Deadly Spin (28 page)

In an attempt to persuade Americans, especially those living and vacationing along the Gulf Coast, that it was a socially responsible company doing all it could do to contain the mess it had made, BP enlisted the support of local businesses and state tourism agencies to allay concerns that the region’s beaches and flora and fauna were threatened.

The Daily Beast Web site reported on May 19, 2010, that BP had quietly shelled out more than seventy million dollars to produce and air commercials ostensibly meant to lure tourists to the area but subliminally implying that BP had done what local businesses and governments had expected it to do in cleaning up the oil spill.
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“It’s one piece of an enormous, largely stealth PR campaign that BP has been waging over the past few weeks … as the enormity of the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster sinks in,” Daily Beast reporter Rick Outzen wrote. He added that “the ground operatives in this propaganda blitz are locally-owned or affiliated companies—mostly those that either supply or own BP stations.”

“Specifically,” he continued, citing sources inside the oil industry, “while BP has commandeered the state’s tourism marketing, the oil giant wants its local marketers to buy ads, distribute flyers at their stations, hold customer appreciation days and use BP-supplied talking points to build a word-of-mouth campaign to ‘diffuse or deflect negative commentary’ about the BP oil spill.” BP had pledged to cover all their expenses.

Originally known as British Petroleum, the company changed its name to BP in 2000 “to project a more environmentally friendly image, saying the initials stood for ‘Beyond Petroleum,’ ”
Newsweek
noted in a May 17, 2010, article about how before the catastrophe in the Gulf the company had vigorously fought additional federal regulation of oil drilling in coastal waters.
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The article quoted Dave Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics as saying that BP had in recent years—which coincided with the company’s multi-million-dollar campaign to reinforce its image as a “green” company—increased its lobbying in Washington “exponentially” to dilute new laws on the prevention of oil-spill pollution.

Thus, on the one hand it had been quietly lobbying Congress to loosen environmental-protection laws, while on the other it had been promoting itself publicly as environmentally friendly. By most accounts, the company’s ongoing campaign to paint itself green was a big success. “BP is running a greenwashing campaign, and from a sales and marketing perspective, it is brilliant,” said John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) in the January 14, 2008, edition of
Adweek
.
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Big oil companies have worked closely with other energy and fossil fuel industries—coal companies in particular—to persuade Americans that climate change not only is nothing to worry about but also is not even happening. The modus operandi of these industries—and the front groups that they have their PR firms create and run—is to create fear that efforts to address a problem that they contend doesn’t really exist will hurt the economy and cost jobs.

One of the leaders in the campaign to diminish concerns about the role that coal-fired power plants play in climate change is the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (previously known as the Center for Energy and Economic Development, or CEED). A leaked 2004 memo from the organization, obtained in 2009 by the CMD, described how it was working behind the scenes to keep both the legislative and the judicial branches of government from taking any actions on climate change that would affect the industry in a negative way.

“In the climate change arena,” the memo stated, “CEED focuses on three areas: opposing government-mandated controls of greenhouse gases (GHG), opposing ‘regulation by litigation,’ and supporting sequestration technology as the proper vehicles for addressing any reasonable concerns about greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.”

The CMD also discovered that CEED’s PR firm was the Hawthorn Group, a Virginia-based firm that the health insurance industry has hired to fight anti-managed-care legislation and litigation. (I participated in numerous strategy-development sessions with Hawthorn Group staffers and my counterparts from other big insurers after several class action lawsuits were filed against our employers on behalf of physicians and their patients in 2000.)

The Hawthorn Group crowed about its successes on behalf of CEED in a 2008 newsletter it sent to “friends and family.” Two paragraphs are particularly noteworthy:

The program also had an impact on the perception of coal among public opinion leaders. In September 2007, on the key measurement question—Do you support/oppose the use of coal to generate electricity?—we found 46 percent support and 50 percent oppose. In a 2008 year-end survey that result had shifted to 72 percent support and 22 percent oppose. Not only did we see significantly increased support, opposition was cut by more than half. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain addressed a crowd wearing “Clean Coal hats” in Pennsylvania.

Building on our existing 200,000-strong grassroots citizen army, we leveraged the presidential candidates’ own supporters, finding advocates for clean coal among the crowd to carry our message. We got these on-the-spot advocates to show strong public support to the candidates and to the media, and enhanced that visibility by integrating online media that created even more of a buzz. We did this by sending “clean coal” branded teams to hundreds of presidential candidate events, carrying a positive message (we can be part of the solution to climate change) which was reinforced by giving away free T-shirts and hats emblazoned with our branding: Clean Coal. Attendees at the candidate events wore these items into the events.
*

Another front group funded by oil companies, the American Energy Alliance, began running ads in late 2009 warning that American taxpayers would pay a heavy price if legislation designed to slow global warming were approved. The AEA was formed in 1993 by the American Petroleum Institute and several large corporations to defeat a bill that would have made companies polluting the environment pay for their emissions.

The AEA ads claimed that the bill would cost families more than three thousand dollars a year in new taxes. Headed by a former staff member of Tom DeLay (the former Republican House majority leader), the AEA got that number from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study estimating that the bill would cost roughly that amount per taxpayer. What the AEA did not disclose was that the MIT study said that taxpayers would not pay any of it.
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The author of the study, John Reilly, said that the claims made by the AEA and its allies in Congress were false.

In addition, the Web site NaturalNews noted, “The AEA ads fail to mention the bill’s emphasis on increased energy efficiency, which would actually save consumers and businesses money—an estimated $465 billion per year, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists study. If the government uses money raised by the bill to finance tax breaks or other incentives for consumers to retrofit their homes for more efficiency, the average household would save $900, including $580 on fuel and $320 on electricity, heating and cooking.”

One of the world’s leading experts on climate change, Joseph Romm, told the online magazine Guernica that the campaigns on behalf of the industry to manipulate public opinion have been stunningly successful. “The fossil-fuel companies and the right-wing have been very effective in their disinformation campaign,” said Romm, a physicist and founder of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, whom
Time
magazine named one of its Heroes for the Environment in 2009. “It’s the most successful disinformation campaign in human history.” As a result, he said, even progressive politicians “have been persuaded not to talk so much about global warming.”
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BIG SODA

With evidence mounting that sugary sodas and other beverages are a leading contributor to the obesity epidemic in the United States, Congress, some states, and several American cities have considered imposing a special tax on the drinks to reduce consumption and also generate needed revenue to help pay for municipal services. In early 2010, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter proposed a two-cents-per-ounce tax on all sweetened drinks, and in Washington, D.C., city council member Mary Cheh proposed a one-cent-per-ounce tax on bottled and canned soda that contained sugar.

Alarmed, the beverage industry sprang into action to defeat efforts to impose a special tax of any amount on its products. Among the first things the industry did was hire a big PR firm to set up a front group, Americans Against Food Taxes. Funded primarily by beverage and food companies and their lobbying groups, AAFT was formed initially to fight a proposed three- to ten-cent tax on sodas and other sugary drinks that health care reform advocates in Congress had proposed to help pay for the expansion of insurance coverage in the new health care bill.

To obscure its real source of funding, AAFT describes itself as a “coalition of concerned citizens—responsible individuals, financially strapped families, small and large businesses in communities across the country” opposed to any government-proposed tax on sugar-sweetened drinks. But as disclosed on the CMD’s SourceWatch Web site, the group’s membership consists mainly of lobbying groups for packaged-food and soda companies, chain restaurant corporations, and large food and soft drink manufacturers and distributors—including the Coca-Cola Company, Dr Pepper–Royal Crown Bottling Company, PepsiCo, Canada Dry Bottling Company of New York, the Can Manufacturers Institute, 7-Eleven Convenience Stores, and Yum! Brands.

The CMD’s investigation found that the group’s Web site, www.nofoodtaxes.com, is registered to Goddard Claussen, the PR and advertising firm that conjured up the “Harry and Louise” commercials to help defeat the Clinton health care reform plan.

Using the “we’re part of the solution” tactic, AAFT launched a campaign to persuade Americans that beverage companies are doing their part to get kids to cut down on their consumption of high-calorie sodas. The group has used ads and e-mail blasts to boast that soda companies have replaced full-calorie soft drinks with “smaller-portion” and “portion controlled” beverages, real juice, and bottled water. Voilà! Their products are no longer the problem; they are part of the solution. Even better, now they will get kids to buy more bottled water—which costs the companies next to nothing to make—at a dollar a bottle, more than they would pay for a soda.

Another part of AAFT’s campaign is to generate outrage against a soda tax by calling it a tax on “groceries.” It isn’t a tax on groceries; it’s just a tax on one class of foods: sugary drinks. But by shifting the focus, the group stands a better chance of getting people—especially low-income people—to oppose the tax.

To kill Nutter’s proposal in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Beverage Association created a coalition with local businesses—including owners of bodegas throughout the city—and even a labor union, the Teamsters, because its members delivered sodas to stores, restaurants, and schools. The coalition conducted a fearmongering campaign, arguing that the tax would ruin small-business owners and lead to layoffs in the beverage and transportation industries.

In the weeks leading up to the Philadelphia City Council’s vote on the proposed beverage tax, the beverage industry mounted a full-court press, including sending the spokesman for the American Beverage Association to the city “to plot strategy,” according to the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. “Lobbyists are buttonholing City Council members,” the
Inquirer
reported. “Trade groups and the unions have locked arms. Industry ads are sprouting on the air and in print extolling the good corporate citizenship of soft-drink companies. The public has weighed in with hundreds of calls and e-mails.”
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The strategy worked. In May 2010, despite being millions of dollars short in paying for city services, council members voted down the tax but approved a budget with a projected $130 million shortfall. To help close the budget gap, the council voted to raise property taxes by almost 10 percent, but Nutter said even that wouldn’t raise enough revenue to avoid cutbacks. He also said, after the defeat of his proposal, that the city would have to cut police, fire, and library services and eliminate 339 jobs.

Nutter blamed the beverage industry’s intense PR and lobbying campaign for the demise of the proposed soda tax and the need to lay off city workers. “They will literally attempt to do or say anything to prevent what is essentially a good idea,” he told the
Philadelphia Daily News
.
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The beverage industry’s win in Philadelphia was just the latest in its string of victories. The proposed tax in Washington succumbed the same week. Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake saw her proposed tax stall in city council. The only place the industry did not prevail was Washington State, which approved an excise tax on soda, but as of this writing lobbyists were trying to persuade legislators to repeal it.

In Washington, D.C., Councilwoman Cheh summed up the situation well in a
Washington Post
story before the vote: “It’s hard to fight a multimillion dollar PR effort from big soda.”
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Indeed. The same article quoted Ellen Valentino, executive vice president of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Beverage Association, as saying that her group was prepared to spend “whatever it takes” to defeat the tax.

BIG BANKS

One of the PR tactics the banking industry used to defeat or water down financial reform legislation in 2010 was to try to fool Americans—especially liberals—into thinking that the legislation was another Wall Street bailout.

As the site Talking Points Memo (TPM) reported in April 2010, banks and their allies formed a front group they named Stop Too Big to Fail to carry out a massive disinformation campaign.

This front group—created by the same people who had launched a similar sham organization, funded by big telecom companies, to support deregulation of the cable industry—“entered the financial reform fray with $1.6 million in aid, a respected economist on board, a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning websites, and a message cooked right into the group’s name—Stop Too Big To Fail—that liberals could love,” TPM reporter Justin Elliott wrote.
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