From SARS to Sarbanes-Oxley to Britney and Madonna locking lips, Melanie Shortman looks at how PR played a powerful role in the major events of 2003.

This will go down as the year that the US waged a dubiously justified war with Iraq, Governor Gray Davis was defeated in a recall election by an action-movie star, and a Presidential candidate from Vermont raised more money over the internet than his competitors did by using traditional methods. That was just politics. The year 2003 ...