Feeling brainwashed? The world's most famous spy, John le CarrT (aka David Cornwell) thinks you should be. "We have become the creatures of these people," he said in a recent interview. "Advertising as news. It's prevalent in every aspect of the press. It's very skilfully done. The amount of energy and money and ingenuity applied to corporate spin and corporate lying has never been greater or more effective than it is now."

This new initiative by one of the world's largest PR firms features "a research tool called the Mad Cow Monitor."

Former Naderite Richard Pollock (more recently a flack for Shandwick PR and the anti-environmentalist Global Climate Information Project) has been hired as the new vice president of communications for the libertarian Cato Institute, in which capacity he plans "to be more aggressive in using communications to help Cato seize credit on issues such as Social Security privatization and school choice."