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Over the last four months, Richard Edelman, the CEO, president and chair of the privately-owned PR firm Edelman, has been busy blogging away about how the public standing of the PR industry is in free-fall.

In a May 2nd post, he was incredulous that blogger David Weinberger - who has been a consultant to Edelman's firm - doesn't think that PR people have a role in the blogosphere, because they are, by their very nature, propagandists.

A few weeks back, Edelman blogged about spending a weekend smarting after CNN/US president Jon Klein referred to "sophisticated corporate PR departments, marketers and politicians" as "propagandists," during his speech to the National Association of Broadcasters.

While it might seem self-evident to most people that the PR industry is in the propaganda business, these incidents led an agitated Edelman to propose a five-point plan to rescue the PR industry’s tarnished credentials.

Anyone who's ever looked at a package of cigarettes in the United States since 1965 is familiar with the Surgeon General's warning labels.

Here's your chance to help with an important journalistic investigation. Former New York Times reporter Philip Shabecoff and his wife Alice are doing research about the links between environmental toxicants and the epidemic of children’s chronic illnesses in the United States today, and they're looking for some leads. The research will lead to a book for the general public. Beyond documenting the evidence arising from the new sciences, the Shabecoffs intend to tell stories about families and communities affected by corporate behavior. The Shabecoffs will try to ‘follow the money’ to explain government laxity.

The following are questions for which the Shabecoffs would appreciate responses or leads to sources of information:

The greens are getting pounded politically, losing almost every national battle they fight, including the new energy bill. Today, on the 35th anniversary of Earth Day, they can't even beat George Bush at the PR game.

Thirty-five years ago 20 million Americans demonstrated, rallied, teach-in'd, lobbied, danced and partied for a healthy, ecologically sound planet on the very first Earth Day. This unprecedented and massive grassroots mobilization was followed by a flurry of green political reforms (supported by many Republicans), from the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency to the first Environmental Impact Statements and the first national clean air and clean water laws. Now, even though surveys show enviromentalism is more widespread and popular than ever, with citizens donating hundreds of millions of dollars each year to Washington DC's big green groups, the movement is a political basket case.