Public Relations

In early April, the global oil company Chevron announced that it has entered into a five-year deal with the foundation created by the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Woods proclaimed that "Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate." Chevron's record, such as its partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship on the Yandana gas pipeline is "certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached," writes Dave Zirin in The Nation.

It isn't every day that a state's largest polluter is honored. It helps when the polluter -- and its buddies -- helped found and advise the group giving the award. The Maryland-based Wildlife Habitat Council gave biodiversity conservation awards to 21 companies, including the Lafarge cement plant in Ravena, New York. The award was for Lafarge's 150-acre Deer Mountain Nature Preserve. The honor was not publicized until the company came under fire for mercury contamination near a local high school.

As CMD previously reported, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) operates a School of Medicine and a School of Public Health while enjoying a cozy relationship with the tobacco industry, especially cigarette maker

New York Times reporter Melody Petersen, who covered the pharmaceutical industry for four years, has now published a book titled Our Daily Meds: How the pharmaceutical companies transformed themselves into slick marketing machines and hooked the nation on prescription drugs.