CBS's new dramatic series about the Central Intelligence Agency, called "The Agency," brings into question the relationship between the network and the government agency. CBS has received input on scripts and support from the CIA for the program, which premieres this month. Jeff Cohen, founder of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and Newsday columnists, compares the new series to the sixties TV-show "The FBI," produced by ABC with the blessing and cooperation of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

British author Fay Weldon's latest novel, "The Bulgari Connection," doesn't just happen to have the name of an up-scale jewelry store in its title by chance. The Italian jewerly company paid Weldon an undisclosed amount of money to be prominently featured in her novel. According to the New York Times, the book's US publisher, Grove/ Atlantic, as well as marketing and PR folks are thrilled with the deal.

Salon.com writer Jeff Stein investigates why the head of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey hired a former top CIA official to spy on and manipulate the life of a free-lance writer. The two-part series documents an eight-year campaign of dirty tricks played on Janice Pottker, a writer who tried to publish stories on child labor abuses in the circus and on Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus owners, the Feld family.