We model strategic mediation of the communication between an informed expert with a discrete type space and an uninformed decision maker. A strategic mediator can improve communication even when he is biased into the same direction as the expert.

Without a multiplicative interaction between durability and other quality attributes Swan's (1970) independence result is violated, even with constant marginal costs. Subsequent distortions are aligned when the marginal cost of quality does not increase too much with durability.