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"A new group financed by a Texas billionaire and organized by some of the same political operatives and donors behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry in 2004 plans to begin running television ads attacking Barack Obama," report Matthew Mosk and Chris Cillizza. The American Issues Project, funded by Dallas businessman Harold Simmons, has amassed a multimillion-dollar fund to run the ads. Republican activists Chris LaCivita and Tony Feather are also involved in organizing the group. "The resurgence on the right appears as though it will not go unanswered," add Mosk and Cillizza. "The Service Employees International Union is set to unveil a multimillion-dollar television campaign on Monday, and other liberal and Democratic-aligned groups are rushing to establish financing for efforts over the final weeks of the campaign."

"A hospital complains about a reporter and pulls ads from the paper. The paper reassigns him. The paper -- offered three chances -- declines to deny that one caused the other," summarizes the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR was following up on a Wall Street Journal article about Carilion Health System, which is Roanoke, Virginia's sole healthcare provider. Since Carilion established a local monopoly, "health-insurance rates in Roanoke have gone from being the lowest in the state to the highest." In 2006, independent local doctors concerned about Carilion's impact on the community and their practices launched the "Coalition for Responsible Healthcare." Roanoke Times healthcare reporter Jeff Sturgeon reported on the controversy. But the paper "moved Mr. Sturgeon off the health-care beat after Carilion complained repeatedly about his coverage. Carilion says it communicated its displeasure to the paper's editors, but never asked that Mr. Sturgeon be reassigned. Carilion withdrew most of its advertising from the paper, but says it did that as part of a reallocation of its ad budget." Roanoke Times' managing editor told CJR, "We feel like we cover Carilion better than any other news media organization." But he wouldn't explain Sturgeon's reassignment to transportation, saying, "We don't get into personnel decisions and why we change beats."

From Pfizer's new Lipitor adPfizer's getting ready to resume advertising for its cholesterol drug Lipitor. In February, the drugmaker pulled its Lipitor ads, over charges they were misleading. The old ads featured artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik, who appeared to be giving medical advice though he isn't a practicing physician. The new ads feature "John E.," a baby boomer and heart-attack survivor who "didn't take a cholesterol-fighting drug before his heart attack ... despite a history of high cholesterol." A Pfizer marketing executive said, "When we did testing with consumers ... John really resonated with them." But will the ad boost sales? According to a new study, the impact of direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertising on sales is "highly variable" and, for two of the three drugs studied, the ads "had no apparent impact." The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal, compared drug sales in French-speaking versus English-speaking Canadian provinces. Like most countries, Canada bans DTC ads, but Canadian viewers still see them via U.S. television. Advertising executives maintain that DTC ads do boost sales. "Had anyone ever heard of erectile dysfunction or overactive bladder before the drugs were advertised?" asked one.

From a Center for Union Facts adThe Center for Union Facts, one of lobbyist Rick Berman's front groups, is railing against the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would "allow employees at a work place to unionize as soon as a majority signs cards expressing support to join a union." Labor rights advocates say the bill is needed, because of employer intimidation and union-busting tactics. Berman's Center, as the "Employee Freedom Action Committee," says the bill would allow "union bosses" to "stand over workers' shoulders and use coercion." It's launched a $30 million campaign, including radio, television, print and online ads and "a substantial grassroots organizing effort." The "Coalition for a Democratic Workplace," which is comprised of "virtually hundreds of businesses, chambers of commerce and trade associations," is also spending millions to defeat the bill. Both groups are targeting Senators "in what they see as key states," including Maine and New Hampshire. The bill has passed the House and is before the Senate. "The folks behind the ad campaign fear that if Sen. Barack Obama, an Employee Free Choice Act sponsor, is elected president and power shifts to the Democrats in the Senate, the bill will become law."

The UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a Shell ad that repeatedly referred to extraction from Canada's oilsands as "sustainable" was "misleading." The advertising regulator noted the "considerable social and environmental impacts" of oilsands development, adding that Shell has not explained how it will manage "carbon emissions from its oilsands projects in order to limit climate change." The World Wildlife Fund filed a complaint accusing Shell of "greenwashing," after the ad appeared in the Financial Times. Shell agreed not to run the ad again. Oilsands development "uses enormous amounts of fresh water and natural gas and produces about three times as much greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil output." The Canadian province of Alberta, where the oilsands are located, "launched a three-year, $25-million campaign" earlier this year, "to market Alberta and correct what the government insists is misinformation about the oilsands." Calgary Herald business editor Charles Frank opined, "We have to reframe the debate ... if we are to have even the faintest hope of making sure this province's most valuable resource isn't sabotaged by people and organizations who do not have our best interests at heart."

The CEO of the public relations firm Burson Marsteller, Mark Penn, likes John McCain's TV ad likening Barack Obama to celebrities like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. "Hillary Clinton's former top strategist wrote the ad tries to 'portray Obama's leadership for change as something fluffy and useless.' It bears a Republican political trademark 'attacking a candidate's strengths rather than the candidate’s weaknesses.'" In an essay posted on Politico.com, Penn contends that "clever negative ad can be devastatingly effective." He says that like the McCain ad, "Some negative ads crystallize voters' opinions without presenting any new information." Penn isn't troubled by that. "This year, you can expect a tough political season and plenty of negative ads. Done fairly, they serve a legitimate role." As CMD reported previously, Mark Penn was demoted from his role as "chief strategist" with the Hillary Clinton campaign after several embarrassing conflicts of interest came to light.

The normally staid FactCheck.org has posted an unusually blunt critique of the latest campaign ad for John McCain, which attempts to blame Barack Obama for rising prices at the gas pump and claims that offshore drilling will "rescue our family budgets." Using McCain's own words and voting record, FactCheck's Viveca Novak disproves every point in the ad, pointing out that by the federal government's own estimate, "if the moratorium on offshore drilling were lifted today, it would be 2030 before we'd see a noticeable effect on supply and prices." Moreover, she writes, "The notion that Obama is singlehandedly, or to any significant degree, or more than most other senators, to blame for the high cost of gas is absurd in too many ways to count here. ... Obama has been in the Senate only since 2005. McCain himself said earlier this month that the problem has been decades in the making."

Most everyone admits that minimizing junk mail would save a lot of trees, but because of the profits it generates, it isn't about to go away. So a group of direct marketers have teamed up with corporations like Microsoft, Washington Mutual and OptimaHealth to form a new coalition called the Green Marketing Coalition (GMC) to encourage greener practices in the direct mail industry. GMC suggests direct marketers use chlorine-free recycled paper, proof their marketing materials using Adobe PDF files instead of hard copies, and maintain good "list hygiene," or cull from mailing lists the names of people who are deceased or otherwise unlikely to respond. The U.S. Postal Service, which is endorsing the effort, has trademarked the term "environMAIList," and plans to use it to refer to marketers who adopt GMC's suggested green practices. But progress for the campaign could be tough to gauge; neither the Postal Service nor the Green Marketing Coalition have specified any quantifiable milestones or target dates by which they can measure the effectiveness of their effort.

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at the poor being used as fronts, product placement on the news and battling ad buys. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the pro-drilling front group "Americans for American Energy." The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions are bringing in millions of dollars in corporate sponsors, but there is no reporting requirement for either the political parties or the companies. There are a reported 146 organizational and corporate donors, but less than a quarter have chosen to disclose information about their donations. Some of the lead donors are telecom companies that just weeks ago received retroactive immunity from Congress for participation in the Bush spy program. AT&T is such a large scale donor that their logo is placed prominently on the attendees' welcome bags. Other identified donors include Motorola, Coca-Cola, Google, Qwest Communications, Comcast, and nuclear energy giant Xcel Energy. Stephen Weissman of the Campaign Finance Institute, explained that "to have that speech come off well, to have the lighting and the rigging and all of the sound and the Broadway producers who do it, to have the production and the setting look just right, to have specially built podiums and so forth, that will earn gratitude."