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Wal-Mart is taking a page from the modern political playbook. Under fire from well-organized opponents who have hammered the retailer with criticisms of its wages, health insurance and treatment of workers, Wal-Mart has quietly recruited former presidential advisers, including Michael K. Deaver, who was Ronald Reagan's image-meister, and Leslie Dach, one of Bill Clinton's media consultants, to set up a rapid-response public relations team in Arkansas.

In honor of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session to mark the fifth anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit, this month's Greenwash Award goes to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

Network, advertising and production executives say that this season, more and more brands will venture outside the confines of 30-second ads. They may have no choice: As technology and clutter blunt the effectiveness and reach of the commercial spots that have underpinned the television business for nearly 50 years, the various players are scrambling to adapt.

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional negotiators have agreed to bar
government agencies for one year from issuing video news releases that
do not clearly identify themselves as the source, Democratic Sen.
Robert Byrd said on Tuesday.

From research patents to high-stakes partnerships, Jennifer Washburn spent years researching the links between industry and the American University. In this exclusive interview with CorpWatch's Jennifer Borden, Washburn talks about what she found, why it matters and what you can do about it.

Rio Tinto has been named as early front-runner for the Greenwash Gold award for the worst Olympic sponsor, with BP in second place and Dow Chemical third. The three corporations have paid millions to stick their names all over Olympic promotional material and activities.

Here is a fact sheet on the education industry prepared by the Applied Research Center (ARC). It is an excellent resource listing a ''who's who'' of the for-profit education world.

Education in the U.S. has become big business. The ''education industry,'' a term coined by EduVentures, an investment banking firm, is estimated to be worth between $630 and $680 billion in the United States. The stock value of 30 publicly traded educational companies is growing twice as fast as the Dow Jones Average.

Activist and researcher Libero Della Piana talks about the history of institutional racism in U.S. schools and how it leaves children of color vulnerable to corporate intervention in the classroom.

CorpWatch discusses industry's efforts to cash in on public schools with Professor Molnar, Author of Giving Kids the Business and director of the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education.

Monsanto IS unquestionably a world leader in agricultural genetic engineering, and has staked its future on that business. It has moved aggressively with R&D, takeovers, mergers and lobbying. And, in the style of this age of greenwash, the company has initiated a slick campaign to convince a skeptical public that their genetic manipulation is a key to 'sustainable development.'

Excerpts from Consumer Reports' ground breaking study on commercialism in the schools.

Underfunded schools, desperate for resources, are increasingly receptive to corporate-sponsored educational materials and programs, and are ever more accepting of the associated commercialism and product promotion. ''We are paying for educational deficits by selling kids to advertisers,'' says Peggy Charren, president of the advocacy group Action for Children's Television

From exclusive soft-drink contracts to computers displaying continuous advertising, corporate marketing in public schools is rising sharply. But few states have laws in place to address the phenomenon, and most decisions on commercial arrangements in schools are made piecemeal by local officials, according to a report from the General Accounting Office scheduled to be released today.

Some 230 staff are being paid to work at the new Fiona Stanley Hospital in West Australia, even though it will not open to patients till March 2015. The project has been labeled a "privatization disaster" and Serco, the contractor, has come under fire for the soaring costs.

Capita, a UK outsourcing company, sent text messages to thousands of people in the UK, asking them to leave the country, as part of a privatized deportation scheme. Unfortunately hundreds of people that they targeted were in the country legally.

Transfield Services, an Australian logistics company that provides services to the mining and oil industry among others, has won a $25.9 million contract from the government of Australia to run a detention center for asylum seekers in the Pacific island nation of Nauru.

Syabas, a private water company in Malaysia, has threatened to start water rationing in the state of Selangor after claiming that it had almost no water reserves left. Critics claim that the threat is a ploy to win more lucrative contracts and to favor a rival political party.