Corporations

"Major US corporations ranging from Pfizer to Halliburton are mobilizing scores of public affairs professionals across Washington this fall in hopes that the new legislative session will bring an end to years of costly asbestos-related lawsuits," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua writes. "Working separately as the Asbestos Study Group (ASG) and the Asbestos Alliance (AA), hundreds of major companies that have either manufactured or used asbestos are lobbying for protection from more than 600,000 asbestos lawsuits now pending in US courts.

"Fox News channel talk show host Bill O'Reilly says 'shut up' the way other people say 'um,'" observes Jack Shafer. "On his daily show, The O'Reilly Factor, he uses it as a place-holder for an idea still formulating in his brain. As a way to begin a sentence, end it, or punctuate it. ... He's even heaved this impolite language at entire nations, demanding they recuse themselves from the international conversation. In the half-decade his top-rated show has been on the air, he's called for the muzzling of practically everybody.

A federal judge has ruled against Fox News in its lawsuit attempting to suppress publication of liberal satirist Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

"Wal-Mart, concerned about its public image, is using a consultant to analyze that image and has commissioned radio and television ads to try to reverse criticism from local officials, consumers and others," Constance Hays reports.