Criticism of AIG’s hiring of PR firms just won’t die. Rachel Maddow and Breakingviews recently took critical looks at the company’s agency roster given its federal funding. This time, it comes in the form of an article from Time: “Is AIG spending too much on public relations?” The author points to recent comments from members of Congress that question “the firm’s p.r. payroll,” as well as a lawyer of former AIG chairman Hank Greenberg. AIG’s SVP of comms, Nick Ashooh - who made PRWeek’s people with the “toughest jobs in PR” 2008 list - broke down the responsibilities of its PR firms to Time.

AIG retained only one full-time p.r. firm when it ruled the insurance world. Today’s four firms, said Ashooh, have different missions: Sard Verbinnen & Co. helps to structure statements on the bailout, Kekst & Co. focuses on sales of assets to pay back federal loans, Burson-Marsteller handles controversial issues and Hill & Knowlton fields inquiries from Capitol Hill and prepares congressional testimony for company officials. “If the criticism was we were running image-advertising or doing sponsorships to make ourselves look better, I could see that,” Ashooh said. “But we’re doing a lot of information-processing. It’s really been just responding to inquiries” from Congress and the media.

A new report from the National Defense University offers some social media tips for government folks - ones “that actually makes sense,” writes Wired’s DangerRoom blog. The aptly named “Social Software and National Security,” report is expected out early next week, Wired says, but the blog provides a sneak peek at the four tenants the paper suggests:

• Inward sharing
• Outward sharing
• Inbound sharing
• Outward sharing

Hmm…

An excerpt under the “Outward sharing” headline reads:

The 2005 natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina is now a textbook example of the need for multi-agency, multi-government, multi-media engagement in an ad hoc and constantly evolving manner.  More recently, people using social software have been able to make useful contributions during real world events such as flooding in Bangladesh, the California wildfires, and Hurricane Gustav…

Who’s winning on Twitter in the political sphere? Left or right? One blogger on the right’s use of to build a conservative movement on the microblogging site.

Much of the chatter in the media has been that the left, via its awe-inspiring, marathon-length successful campaign for Barack Obama has spawned the first tech presidency. But Blog P.I.’s William Beutler of New Media Strategies argues the right is harnessing at least one channel better - Twitter.

These new conservative projects are often built around Twitter itself. Sometimes this results in really annoying tweets, but at this point the right is doing more interesting things in this space.

Thoughts from others? From TweetLeft?

Ben & Jerry’s announced today it was behind the unsettling corporate site, Cyclone Dairy, a company marketing milk from 100% cloned cows. Part April Fool’s Day prank, part educational campaign, the fake site, which went up about two weeks ago, was created to drive awareness about the use of cloned animals in the food supply and advocate Congress create a national registry and tracking system. AOR Cone supported the initiative.

The Special Olympics is hoping to eradicate the use of the word “retard” through a new campaign that asks the public to sign a pledge to “end the word.” It comes on the heels of President Obama’s late night gaffe where he equated his bowling score with that of one belonging to the Special Olympics while with Jay Leno.

In describing the community’s reaction to the president’s misstep, Timothy Shriver, chairman of the board of Special Olympics, wrote today that, “At Special Olympics, we had to deploy a round-the-clock team to monitor our website and remove offensive posts. Clearly, we’ve got a problem.”

His column for the Washington Post is here. Pledge drive is here.

Last week, I wrote about how labor and business organizations are using PR to communicate their positions on the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card check.”

Today, The Washington Post has a story about how Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Costco are proposing a third solution to the debate. By proposing a compromise, the companies are able to “to project a progressive image,” says the newspaper.

According to the Post, the companies are opposed to two of the bill’s provisions - in short, allowing workers to form a union without having a secret-ballot election and imposing binding arbitration when a contract is not reached after 120 days.

But, these three companies would keep the third provision that toughens penalties for companies that retaliate against workers.

In an internal memo by Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn, which PRWeek obtained last week, the agency’s top executive took issue with the way TV host Rachel Maddow characterized its past and current work. At one point in the letter, Penn writes, “Her commentary also significantly mischaracterized the nature of the firm’s past – for example, we never took a dime from Blackwater.”

However, as PRWeek has reported in the past, Burson subsidiary BKSH & Associates has worked for Blackwater. The agency has declined to comment.

Last night, Rachel Maddow returned to the subject. On her she pointed to the statement in the memo, and the seeming contradiction with a previous news report that showed BKSH had in fact worked for Blackwater. Maddow said:

Mr Penn also accused me of getting my facts wrong… If I’m wrong, I’m happy to do a correction… Is it possible that Burson-Marsteller could have worked for Blackwater but not been paid for it… Blackwater is their charity case? …I welcome any further opportunity to clear up the record.

More Hispanic media and minority publications have had more access to the White House and President Obama this year, the Washington Post reports, and it all stems from Obama’s strategy to be more inclusive.

“We should have a conscious strategy of communicating through Hispanic media,” White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says in an interview. “It’s one of the fastest-growing groups in the country. Telemundo is one of the most significant media outlets.”

Every administration does some outreach to minority outlets. But by talking to Black Enterprise well before the New York Times, which last week got its first sit-down interview since Election Day, Obama is shaking up the existing media order. Just as he took a question from the Huffington Post — but not from the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune or Wall Street Journal – at his first news conference, the president is broadening the circle of access to include more sympathetic outlets.

From job training to start-up money for entrepreneurs, New York’s mayor is looking to keep the city vibrant and poised for a rebound, despite the that Washington is the new financial heart of the country.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced a multifaceted effort last week to “help support New York City’s financial services sector and grow as a global center for business innovation and entrepreneurship,” according to the city’s Economic Development Corp. In his speech, Bloomberg said:

We are taking aggressive steps to put the City in the best position to capture growth, and we’re doing it by promoting one thing more than any other: innovation. Read more »

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If you didn’t catch the full-page Wells Fargo ad in Sunday’s New York Times, the paper takes a closer look at it today.

“O.K., time out. Something doesn’t feel right,” writes John Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, in a full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times and Washington Post. In a long letter, he blames misleading news articles that create the impression that “every employee recognition event is a junket, a boondoggle, a waste, or that it’s for highly paid executives. Nonsense!”
Its annual “recognition events,” Mr. Stumpf added, were paid for by profits, not the government.

Stumpf goes on in the ad, though, to say the company has canceled its “recognition events” for the rest of the year due to just this perception.

Wells Fargo was just in time for the new rules the White House is pushing that place greater restrictions on not only CEO pay from those companies seeking government and TARP help, but also on entertainment, holiday parties, and oh yes, . Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to announce additional plans for the bank bailout tomorrow. The TARP news was delayed a day as the Obama administration continued to focus on the stimulus package.