Martha Stewart's PR Makeover

Martha Stewart has hired a public relations firm to help her handle the media onslaught prompted by insider trading investigations of her sale of ImClone stock.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Stewart's company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, retained PR strategists Brunswick Group over the weekend.

Many public relations experts have said Stewart has done a poor job of presenting her case to the public. Exhibit A is the domestic diva's appearance on CBS News' The Early Show.

Stewart fielded questions about her stock sale from Early Show anchor Jane Clayson on a kitchen set. She chopped cabbage with a large knife while Clayson attempted to get her to talk about the transaction. The result was not only comic, but tended to associate the insider trading scandal with her home-and-hearth activities.

Stewart, who has denied any wrongdoing, sold nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone on Dec. 27, a day before it was announced that the Food and Drug Administration had refused to consider approval of a highly touted ImClone anti-cancer drug.

The value of ImClone stock plummeted following the announcement. Federal prosecutors and Congress subsequently opened insider trader investigations into the stock sale.

Stewart and her Merrill Lynch stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, said the stock was sold in accordance with a previously established "stop-loss" order to sell the ImClone stock if the price slipped below 60.

Bacanovic's assistant, Douglas Faneuil, executed the Stewart trade. According to the Washington Post, Faneuil has told Merrill Lynch lawyers that no "stop-loss" existed, and that Bacanovic allegedly urged him to lie by saying there was such an order.

Bacanovic and Faneuil were suspended with pay by Merrill Lynch recently for what the company called "factual issues regarding a client transaction."