"If you are going to fairly represent the [military] institution to the media, you must know how the boss views various issues," PR Tactics reports Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Plummer saying. "You have to understand his position vis-a-vis the greater environment in which he works." According to Tactics, loyalty, "strategic communications" experience, "deep insight into the media environment," and "knowledge of all the 'skeleton-in-the-closet' issues" are other key ingredients needed to make a good public affairs officer.

During recent protests in Washington against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, police deliberately used mass arrests to round up protesters who had committed no crime, writes law professor Jonathan Turley. "All the students were arrested while trying to comply with the law," he writes. "The D.C. and National Park Service police had used the same technique in each instance: Surround the crowd. Tell its members to disperse or face arrest. And then, as people try to disperse, block their escape with rows of officers in riot gear and arrest them. ...

"Qorvis Communications is helping Saudi Arabia handle fallout from charges that American children born of mixed U.S./Saudi parents are being kidnapped to the Kingdom," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. Congressman Dan Burton, who recently held hearings on the issue, says there are "hundreds of such cases," and that the U.S. State Department hasn't done anything to pressure Saudi Arabia to return the American children held there against their will. U.S.