Urgent stories of humanitarian crises that claimed or threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Africa and other war-torn regions around the world were largely ignored by the U.S. news media, according to a year-end report by the international medical aid group, Doctors Without Borders. Their report on the Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2002 said the three major U.S. TV networks devoted more airtime to the activities of British royalty than to eight of the top 10 crises combined.

Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Assocs., a PR firm that specializes in crisis management, is helping energy companies fend off environmentalist and human rights groups that oppose a planned 400-mile pipeline in Peru that will pass through indigenous homelands in the Amazon rainforest. CLSA's other clients have included the Arthur Andersen accounting firm during the Enron scandal.

Advertising Age editor-at-large Bob Garfield reviews the high and low points of TV advertising during the past year and finds mostly lows connected to the "war on terrorism": from ads linking casual drug use to the funding of terrorism ("the evidence is a bit thin"); to the Freedom Campaign, which ran ads celebrating the blessings of American democracy. Unfortunately, Garfield observes, "The most striking - a 'Twilight Zone'-esque glimpse at how an America without civil liberties might look - was more chilling and ironic than intended. The supposedly apocalyptic scenario of federal agents shadowing our personal library activities had already come to pass, among other infringements, in the repulsively named Patriot Act."

"No less than three 'corporate credibility' seminars involving PR/IR pros have popped up as panelists scratch their heads, trying to find ways to win back public trust in corporations in the wake of Enron, Worldcom, etc.," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Unfortunately, the corporados are seeking advice from the same sleazebags as before: people like Margery Kraus of APCO Worldwide, who helped big tobacco set up deceptive front groups and gave advice on how to be "forthright, open and honest" to Russian robber baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky and to WorldCom during its fraud and bankruptcy scandal.

In each war and military action since losing in Vietnam, the US military has exerted increased control and censorship over battlefield reporting. Now the Pentagon claims to be changing its ways, in part to gain a propaganda advantage. According to the New York Times, "military officials said in interviews that limits on access to frontline units ... would be loosened if President Bush ordered military action. The Pentagon has made similar pledges of greater access before without making good on the promise. Even now, as the Pentagon completes plans to 'embed' correspondents, photographers and video crews within frontline units - and offering military training so journalists can maneuver safely with the troops - officials say it is premature to announce how many would be included, with which units or how close they would be to decisive operations. ... Several Pentagon officials lamented that the military had too often damaged its image by failing to engage the news media. The result, they said, is that the military has found itself surrendering the fight over world opinion to the propaganda of adversaries."

Odwyer's PR Daily reports that "Qorvis Communications [OC] received a staggering $14.6 million from Saudi Arabia during the six-month period ended Sept. 30 for producing ads and doing PR to 'increase the awareness in the U.S. of the Kingdom's commitment to the war against terrorism and to peace in the Middle East.' That amount exceeds the previous record $14.2 million that the Citizens for a Free Kuwait front group spent at Hill and Knowlton during a six-month period in 1990-`91 to build support for the Persian Gulf War. QC projects another $5.6 million in spending for the last three months of the year. QC dealt with a Saudi front group called the Alliance of Peace & Justice, which is described in the PR firm's government filing as an American organization concerned about the Middle East process. Ads ran in the Spring in support of the Saudi Middle East plan. ... On the PR front, QC arranged interviews for Adel Al-Jubeir, the foreign affairs advisor to Crown Prince Abdullah, with media worthies such as Ted Koppel, Bill Plant, Paula Zahn, Andrea Mitchell, Aaron Brown, Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly."

"At a press briefing Dec. 18, State Dept. public diplomacy chief Charlotte Beers announced that her division has asked author Ken Pollack to interrupt a book tour and travel overseas to talk about his book 'The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.' Turns out the State Dept. also has been courting foreign journalists over the past year. 'We set up many more responsive facilities than we've had in the past for the foreign press at the president's ranch in Texas, at the White House and in our own State foreign press centers, which are Washington, New York and Los Angeles,' Beers said. A former Madison Ave. executive, Beers extolled the importance of 'storytelling' in convincing overseas audiences that the U.S. is only trying to do good. 'And that's something that we really have to get better at. This is an emotionally laden universe now. It's not just the facts that are operating in the world now,' Beers said. Hence, the State Dept. has just published the book 'Iraq: From Fear to Freedom.' Beers made sure to point out a passage by President Bush: 'I hope the good people of Iraq will remember our history. America has never sought to dominate, never sought to conquer. We have, in fact, sought to liberate and free. Our desire is to help Iraqi citizens find the blessings of liberty within their own culture and their own traditions.' In the middle of Beers' briefing at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, several protesters stood up and began shouting, 'You're selling war and we're not buying.' "

"The expressions of concern about the nation's safety by Mr. Bush's prospective challengers, voiced in interviews, speeches and television appearances over the last three weeks, suggest that the focus of the Democratic White House candidates in 2004 will go well beyond the traditional Democratic fare of education, the economy, jobs and health care. While so far the criticisms lack many specifics beyond asking for more money for police agencies or the creation of an additional intelligence force, campaign aides said these early challenges on terrorism signaled what they expected to be a central theme in 2004. They argued that Mr. Bush was potentially vulnerable on the issue that Republicans view as a pillar of the president's political strength. ... Several Democrats predicted a fundamental shift in the way presidential candidates would have to present themselves in the 2004 campaign. They said polls showed that the voters would now consider a presidential candidate's ability to protect them from terrorism at home in much the same way voters in a big city might now consider a mayoral candidate's ability to stop crime in their neighborhoods."

"Drug companies and doctors are fighting a Bush administration plan to restrict gifts and other rewards that pharmaceutical manufacturers give doctors and insurers to encourage the prescribing of particular drugs. ... In contending that the proposed federal code of conduct would require radical changes, those opposing the change discuss their tactics with unusual candor and describe marketing practices that have long been shrouded in secrecy. Drug makers acknowledged, for example, that they routinely made payments to insurance plans to increase the use of their products, to expand their market share, to be added to lists of recommended drugs or to reward doctors and pharmacists for switching patients from one brand of drug to another. ... But a coalition of 19 pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Schering-Plough, said the Bush administration proposal was 'not grounded in an understanding of industry practices.' The payments and incentives to which the government objects are standard in the drug industry, they said."

In Orwell's 1984, people loved Big Brother. Today, we've already embraced Big Brother technology. "In the Pentagon research effort to detect terrorism by electronically monitoring the civilian population, the most remarkable detail may be this: Most of the pieces of the system are already in place. Because of the inroads the Internet and other digital network technologies have made into everyday life over the last decade, it is increasingly possible to amass Big Brother-like surveillance powers through Little Brother means. The basic components include everyday digital technologies like e-mail, online shopping and travel booking, A.T.M. systems, cellphone networks, electronic toll-collection systems and credit-card payment terminals. In essence, the Pentagon's main job would be to spin strands of software technology that would weave these sources of data into a vast electronic dragnet. ... The civilian population, in other words, has willingly embraced the technical prerequisites for a national surveillance system that Pentagon planners are calling Total Information Awareness."

Faced with a "mounting public relations disaster" over its attempt to sue the famine-stricken country of Ethiopia for $6 million, the Nestle corporation has promised to donate the money to hunger relief. But Justin Forsyth of the hunger organization Oxfam calls the offer a "half measure" and calls on the company "unambiguously to drop the claim and allow the Ethiopian government to spend the money on famine relief. ... Nestle has had lots of opportunities to back down over the last year. Sadly it has taken Oxfam and the Ethiopian government exposing them to public outrage to make them see sense."

"The momentum that ended in Trent Lott's resignation yesterday as the Senate majority leader did not, primarily, come from the traditional behemoths of the US media - the New York Times, the Washington Post and the main TV news networks," observes Oliver Burkeman. Those publications initially failed to report on Lott's racist comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. "In the interim, writers on numerous weblogs, or 'blogs,' were condemning the remarks - and swiftly uncovering evidence of a pattern in Mr. Lott's public pronouncements of indulgence towards the racist policies of the Old South."

A whistle-blower's lawsuit has unearthed documents showing that the Warner-Lambert pharmaceutical company circumvented the Food and Drug Administration's drug approval process through a PR and advertising campaign. The company's internal memoranda show that it avoided the large clinical trials needed to gain government approval of off-label uses for Neurontin, an epilepsy medicine. Instead, the company paid for small studies and had the results published in medical journals. "The company also hired advertising agencies to help write the medical journal articles," reports Melody Petersen. Warner-Lamber also "spread the word about those small clinical studies by inviting doctors to continuing-education classes, lectures at hospitals, dinners and weekend retreats. ... The company hired doctors to speak to their peers about Neurontin; the doctors were expected to present positive messages about the drug and were paid fees of $500 to $2,000 a speech. ... One of the more interesting tactics used by Warner-Lambert and the advertising agencies it hired to promote Neurontin concerned a 1996 dinner at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. In a draft of a letter written to a doctor by an advertising agency, marketers offered the doctor $200 to memorize questions about Neurontin that they wanted him to drop casually into the dinner conversation."

PR Watch has reported in the past on the questionable tactics of Bonner & Associates, which specializes in "astroturf" (artificial grassroots) organizing for corporate clients. Earlier this year, Jack Bonner was charged with ethics violations in Maryland, but the Maryland State Ethics Commission has cleared him of charges that he used deceptive tactics on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. "The education fund's complaint was filed after an article in The Sun detailed how PhRMA and Bonner & Associates were attempting to defeat prescription drug legislation in Maryland and other states by teaming with obscure nonprofit community groups. ... Bonner & Associates teamed with a Michigan-based group called the Consumer Alliance. In exchange for seed money from PhRMA, Consumer Alliance tried ... making legislators think there was a groundswell of grass-roots opposition." Was Bonner really innocent, or does the ethics commission just have really low standards? Read the original story from the Baltimore Sun and decide for yourself.

"The administration's fight to keep a tight hold over government information is far from over," reports Vanessa Blum. "Watchdog groups continue attempts to penetrate the inner sanctum of the executive branch using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other open government laws." Numerous FOIA fights are currently underway against the White House and Justice Department. "It's absolute trench warfare," says Georgetown University Law Center professor David Vladeck. "We've had to litigate cases that we would never have brought before because the information ordinarily would have been disclosed."

"The United States edited out more than 8,000 crucial pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitized version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council," reports the UK's Sunday Herald. Apparently the report includes embarrassing evidence of U.S. and European culpability in aiding the Iraqi weapons programs, dating back to before the Gulf War, but covering the period of Saddam Hussein's rise and his worst crimes. The list of companies that allegedly supplied Iraq with nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile technology includes Honeywell, UNISYS, Sperry Corp., Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Eastman Kodak and Bechtel.

The National Security Archive (NSA), a nonprofit research institute, has published a collection of documents detailing an early Cold War campaign to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, launched 50 years before current efforts to achieve United States "public diplomacy" goals in the region. Methods that were utilized included graphic displays, manipulation of the news, books, movies, cartoons, activities directed at schools and universities, and exchange programs. "The documents show that many of the factors that generated resentment of the U.S. during the 1950s, and that impeded the effectiveness of U.S. propaganda, have persisted into the 21st century," states an NSA news release.

"The Total Information Awareness System (TIA), the controversial Pentagon research program that aims to gather and analyze a vast array of information on Americans, has hired at least eight private companies to work on the effort," reports the Center for Public Integrity. Those companies, including Booz Allen & Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Syntek Technologies (John Poindexter's former employer), have won $88 million in contracts from the Defense Department agency that oversees the program. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) recently filed a legal action to force public disclosure of information about TIA, but unfortunately the judge in charge is John Bates -- the same guy who recently helped block public access to records of Dick Cheney's energy task force.

"Resentment at the 'liberal media' has been a Holy Grail of the American right for 40 years, and a gold mine for conservative direct-mail fund-raisers," writes Joel Connelly. In reality, though, "the right plays an almost dominant role in setting the agenda and stereotyping opponents. It has unmatched powers to get a story airborne. ... The party line gets out on issues from going to war with Iraq to drilling the West." Then why do conservatives still pretend that the media are liberal? "Pretending to be under siege has been so lucrative for so long that no conservative pundit dares admit to a reversal of fortune," Connelly writes.

"The Defense Department is considering issuing a secret directive to the American military to conduct covert operations aimed at influencing public opinion and policy makers in friendly and neutral countries, senior Pentagon and administration officials say. ... Some are troubled by suggestions that the military might pay journalists to write stories favorable to American policies or hire outside contractors without obvious ties to the Pentagon to organize rallies in support of American policies. ... Those who oppose the military's taking on the job of managing perceptions of America in allied states say it more naturally falls to diplomats and civilians, or even uniformed public affairs specialists. They say that secret operations, if deemed warranted by the president, should be carried out by American intelligence agencies."

Retaining Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader would damage the political future of the Republican Party, according to public relations experts interviewed by Matt Stearns. Former Hill & Knowlton CEO Bob Dilenschneider suggested Lott limit the damage by giving a speech at a black university, while others predicted "a slow, agonizing, debilitating political death" as Lott's ineffective attempts to explain away his endorsement of racist politician Strom Thurmond have been met with a flurry of stories about Lott's own racist track record: his racially-inflected 1984 interview with the Southern Partisan; his long-standing association with a white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens; and his long history of support for segregation, enthusiasm for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and disrespect for Martin Luther King.

Following the publication of an influential 1981 Japanese study linking secondhand cigarette smoke to lung cancer, the tobacco industry went on the attack, funding its own study to counter the Hirayama study. "The goal of the study was to produce a credible, peer reviewed article that could be used as a public relations tool," report Mi-Kyung Hong and Lisa A. Bero. The published study included a disclaimer noting that it had received tobacco funding, but failed to disclose that key decisions about the study's methodology were made by a tobacco industry scientist (Chris Proctor), a tobacco industry consultant (Peter N Lee), and an industry law firm (Covington and Burling,). "Chris Proctor delivered progress reports (on Covington and Burling stationery) to tobacco industry executives, but his role as acting investigator was never disclosed in scientific publications," write Hong and Bero.

"The head of the government's Total Information Awareness project, which aims to root out potential terrorists by aggregating credit-card, travel, medical, school and other records of everyone in the United States, has himself become a target of personal data profiling," reports Wired Magazine. After a journalist published John Poindexter's address and phone number in the San Francisco Weekly, hundreds of online prankstes and privacy activists are protesting the TIA program by re-posting the information, along with photos of his house and other personal information. (Don't bother calling his phone number; he's no longer answering.)

Oh what a tangled web: "Two giant companies are struggling to shut down parody websites that portray them unfavorably, interrupting internet use for thousands in the process, and filing a lawsuit that pits the formidable legal department of PR giant Burson-Marsteller against a freshman at Hampshire College," writes Paul Hardin (the freshman in question). It all began when The Yes Men, a group of activist pranksters, began to impersonate representatives of the World Trade Organization and found that corporate lawyer types actually couldn't tell the difference when they gave speeches advocating vote-selling, banning siestas in Spain, and Nazi economics - or even when someone gave a talk wearing a golden leotard with a three-foot phallus. Now the parodies have begun to proliferate, with Dow Chemical taking possession of a fake apology for Bhopal, and Burson-Marsteller discovering that Hardin owns the domain name to bursonmarsteller.com.

Prompted in part by reports that a leaders of the Hezbollah has urged Palestinians to step up their suicide bombings, the Canadian government has banned the Lebanese group. Only problem is, the alleged statement from Hezbollah was probably invented by Washington Times reporter Paul Martin, who has a history of fabricating news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug czar, has now become a mind-altering substance himself. The PR firm of Fleishman-Hillard has hired him to head its new homeland security practice. "Homeland security" has turned into a gold rush for Washington lobbyists, lawyers and PR firms, with more than 444 lobby registrations declaring an interest in "terror" or "security."

"The State Dept. is looking for a PR firm to promote a monthly Arabic language magazine that it plans to debut in the Spring," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The magazine will be targeted at Muslims aged 18-to-35 living in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. The International Information Programs unit, which is the result of the Oct. 1999 merger of the U.S. Information Agency into the State Dept., is handling the magazine launch."

"The Rendon Group, which was hired by the Pentagon to a $100K a-month contract following Sept. 11, has re-launched its website after a seven-month hiatus," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The site heralds TRG daring-do in international hot spots, such as Kuwait (during Persian Gulf I) and Colombia." Other Rendon clients include Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Trade & Development Agency, The United Nations Air Intelligence Agency, Government of Panama, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Toyota Saudi Arabia, Bosnia & Herzegovina Privatization, and Zambia Privatization Agency.

"Setting aside the shrill and nonsensical efforts of those who suggest the corporate-owned media in America is 'liberal,' the situation with regard to talk radio is particularly perplexing: It doesn't even carry a pretense of political balance," writes former radio DJ Thom Hartmann. "Average Americans across the nation are wondering how could it be that a small fringe of the extreme right has so captured the nation's airwaves?" Hartmann examines the history of talk radio and suggests that the current absence of alternative voices creates a business opportunity that broadcasters are missing: "Those stations that take the plunge into progressive talk will serve democracy by offering a loyal opposition (which Americans always appreciate), and earn healthy revenues in an industry where it's increasingly difficult to find a profitable niche. And whichever network is first to realize this simple reality and provide stations with solid progressive or Democrat talk programming will build a strong, viable, and financially healthy business."

"A dozen years after the Gulf War, public perceptions of it are now very helpful to the White House," media critic Norman Solomon writes in his Media Beat column. "That's part of a timeworn pattern. Illusions about previous wars make the next one seem acceptable." Reminding readers that during Operation Desert Storm reporters in the Pentagon's press pool had to submit all copy and footage for approval by their military handlers before filing a story, Solomon quotes Patrick Sloyan, who covered the Gulf War for Newsday: "In manipulating the first and often most lasting perception of Desert Storm, the Bush administration produced not a single picture or video of anyone being killed. This sanitized, bloodless presentation by military briefers left the world presuming Desert Storm was a war without death."

The congressional Joint Inquiry into September 11 is recommending revising government information policies not only to promote information sharing among government agencies, but also to expand public access to government information, because ""an alert and committed American public" could be "the most potent weapon" in the war against terrorism. This recommendation, unfortunately, comes while the Homeland Security Act, recently approved by Congress, "sets up rules that restrict the flow of information to scientists and to the general public and may actually retard progress in securing the homeland." And with Republicans now controlling Congress, Washington insiders say that "President Bush over the next two years will be protected from potentially embarrassing congressional investigations into his administration." The executive and judiciary branches of government are also doing their part to keep government secrets safe from public scrutiny, with a recent court ruling that blocks public access to the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force -- part of what former White House Counsel John Dean describes as "efforts ... to literally chop off Congressional oversight authority of the Executive branch."

The news director of Philadelphia's top public radio station, WHYY-91FM, resigned amid ethical questions surrounding news underwriting. "WHYY's president and CEO, would not say whether [former news director Bill] Fantini's resignation was connected to a story in Tuesday's Daily News that raised questions about a series of stories that were aired earlier this year. The series of environmental news reports was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which in turn is indirectly paid for by taxpayers," the Philadelphia Business Journal reports.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection funneled money through a non-profit organization in order to underwrite environmental reporting on Philadelphia's leading public-radio station, WHYY, reports the Philadelphia Daily News. The radio stories were supposed to take "a solution-oriented approach" according to an agreement between WHYY's news director and GreenWorks, which received $466,000 from the state agency via a Washington, D.C., public relations firm. GreenWorks paid $93,830 to WHYY to hire a reporter, who was to work with the GreenWorks staff "to identify and plan the content" of his reports. "The bulk of the state money stayed with GreenWorks, to hire three other staff members who were supposed to help [the reporter] with his research and post relevant material at a GreenWorks Web site," the Daily News writes. "The reports continued until mid-October, when Gwen Shaffer, a former GreenWorks staffer and occasional on-air contributor to WHYY, prepared a critical, first-person account of the situation for the Columbia Journalism Review."

CBS's promo for its program says: "Politicians have had to sell the public on going to war since Colonial times, but they never had the arsenal of advertising and communications techniques the Bush administration is using to sell a possible war on Iraq. Bob Simon reports on those techniques and those employed by the elder Bush prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Simon reminds viewers that a horrible story spread widely by the first Bush administration prior to the Gulf War about Kuwaiti babies pulled from incubators by invading Iraqis turned out not to be true. The current Bush administration may be also misinforming the public in its efforts to justify a possible second war with Saddam Hussein. ... [Simon] also interviews a former CIA agent who investigated the oft-mentioned report that hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague several months before the deadly attacks on 9/11. Despite a lack of evidence that the meeting took place, the item was cited by administration officials as high as Vice President Dick Cheney and ended up being reported so widely that two-thirds of Americans polled by the Council on Foreign Relations believe Iraq was behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11."

The New York Times examines BP/Amoco, the world's second largest oil company, and its $200 million PR and advertising campaign to greenwash its image. It is an "enormous corporate rebranding exercise, shortening its name from British Petroleum to BP, coining the slogan "Beyond Petroleum" and redesigning its corporate insignia. ... in came a green, yellow and white sunburst that seemed to suggest a warm and fuzzy feeling about the earth. ... But ... BP remains an oil company, deriving the vast majority of its profits from the black stuff that -- from drilling rig to oil tanker to refinery to gas station -- scars the earth, pollutes the air and eventually warms the planet. And once the company tried to convey its new identity in billboard form, the contradiction only deepened." As reported in PR Watch, BP has greenwashed itself is by partnering with green groups including the National Wildlife Federation which allowed BP to decorate its gas stations with NWF toys and logos.

"The Bush administration has recruited prominent American writers ... in a campaign started after 9/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic interests. ... The Smith-Mundt Act ... bars the domestic dissemination of official American information aimed at foreign audiences. The essays can, however, be read on a government Web site intended for foreigners... ." The anthology is "complementing efforts by Charlotte Beers, a former Madison Avenue advertising executive who is now under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to sell the United States to often hostile Muslim populations. Her campaign includes Next Chapter, a television show broadcast by the Voice of America in Iran, a worldwide traveling exhibition of photographs of the ravaged World Trade Center site by Joel Meyerowitz, the distribution of videos spotlighting tolerance for American Muslims and a pamphlet showing Muslims as part of mainstream American life." The article on Next Chapter calls it part of "a new spin on old-fashioned American propaganda ... a multimillion-dollar public diplomacy campaign ... to soften anti-American feelings."

Tonight's HBO movie "Live from Baghdad" has journalists repeating the false Iraqi-baby-killing scam perpetrated by Hill & Knowlton PR in 1990. That outrageous stunt before a make-believe congressional committee was part of a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign funded by Kuwait to make sure the US went to war. The crying teenage witness "Nayirah" seen in tonight's HBO film was actually the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. A year later journalists documented that her babies-thrown-from-incubators testimony was false, but most people still remember it as true. TV critics including Tom Shales of the Washington Post are giving the PR scam new life and a new spin. Shales writes that in tonight's HBO film "The horror wreaked on Kuwait is brought back vividly during a sequence in which [CNN producer Robert] Wiener and his team travel to Kuwait to investigate allegations that Iraqi troops had ripped babies out of incubators as part of their plundering -- remember? Too late, Wiener realizes that he and CNN have been duped by the Iraqis for propaganda purposes and that they were allowed into Kuwait only so the Iraqis could use them to help discredit the incubator allegations." But who was and is duping whom? Hill & Knowlton PR duped Shales and the rest of the nation back in 1990 and now tonight's HBO piece will reinforce that Big Lie. For the REAL story of the baby-killing PR scam read the on-line excerpt from our book Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.

While Fox News and other mainstream media often seem to be cheerleading for a US attack on Iraq, an alternative media website is providing information, analysis and anti-war advocacy that is kept off the Boob Tube. Check out Alternet's Iraq News Log which says that "a unilateral strike against Baghdad is both unwarranted and potentially disastrous. This content file offers readers breaking news, the best analysis, activism resources, and timely information they need to resist this precipitous rush to war."

O'Dwyer's reports that top PR and lobby firms for the Saudis are dodging subpoenas from the Congressional Committee on Government Reform. Says the O'Dwyer website (now only accessible by subscription, but well worth the fee), "Michael Petruzzello, head of Qorvis Communicatins and Jack Deschauer of Patton Boggs, were not found at their offices or homes by U.S. Marshals, according to The New York Sun. A lawyer for Jamie Gallagher of the Gallagher Group stalled Congressional staffers until too late in the day for agents to serve a subpoena, reports The New York Post. The firms have claimed their documents are privileged under the Vienna Convention on Consular Records. Representative Burton (R-Ind.) is investigating cases of children born of mixed U.S./Saudi parents who were allegedly kidnapped to Saudi Arabia."

"Saudi Arabia's latest public relations problem may be with its public relations firm. Three of the founding partners in the Washington firm, Qorvis Communications, have announced that they are leaving, and associates say their departure reflects a deep discomfort in representing the government of Saudi Arabia against accusations that Saudi leaders have turned a blind eye to terrorism. The firm, hired by the Saudi government in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, has been paid about $200,000 a month to help the Saudis bolster their battered image with the American public. The most prominent of the departing executives is Judy Smith, a former White House deputy press secretary who became the spokeswoman for Monica Lewinsky during President Clinton's impeachment ... . She and the other departing partners - Bernie Merritt and Jim Weber, two longtime Republican Party strategists - announced on Wednesday that they were leaving Qorvis to join a New York-based consulting and public relations firm, Clark & Weinstock. Spokesmen for the Saudi Embassy and Qorvis did not return phone calls for comment."

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) warns that "the fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in 'Live from Baghdad,' the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. HBO and CNN are both owned by the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate. ... In the film, the story is turned upside down, portrayed as a deft public relations move by the Iraqi government, who grant CNN access to Kuwait in a calculated attempt to discredit the rumors that their soldiers were pulling babies from incubators. ... 'Live from Baghdad' is a dramatization, not a documentary, but it is being presented by HBO as a 'behind-the-scenes true story' of the Gulf War and is being released at a crucial political moment." For the REAL true story of the 'Nayirah' baby killing PR scam, orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton, read How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf from our book Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.

During the past two days, PR Watch received emails alerting us of an unbelievable press release from Dow Chemical. "DOW ADDRESSES BHOPAL OUTRAGE, EXPLAINS POSITION," read the release headline. "Many individuals within Dow feel tremendous sorrow about the Bhopal disaster," the release read. However, Dow has "responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible." The release directs people to the website "www.dow-chemical.com" for Dow's statement on Bhopal. But what readers were really being directed to was a clever spoof of the real Dow website. According to the straight-faced spoof, "Cleaning up Bhopal could open up Dow to greater liability than the moral weight of this issue can justify from a profitability standpoint. As we look at the situation today, few people outside of India really remember Bhopal, or that Union Carbide was at fault for the accident. Even fewer realize that Dow bought Union Carbide." The joke must not have gone over well at Dow, because at the time of this posting the site had been taken down.

"Some companies have repeatedly disseminated misleading advertisements for prescription drugs, even after being cited for violations, and millions of people see the deceptive commercials before the government tries to halt them, Congressional investigators said today. The investigators, from the General Accounting Office, said Pfizer, for example, had continued to make misleading claims in advertisements for its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, despite several letters from the Food and Drug Administration in the last four years. In a new report, the accounting office said that drug company advertising appeared to produce a significant increase in the use of prescription drugs, as well as higher drug spending. The report criticized delays in the enforcement of federal standards for the accuracy of drug advertising and attributed much of the delay to a recent change in procedure by the Bush administration that lengthens the review process."

Since its founding nine years ago, the Center for Media and Democracy remains the world's only organization dedicated to investigating and exposing special interest propaganda. In those nine years, we've published 36 issues of our award-winning quarterly, PR Watch. CMD staff members have written three acclaimed books and spoken to thousands of people in most states and many countries. We've conducted hundreds of interviews, from the smallest radio stations to the largest TV networks, and with newspapers including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Unfortunately, however, success in our mission does not guarantee our survival. On the contrary, it places greater demands upon us. That's why we hope you'll take a moment right now to visit our online donation page and send a contribution so that our work can continue. CMD has survived as a spunky, underfunded organization thanks to a small but dedicated staff. We refuse grants from businesses and government to maintain our independence, so personal contributions from people like you are crucial in funding our work.

There's something "incredibly creepy" about Fox TV mogul Roger Ailes, writes Michael Wolff: "He looks the way you imagine the man behind the curtain looking: That is, he doesn't care about how he looks (which is, as it happens, gray and corpulent). He understands it's all manipulation." Wolff examines the techniques that Ailes has used to turn his right-wing network into a ratings phenomenon: "Fox is not really about politics (CNN, with its antiseptic beltway p.o.v., is arguably more about politics than Fox). It certainly isn't arguing a consistent right-wing case. Rather, it's about having a chip on your shoulder; it's about us versus them, insiders versus outsiders, phonies versus non-phonies, and, in a clever piece of postmodernism, established media against insurgent media. ... In the conventional-wisdom swamp of television, this passes for serious counter-programming. "

Outside the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in August in Johannesburg, there were poor street vendors and farmers holding signs and wearing t-shirts reading: "Save the Planet from Sustainable Development", "Say No To Eco-Imperialism", "Greens: Stop Hurting the Poor" and "Biotechnology for Africa." The problem, according to environmental reporter and activist Jonathan Matthews is that the anti-environmentalist demonstration was organized by the corporations that environmentalist wanted to be held accountable. "The counterattack takes place via a contrarian lens, one that projects the attackers' vices onto their target. Thus the problem becomes not Monsanto using questionable tactics to push its products onto a wary South, but malevolent agents of the rich world obstructing Monsanto's acceptance in a welcoming Third World," Matthews writes.

"Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq," writes Robert Dreyfuss. "Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push for war." Much of the pro-war faction's information comes from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a PR front group established in the early 1990s by the Rendon Group. "But most Iraq hands with long experience in dealing with that country's tumultuous politics consider the INC's intelligence-gathering abilities to be nearly nil," Dreyfuss writes. "The Pentagon's critics are appalled that intelligence provided by the INC might shape U.S. decisions about going to war against Baghdad. At the CIA and at the State Department, Ahmed Chalabi, the INC's leader, is viewed as the ineffectual head of a self-inflated and corrupt organization skilled at lobbying and public relations, but not much else."

"Colombian journalist Ignacio Gomez told a roomful of America's most influential journalists Tuesday how Washington-supported Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is connected to drug traffickers and how U.S. military trainers helped organize a massacre in his country," reports Lucy Komisar. "Among the 1,000 guests at the Committee to Protect Journalists' annual dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria grand ballroom were NBC's Tom Brokaw, CBS's Dan Rather, Time-Warner's Walter Isaacson, Reuters CEO Thomas Glocer and executives and reporters from the nation's major TV networks, newspapers and newsmagazines. Gomez, 40, has twice gone into exile after death threats. The media 'stars' applauded him for his courage. But did they put his revelations into print or on air? If you didn't see the stories he recounted in the American press, don't be surprised."

Bob Woodward's reporting on the Watergate story made him a journalistic legend, but his reliance on secret sources troubles Richard Blow. "Among journalists who care about nagging details like accuracy, there will also be the inevitable handwringing over Woodward's dubious reporting methods, the fact that he writes from a fly-on-the-wall perspective yet never identifies his sources," Blow writes. "Speaking anonymously allows people to say things that they don't have to be held accountable for, and without accountability there is no impediment to spinning, manipulating and just plain using the reporter." This is particularly evident, Blow says, in Woodward's recent book about President Bush, which paints Bush as "a wise, determined executive, a master at manipulating and motivating the world-weary Washington insiders around him, a visionary leader who wants to use the war on terrorism to effect world peace and the end of human suffering. ... You have to give George Bush credit for one thing. He was smart enough to figure out how to play Bob Woodward like a maestro, and now he has the hagiography to show for it."