Jerold M. Starr, executive director of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, takes an in-depth look at the Public Broadcasting Service in a series of article for TomPaine.com. In part three, Starr writes, "It is times like these that Americans need a truly independent public broadcasting service.

University of California professor Ernest Partridge, who served until recently on the "public advisory panel" of the American Chemistry Council (formerly the Chemical Manufacturers Association), has written a memoir of his experiences. The public advisory panel, which brought together distinguished academics to advise the industry on safety and environmental issues, was part of the chemical industry's "Responsible Care" program, which was established to allay public concerns in the wake of the chemical plant disaster at Bhopal, India.

When the White House, via National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, requested recently that the networks not air any future unedited videos of Osama bin Laden, the broadcast media's top managers meekly complied. "Thanks to the White House and its high-level courtiers in the media, we Americans -- or those of us without the proper hardware -- are now the only people in the whole developed world who can't actually hear what our enemy is saying about us. That's an odd distinction, considering we are also his main targets," writes Mark Crispin Miller.