"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

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.

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.