Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19861

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: news

Stauber J, Rampton S
The Public Relations Industry's Secret War on Activists
Covert Action Quarterly 1995
http://mediafilter.org/caq/Caq55.prwar.html

Full text: “The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” —Alex Carey

All Lynn Tylczak wanted to do was keep a few kids from being poisoned.

A housewife in Oregon, her imagination was captured by a PBS documentary about a technique used in Europe to prevent children from accidentally swallowing household poisons. Common antifreeze, for example, is made of ethylene glycol, whose sweet taste and smell belies its highly poisonous nature. As little as two teaspoons can cause death or blindness. About 700 children under the age of six are exposed to antifreeze each year, and it is the leading cause of accidental animal poisoning affecting both pets and wild animals. European antifreeze makers poison-proof their products by adding the cbitterant — denatonium benzoate. Two cents worth makes a gallon of antifreeze taste so vile that kids spit it out the instant it touches their mouth.

Anti_Activist_Poster
Tylczak launched a one-woman crusade, the cPoison Proof Project& to persuade antifreeze makers to add bitterant. Her story made the New York Times and Oprah Winfrey, prompting a swift backlash from antifreeze makers.

She remembers one company’s PR representative threatening that he could pay someone $2,000 to have her shot if she didn’t back off. When Tylczak began pushing for legislation to require bitterant, another PR firm was sent into the breach: National Grassroots and Communications, which specializes in passing and defeating legislation at the federal and state level. Tylczak had never even heard of the firm until its CEO, Pamela Whitney, made the mistake of bragging about her exploits at a PR trade seminar. The key to winning anything is opposition research, she said. We set up an operation where we posed as representatives of the estate of an older lady who had died and wanted to leave quite a bit of money to an organization that helped both children and animals. We went in and met with [Tylczak] and said, `We want to bequeath $100,000 to an organization; you’re one of three that we are targeting to look at. Give us all of your financial records…, all of your game plan for the following year, and the states you want to target and how you expect to win. We’ll get back to you.’

Whitney claimed that the records she received contained two bombshells: The Poison Proof Project’s tax-exempt status had lapsed, and it had taken funding from bitterant manufacturers. Without leaving any fingerprints or any traces, Whitney boasted, we then got word through the local media and killed the bill in all the states.

When the story got back to Tylczak, she noted that only $100 of the $50,000 in family savings spent on the campaign came from bitterant makers. She’s got a very foolish client, Tylczak said. Her story has got more bullshit than a cattle ranch. In fact, she noted, her bill requiring bitterant did pass in Oregon.

What did the PR industry accomplish in its battle against Lynn Tylczak? Were news stories or legislation killed because of Whitney’s intervention? In this and other cases, the degree of success PR firms have in manipulating public opinion and policy is almost imposssible to determine. By design, the PR industry carefully conceals many of its activities. Persuasion, by its definition, is subtle, says one PR executive. The best PR ends up looking like news. You never know when a PR agency is being effective; you’ll just find your views slowly shifting.

Using money provided by its special interest clients usually large corporations, business associations and governments the PR industry has vast power to direct and control thought and policy. It can mobilize private detectives, lawyers, and spies; influence editorial and news decisions; broadcast faxes; generate letters; launch phony grassroots campaigns; and use high-tech information systems such as satellite feeds and internet sites.

Activist groups and concerned individuals often fail to recognize the techniques and assess the impact of PR campaigns. And indeed, with its $10 billion-a-year bankroll and its array of complex, sophisticated persuasive weaponry, the PR industry can often outmaneuver, overpower, and outlast true citizen reformers. Identifying the techniques of the industry and understanding how they work are the first steps in fighting back.
SPIES FOR HIRE
In 1990, David Steinman’s book, Diet for a Poisoned Planet, was scheduled for publication. Based on five years of research, it detailed evidence that hundreds of carcinogens, pesticides, and other toxins contaminate the US food chain. It documented, for example, that raisins had 110 industrial chemical and pesticide residues in 16 samples, and recommended buying only organically grown varieties.

Diet for a Poisoned Planet enabled readers to make safer food choices. But before they could use the information, they had to know about the book so that they could buy and read it. In the weeks after it came out, Steinman’s publisher scheduled the usual round of media reviews and interviews, not suspecting that the California Raisin Advisory Board (CALRAB) had already launched a campaign to ensure that Steinman’s book would be dead on arrival.

The stakes were high. In 1986, CALRAB had scored big with a series of clever TV commercials using the California Dancing Raisins that pushed up raisin sales by 17 percent. Steinman’s book threatened to trip up the careful PR choreography. Grassroots_Infiltration

Even PR hacks
use the term “Astroturf”
to deride their competitor’s work.
In their perverse doublespeak world,
“real” grassroots is astroturf that has been
so well designed that it looks real.

To kill the Steinman book, CALRAB hired Ketchum PR Worldwide, whose $50 million a year in net fees made it the country’s sixth largest public relations company. Months before the publication of Diet for a Poisoned Planet, Ketchum sought to obtain [a] copy of [the] book galleys or manuscript and publisher’s tour schedule, wrote senior vice-president Betsy Gullickson in a secret September 7, 1990 memo outlining the PR firm’s plan to manage the crisis.

“All documents…are confidential. Make sure that everything even notes to yourself are so stamped. … Remember that we have a shredder; give documents to Lynette for shredding. All conversations are confidential, too. Please be careful talking in the halls, in elevators, in restaurants, etc. All suppliers must sign confidentiality agreements. If you are faxing documents to the client, another office or to anyone else, call them to let them know that a fax is coming. If you are expecting a fax, you or your Account Coordinator should stand by the machine and wait for it. “

Gullickson’s memo outlined a plan to assign broad areas of responsibility, such as intelligence/information gathering, to specific Ketchum employees and to Gary Obenauf of CALRAB. She recommended that spokespeople conduct one-on-one briefings/interviews with the trade and general consumer media in the markets most acutely interested in the issue …. [Ketchum] is currently attempting to get a tour schedule so that we can `shadow’ Steinman’s appearances; best scenario: we will have our spokesman in town prior to or in conjunction with Steinman’s appearances.

After an informant involved with the book’s marketing campaign passed Ketchum a list of Steinman’s talk show bookings, Ketchum employees called each show. The PR firm then made a list of key media to receive low-key phone inquiries. They tried to depict Steinman as an off-the-wall extremist without credibility, or argued that it was only fair that the other side be presented. A number of programs canceled or failed to air interviews. In the end, an important contribution to the public debate over health, the environment, and food safety fell victim to a PR campaign designed to prevent it from ever reaching the marketplace of ideas.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Ronald Duchin, senior vice-president of another PR spy firm Mongoven, Biscoe, and Duchin would probably have labeled Steinman and Tylczak radicals. A graduate of the US Army War College, Duchin worked as a special assistant to the secretary of defense and director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars before becoming a flack. Activists, he explained, fall into four categories: radicals, opportunists, idealists, and realists. He follows a three-step strategy to neutralize them: 1) isolate the radicals; 2) cultivate the idealists and educate them into becoming realists; then 3) co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.

According to Duchin, radical activists:

“want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives [and] see multinational corporations as inherently evil….These organizations do not trust the… federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry. … I would categorize their principal aims right now as social justice and political empowerment.”

Idealists are also hard to deal with. They want a perfect world and find it easy to brand any product or practice which can be shown to mar that perfection as evil. Because of their intrinsic altruism, however, and because they have nothing perceptible to be gained by holding their position, they are easily believed by both the media and the public, and sometimes even politicians. However, idealists have a vulnerable point. If they can be shown that their position in opposition to an industry or its products causes harm to others and cannot be ethically justified, they are forced to change their position…. Thus, while a realist must be negotiated with, an idealist must be educated. Generally this education process requires great sensitivity and understanding on the part of the educator.

Opportunists and realists, says Duchin, are easier to manipulate. Opportunists engage in activism seeking visibility, power, followers and, perhaps, even employment. … The key to dealing with [them] is to provide them with at least the perception of a partial victory. And realists are able to live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. [They] should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue. … If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution.
BEST FRIENDS MONEY CAN BUY
Another crude but effective way to derail potentially meddlesome activists is simply to hire them. In early 1993, Carol Tucker Foreman, former executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, took a job for what is rumored to be an exceptionally large fee as a personal lobbyist for bovine growth hormone (rBGH), the controversial milk hormone produced by chemical giant Monsanto. With Foreman’s help, Monsanto has successfully prevented Congress or the FDA from requiring labeling of milk from cows injected with rBGH. In fact, the company used threats of lawsuits to intimidate dairy retailers and legislators who wanted to label their milk rBGH-free.

While she is helping Monsanto wage its all-out campaign for rBGH, Foreman is also the coordinator and lobbyist for the Safe Food Coalition, an alliance of consumer advocacy, senior citizen, whistleblower protection, and labor organizations. Formed by Foreman in 1987, the Coalition’s members include such public interest heavyweights as Michael Jacobson’s Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, and Public Voice for Food and Health Policy.

Foreman said she saw no conflict of interest in simultaneously representing rBGH and the Safe Food Coalition. The FDA has said rBGH is safe, she explained, adding Why don’t you call CSPI; they say rBGH is safe too? Asked how much money she has received from Monsanto to lobby for rBGH, she angrily retorted, What in the world business is that of yours? Her D.C. consulting firm, Foreman & Heidepriem, refused to provide further information and referred journalists to Monsanto’s PR department.

BOTH SIDES OF THE STREET
William Novelli, a founder of the New York-based Porter/Novelli PR firm, cheerfully uses the term cross-pollination to describe his company’s technique of orchestrating collusion between clients with seemingly conflicting interests. By donating free work to health-related charities, for example, Porter/Novelli gains leverage to pressure the charities into supporting the interests of the firm’s paying corporate clients. In 1993, this strategy paid off when produce growers and pesticide manufacturers represented by Porter/Novelli learned that PBS was about to air a documentary by Bill Moyers on pesticide-related cancer risks to children. The PR firm turned to the American Cancer Society (ACS), to which it had provided decades of free services. The national office of ACS dutifully issued a memo charging that the Moyers program makes unfounded suggestions…that pesticide residues in food may be at hazardous levels. The industry then cited the memo as evidence that Moyers’ documentary overstated dangers to children from pesticides.

Hill & Knowlton executive Nina Oligino used a similar cross-pollination technique in 1994 to line up national environmental groups behind Partners for Sun Protection Awareness, a front group for Hill & Knowlton’s client, Schering-Plough. Best known for Coppertone sun lotion, the drug transnational uses the Partners to educate the public to the dangers of skin cancer, cataracts, and damaged immune systems caused by a thinning ozone layer and an increase in ultraviolet radiation.

In the past, Hill & Knowlton has also worked for corporate clients who hired them to disprove or belittle the environmental warnings of global climate change.15 Seamlessly shifting gears into environmentalist mode, Hill & Knowlton convinced leaders of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club to add their names to the Partners for Sun Protection letterhead.

A representative (who asked not to be named) of one of the environmental groups said he was ignorant of the Schering-Plough funding and its hidden agenda to sell sun lotion. Had he examined the Partners campaign, however, he might have noticed that it offered no proposals for preventing further ozone depletion and failed to mention that covering up completely was the best sun screen of all. Instead, the primary action the drug company-funded coalition recommended was to liberally apply a sunscreen…to all exposed parts of the body before going outdoors. One of the campaign’s clever video news releases shows scores of sexy, scantily-clad sun worshippers overexposing themselves to UV rays, while slathering on suntan oil.

SYNTHETIC GRASSROOTS
PR firms often bypass activist organizations and custom design their own grassroots citizen movements using rapidly evolving high-tech data and communications systems. Known in the trade as astroturf, this tactic is defined by Campaigns & Elections magazine as a grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them.

Astroturf is particularly useful in countering NIMBY or Not in my back yard movements community groups organizing to stop their neighborhood from hosting a toxic waste dump, porno bookstore, or other unwanted invaders.

John Davies, who helps neutralize these groups on behalf of corporate clients such as Mobil Oil, Hyatt Hotels, Exxon, and American Express, describes himself as one of America’s premier grassroots consultants. His ad in Campaigns & Elections (see p. 18) is designed to strike terror into the heart of even the bravest CEO. It features a photo of the enemy: a little old white-haired lady holding a hand-lettered sign, Not In My Backyard! The caption warns, Don’t leave your future in her hands. Traditional lobbying is no longer enough….To outnumber your opponents, call Davies Communications.

Davies promises to make a strategically planned program look like a spontaneous explosion of community support for needy corporate clients by using mailing lists and computer databases to identify potential supporters. He claims his telemarketers will make passive supporters appear to be concerned advocates. We want to assist them with letter writing. We get them on the phone [and say], `Will you write a letter?’ `Sure.’ `Do you have time to write it?’ `Not really.’ `Could we write it for you?… Just hold, we have a writer standing by.’

Another Davies employee then helps create what appears to be a personal letter. If the appropriate public official is close by, we hand-deliver it. We hand-write it out on `little kitty cat stationery’ if it’s a little old lady. If it’s a business we take it over to be photocopied on someone’s letterhead. [We] use different stamps, different envelopes…. Getting a pile of personalized letters that have a different look to them is what you want to strive for.

BLENDING IN
Grassroots PR is the specialty of Pamela Whitney at National Grassroots & Communications, the firm that spied on Lynn Tylczak.

My company basically works for major corporations and we do new market entries, she says. Wal-Mart is one of our clients. We take on the NIMBYs and environmentalists. They also work for companies who want to do a better job of communicating to their employees because they want to remain union-free. They aren’t quite sure how to do it, so we go in and set that up.

One of National Grassroots’ first tasks, after information gathering/spying, is to set up its own local organizations by hiring local ambassadors who know the community inside and out to be our advocates, and then we work with them, explains Whitney. They report to us. They are on our payroll, but it’s for a very small amount of money. [O]ur best community ambassadors are women who have possibly been head of their local PTA; they are very active in their local community or women who are retired and who have a lot of time on their hands. They are supervised by professionals with field organizing experience on electoral campaigns who can drop in the middle of nowhere and in two weeks they have an organization set up and ready to go.

These professional grassroots organizers dress carefully to avoid looking like the high-priced, out-of-town hired guns they really are. When I go to a zoning board meeting, Whitney explained, I wear absolutely no make-up, I comb my hair straight back in a ponytail, and I wear my kids’ old clothes. You don’t want to look like you’re someone from Washington, or someone from a corporation…. People hate outsiders; it’s just human nature.

With enough money, the same techniques can be applied on a national scale. As the health care debate heated up in the early days of the Clinton administration, Blair G. Childs masterminded the Coalition for Health Insurance Choices (CHIC). An insurance industry front group, CHIC received major funding from the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), a trade group of insurance companies. According to Consumer Reports, The HIAA doesn’t just support the coalition; it created it from scratch.

Health reform opponents used opinion polling to develop a point-by-point list of vulnerabilities in the Clinton administration proposal and organized over 20 separate coalitions to hammer away at each point. Each group chose a name with a general positive reaction….That’s where focus group and survey work can be very beneficial, explained Childs. `Fairness,’ `balance,’ `choice,’ `coalition,’ and `alliance’ are all words that resonate very positively. Childs, who has been organizing grassroots support for the insurance industry for a decade, wasn’t the only PR genius behind the anti-health care campaign, but his coalition can honestly claim the kill.

CHIC’s multi-coalition strategy assured numbers and cover, and took advantage of different strengths. Some have lobby strength, some have grassroots strength, and some have good spokespersons, Childs said. In its campaign against mandatory health alliances, CHIC drew in everyone from the homeless Vietnam veterans….to some very conservative groups. *23 It also sponsored the legendary Harry and Louise TV spot which, according to the New York Times, ‘symbolized everything that went wrong with the great health care struggle of 1994: A powerful advertising campaign, financed by the insurance industry, that played on people’s fears and helped derail the process.

CHIC and the other coalitions also used direct mail and phoning, coordinated with daily doses of misinformation from radio blowtorch Rush Limbaugh, to spread fears that government health care would bankrupt the country, reduce the quality of care, and lead to jail terms for people who wanted to stick with their family doctor. Childs explained how his coalition used paid ads on the Limbaugh show to generate thousands of citizen phone calls from the show’s 20 million listeners. First, Limbaugh would whip up his fans with a calculated rant against the Clinton plan. Then, during a commercial break, listeners would hear an anti-health care ad and an 800 number to call for more information. The call would ring a telemarketer who would ask a few questions, then patch them through electronically to their congressmembers’ office. Staffers fielding the resulting barrage of phone calls typically had no idea that the constituents had been primed, loaded, aimed, and fired at them by radio ads paid for by the insurance industry, with the goal of orchestrating the appearance of overwhelming grassroots opposition to health reform.

When the health care debate began in 1993, Childs said, popular demand for change was so strong that the insurance industry was looking down the barrel of a gun. By 1994, industry’s hired PR guns had shot down every proposal for reform.

MANAGING THE MEDIA
Many PR pros think that the media, both national and local, are easier to handle than the public. To begin with, the media itself is a huge, profitable business, the domain of fewer and fewer giant transnational corporations. Not surprisingly, these transnationals often find that their corporate agenda and interest are compatible with, or even identical to, the goals of the PR industry’s biggest clients. While this environment may be demoralizing to responsible journalists, it offers a veritable hog heaven to the public relations industry.

In their 1985 book, Jeff and Marie Blyskal write that

“PR people know how the press thinks. Thus, they are able to tailor their publicity so that journalists will listen and cover it. As a result much of the news you read in newspapers and magazines or watch on television and hear on radio is heavily influenced and slanted by public relations people. Whole sections of the news are virtually owned by PR….Newspaper food pages are a PR man’s paradise, as are the entertainment, automotive, real estate, home improvement and living sections… Unfortunately, `news’ hatched by a PR person and journalist working together looks much like real news dug up by enterprising journalists working independently. The public thus does not know which news stories and journalists are playing servant to PR. “

As a result, notes a senior vice-president with Gray & Company public relations, Most of what you see on TV is, in effect, a canned PR product. Most of what you read in the paper and see on television is not news.

The blurring of news and ads accelerated in the 1980s, when PR firms discovered that they could film, edit, and produce their own news segments even entire programs and that broadcasters would play them as news, often with no editing. Video news releases (VNRs), typically come packaged with two versions: The first is fully edited, with voiceovers pre-recorded or scripted for a local anchor to read. The second, a B-roll, is raw footage that the station can edit and combine with tape from other sources.

There are two economics at work here on the television side, explains a Gray & Company executive. The big stations don’t want prepackaged, pretaped. They have the money, the budget, and the manpower to put their own together. But the smaller stations across the country lap up stuff like this.

With few exceptions, broadcasters as a group have refused to consider standards for VNRs, in part because they rarely admit to airing them. But when MediaLink the PR firm that distributed about half of the 4,000 VNRs made available to newscasters in 1991 surveyed 92 newsrooms, it found that all had used VNRs supplied free by PR firms. CBS Evening News, for example, ran a segment on the hazards of automatic safety belts created by a lobby group largely supported by lawyers.

CYBERJUNK MAIL
The PR industry is innovating rapidly and expanding into cyberspace. Hyped as the ultimate in electronic democracy, the information superhighway will supposedly offer a global cornucopia of programming offering instant, inexpensive access to nearly infinite libraries of data, educational material and entertainment. But as computer technology brings a user-friendlier version of the internet to a wider spectrum of users, it has attracted intense corporate interest.

Given that a handful of corporations now control most media, media historian Robert McChesney finds it is no surprise that the private sector, with its immense resources, has seized the initiative and is commercializing cyberspace at a spectacular rate effectively transforming it into a giant shopping mall. *30 PR firms are jumping on the online bandwagon, establishing world wide web sites and using surveys and games to gather marketing and opinion information about the users of cyberspace, and developing new techniques to target and reach reporters and other online users.

Today, with many more options available, PR professionals are much less dependent upon mass media for publicity, writes industry pro Kirk Hallahan in Public Relations Quarterly. In the decade ahead, the largest American corporations could underwrite entire, sponsored channels. … [which] will be able to reach coveted super-heavy users … with a highly tailored message over which [corporations could] exert complete control.

FIGHTING BACK AT FLACKS
The groups that most scare the PR industry are the local grassroots groups they derisively label NIMBYs. Unlike national environmental groups and other professional reformers, the local groups are hard to manipulate precisely because they aren’t wired in to the systems that PR firms like to manipulate. Most Not in My Backyard activists commit to a cause after some personal experience drives them to get involved. Typically, they act as individuals or with small groups of citizens who come together to address a local, immediate threat to their lives, cities and neighborhoods. They are often treated with contempt by the professional environmentalists, health advocates and other public interest organizations headquartered in Washington, D.C. Many times, they lack organizing expertise and money. They don’t have budgets or polished grant proposals needed to obtain funding from foundations and major donors. But corporations and the US government are spending tens of millions of dollars on PR and lobbying to fight these local community activists.

The most visible manifestations of NIMBYism, and its biggest success stories, have been in stopping toxic waste sites and toxin-belching incinerators from invading communities. Author Mark Dowie sees this new wave of grassroots democracy as the best hope for realizing the public’s well-documented desire for a clean and healthy environment in sustainable balance with nature. Today, grassroots anti-toxic environmentalism is a far more serious threat to polluting industries than the mainstream environmental movement, Dowie writes. Not only do local activists network, share tactics, and successfully block many dump sites and industrial developments, they also stubbornly refuse to surrender or compromise. They simply cannot afford to. Their activities and success are gradually changing the acronym NIMBY to NIABY Not In Anybody’s Backyard.

But before that can happen, local groups need to develop a strategy for confronting the powers-that-be in their backyard, and that means learning to recognize and fight the techniques of PR. Until they learn this lesson, local activists may continue to win local battles, while finding themselves outmaneuvered and outgunned at the national level.