"Throughout the six-month trial that led to Richard Scrushy's acquittal in the $2.7 billion fraud at HealthSouth Corp., a small, influential newspaper consistently printed articles sympathetic to the ... fired CEO." The author of those stories, Audry Lewis, now says "she was secretly working on behalf of Scrushy, who she says paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm," The Lewis Group.

Public relations "is an increasingly vital marketing tool," writes The Economist, "especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers' attention." Overall spending on PR in the United States is growing, reaching "some $3.7 billion last year, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a New York investment firm that specialises in media. It forecasts PR spending will grow by almost 9% a year.

Lincoln Group, the Pentagon contractor recently outed for planting stories in Iraqi newspapers, is boosting its own PR efforts. The firm hired Bill Dixon, "a veteran PR executive," as its new director of media relations.