The Lorillard Tobacco company doesn't want to be made to look like a villain, and so it is suing the American Legacy Foundation claiming that anti-smoking ads violate the historic 1998 settlement agreement that governs the industry. That agreement created the foundation and funded it with $1.5 billion dollars for PR, advertising and education to try to prevent smoking.

PR Watch for the last quarter of 2001 is now available on-line. In "Terrorism as Pretext" we examine how corporations and corporate-funded lobbyists and PR front groups quickly exploited 911 for ideological, economic and political purposes.

"The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said. ... (The US military) recently created the Office of Strategic Influence, which is proposing to broaden that mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe. ...