Wouldn't it be nice if we could find a story that would simultaneously indict authoritarian governments, greedy PR firms, and amoral, careless media outlets, all at once? Aha. Yes. Here's one.

Food conglomerate ConAgra, maker of all remaining food, hired the PR firm Ketchum for a fun promotional stunt: it would invite a bunch of food bloggers to a fancy dinner at an Italian restaurant, then reveal that they'd actually been served frozen ConAgra food-like products instead of real food. Mirth and delight would ensue! Alas, ConAgra and Ketchum should have watched the old Chris Farley skit more closely.

This is fun: Greenpeace is suing Dow Chemical and two of its PR firms, claiming that they hired private investigators "who stole documents, tapped phones and hacked into computer networks between 1998 and 2000." They have lots of documents!

A flack for Ketchum named James Andrews had to fly into Memphis yesterday for a client meeting with FedEx, and observed, correctly, that Memphis is a hellhole. This could get him fired.

Nick Ragone, an executive at the huge PR agency Ketchum [Disclosure: and an occasional source of mine at PRWeek], has a new book out about Presidents, for some reason. And he's putting those PR skills to use for it. It's on Page Six today! He has a podcast about it! And an op-ed in PRWeek about how "real" authenticity is "essential" for corporations and politicians alike! How does Ketchum, which does everything from sell you food to lobby your politicians, teach its employees to be such paragons of authenticity in communications?