When Spozhmai Maiwandi, who ran the Pashto service of the U.S. government's Voice of America, aired remarks made by Taliban leader Mullah Omar not long after September 11, the Bush administration got upset. Maiwandi lost her job. Frank Smyth writes for TomPaine.com that "unfortunately the VOA case is only one of many examples in which Bush officials have manipulated the press, particularly since 9/11. The administration has demonstrated a callous disregard for journalism, truth and transparency.

The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is keeping lobbyists and PR firms busy on both sides of the issue. New York Times reporter Evelyn Nieves writes: "In an effort to counter the nuclear industry's own deep-pocketed Washington lobbyists -- John Sununu, chief of staff for the first President Bush, and Geraldine Ferraro, the onetime vice-presidential candidate, have been enlisted in the pro-Yucca fight -- Nevada is planning a multimillion-dollar advertising and publicity campaign intended to stoke opposition to the plan beyond Nevada's borders.

PR Week describes how the Distilled Spirits Council, an alcohol industry trade group, handled a "crisis" when the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA) released a study claiming that children consume 25% of alcohol sold in the US. "Such a study could do irreparable harm to the alcohol industry," says PR Week. DSC pored through the raw data used in CASA's study, rerunning the numbers "in hope of finding some miscalculation" and ready to jump if there was a mistake.