"UK ministers have been accused of spending British aid money on a public relations campaign to promote water privatisation in Sierra Leone," reports BBC News. Vicky Cann, of the organization World Development Movement, criticized the British Department for International Development (DfID), saying, "In the poorest country of the world, which is still recovering from a decade long bitter civil war, DfID is not only going to pay international consultants to advise on how to privatise water ...

Tired of being picked on by religious media watchdog groups, big media is fighting back with its own advocacy group. NBC Universal, Viacom and News Corp. have launched the group TV Watch to "advocate parental controls and oppose government intervention" into TV programming, the Dallas Morning News reports.

"Soda industry touts school ban to quiet obesity critics," reads the PR Week headline on a story outlining the soft-drink industry's latest defensive move in response to national concerns about childhood obesity.