examines the conflicts of interest and delusions that led journalists to hype the stock market bubble.