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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."

Ads from groups weighing in on the U.S. presidential campaign "have begun getting sharper and more numerous," reports NPR's "All Things Considered." The conservative pro-war group Vets for Freedom has already spent $1.5 million on ads in such "key presidential states" as Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with plans to "spend exponentially more." Their ads show military veterans supporting Senator John McCain's stance on Iraq, claiming, "The surge worked." Ads from the AFL-CIO labor union also feature veterans, who express respect for McCain's war record while questioning his plan "to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq." Religious groups are also getting into the act. The Chicago-based political action committee Matthew 25 Network is supporting Senator Barack Obama with ads on Christian radio stations, which tend to draw conservative listeners. On the other side, the Christian Defense Council is distributing a poster that calls Obama the "abortion president."

Attendees at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin were offered the latest Nation magazine with a cover article by Christopher Hayes. He writes, "This year, MoveOn turns ten. ... Capable of dominating a news cycle with a single ad and raising millions of dollars with a lone e-mail, MoveOn pioneered an entire approach to conducting politics through the Internet that has been replicated and spun off across the country and around the globe, an approach that, as the Obama campaign has dramatically demonstrated, has permanently transformed the landscape of American politics. ... Perhaps the most damning criticism leveled at MoveOn is that by creating a clear and easy outlet for people's frustration and angst, the organization delivers people a false sense of accomplishment. In other words, MoveOn can be tremendously successful without being effective." CMD's John Stauber is one of MoveOn's critics interviewed for the piece.

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 Dick Cheney's red pen, drug companies' new code and a match made in PR heaven. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at Montel Williams' pharma gig. 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!