When he took off his sunglasses, you knew it was screen star Paul Newman. Those blue eyes always give him away. One day last week, I found myself staring into them from behind a video camera, as Newman recorded a message beginning with a recollection of "Torn Curtain," a movie he made in the 1960s for Alfred Hitchcock.

He reminisced briefly about a speech he gave playing a scientist defending the United States from nuclear war.

He mentioned that the movie had doubled its investment.

But no, this wasn't a segment for "Entertainment Tonight," a TV program I admit I once produced some segments for. And no, this was not a commercial for an investment firm hyping entertainment stocks.

Newman was in front of this camera not as an actor but as an advocate, using his persona, and in the process voluntarily being used, to make a point about an issue he's been passionate about for decades.

"Seventeen years later, in 1983, Ronald Reagan — another actor — gave the same speech in advocating Star Wars. Only that production lost $70 billion, and there was no return on investment," he opined.

Newman's statement was part of a campaign to challenge the so-called Son of Star Wars, a laser-equipped, multibillion dollar missile defense system shored up by claims that it will be able to shoot down missiles from space after they launch. He characterized it as a Pentagon boondoggle: "malarkey — hitting a bullet with a bullet."
Click here to see the video.

Newman has perhaps been better known in the last decade for his "Newman's Own" popcorn and other products (his company doubles as a philanthropy) than his movie roles. Yet here he was, lending his reputation and celebrity to a cause that certainly deserves more visibility — the call to reduce and retire nuclear weapons. His appearance was arranged by a progressive public relations firm, Fenton Communications, run by my old friend David Fenton as part of an effort to get media visibility for critics of the administration's newly revived missile defense system.

There are three times as many PR people today in the United States as there are reporters. Monitoring groups like MediaChannel-affiliate PR Watch regularly expose the powerful behind-the-scenes role of PR people in getting their clients and issues into the media. They triumph at "scientific studies" paid for by drug companies to give credibility to their own products. Thanks to PR wizardry and media sloppiness, those studies are often reported without their funders being identified or their agendas explained.

While the public relations world, with its mission of "engineering consent" always in the fore, is dominated by giant firms firmly wedded to corporate agendas, a growing number of progressive PR companies are at work, too, challenging the system and championing oft-marginalized issues. Some are more activist than others. Some command high fees. Many have learned how to be effective. Some, like Cause Communications, publish manuals on how you can do it yourself.

With Newman on tape, David's colleague Josh Baran, as savvy a PR honcho as there is in the business, can open another front in his war against nuclear war on behalf of an organization called GRACE. Lawyer Alice Slater is GRACE's organizer in chief, steering the campaign to persuade the United Nations and the U.S. government to abolish weapons of mass destruction in the same way that slavery was abolished more than a century ago.

Like many advocates, Alice knows that when her issue is not on TV, it doesn't exist for the American people. She also knows that she can't get it on TV by herself. She was smart enough to recognize she needed professional help from a skilled strategist like Josh. And she went out to raise the money to rent his services. (Note: Right-wing groups learned the importance of good PR years ago.)

Baran is an anomaly in an industry that is primed to serve corporate interests far more than the public interest. Having cut his teeth on handling projects for big Hollywood studios and then, briefly, for Bill Gates, he decided to marry money with meaning by working with a firm that served issues he could believe in. He went from selling the makers of Windows to opening some new windows for "celebrities" he believes in, such as the Dali Lama. Josh played a key role in ensuring a 50,000-person turnout in New York's Central Park for the Tibetan spiritual leader's visit last year.

Twenty years ago, he worked with Paul Newman on the Nuclear Freeze Campaign. He grimaced when I reminded him that during that semi-successful effort — the nuclear arms race fizzled for a while because of a large public outcry, though it has yet to be fully frozen — Paul Newman debated his Hollywood nemesis Charlton Heston about the freeze on a TV show moderated by Phil Donahue. It was also aired on a program I produced for. "They decided to do that when I was out of the room," Baran says now, disclaiming responsibility for the segment after the fact. Newman, for his part, admitted to me: "I didn't do very well." Heston, a master demagogue, had been better briefed by the Reaganites then engaged in escalating the Cold War. His well-scripted comments pushed Newman's folksy and more personal approach onto the defensive. The debacle underscored how the wrong media visibility can backfire.

By pretaping — and with no Heston baiting him — Newman has far more control over what he wants to say and recorded his current message in just two takes. He fine-tuned the script and did his thing with aplomb. I was there because Baran had hired our TV company, Globalvision (How's that for sneaking some of our own PR into this column?), to produce the taping and edit a short news video to try to give the nuclear issue more visibility. By supervising the shoot, I got a chance to schmooze with the star. Ironically, at this point in his career, Newman could have handled the whole exercise without so much help.

Baran & Co. have been able to generate some attention for the nuclear weapons cutbacks, more than the issue's had in years. But like many PR people "flacking" critical issues, he is frustrated about how closed and close-minded many segments of the media are. It's an uphill battle to get attention for critical ideas in a print or TV environment where reporters often function as stenographers for those in power or as extensions of show biz.

That's why projects with deeper pockets no longer rely on just PR. Our friends at TomPaine.com, another MediaChannel affiliate, also advised by Fenton, buy ads in the New York Times to call attention to issues being spotlighted in their online Web journal. They, like many others, mix "paid media" with so-called free media (which is rarely free).

That's what it has come down to: If you want to be taken seriously, you have to buy visibility, one way or another.

Finally, on a personal note, as a journalist I am usually uncomfortable doing PR on the side. But in a climate where independent news magazines like Globalvision's human rights TV series (www.globalvision.org) can't even get on public television, smaller media companies have to produce projects for clients just to survive. Of course, one has to draw a clear public distinction between sponsored programming and journalistic endeavors. That line is often blurred and always needs to be disclosed.

Years ago, my late mentor, Nation editor Andrew Kopkind, once said of his stint with Time magazine, "I used to work for Time, or was it sell?" He meant that mainstream journalists often see themselves — and, in fact, are — selling a product as much as reporting a story. If that's true, then meaningful distinctions between journalism and public relations are more nebulous than we think.

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld Online and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.