PR Watch, Third Quarter 2000, Volume 7, No. 3

PR Watch has reported in the past on the antics of Steven Milloy and his "Junk Science Home Page." His tobacco connections, however, were first revealed on April 8 in the Lancet

, England's leading medical journal. The Lancet story detailed a covert industry campaign in the 1990s to undermine scientific evidence linking tobacco smoke to health problems in nonsmokers. The campaign was prodigiously expensive, international in scope, and even reached into the editorial offices of the Lancet itself.

Industry Hacks Turn Fear on its Head

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

A number of leading figures in the anti-environmental "sound science" movement have teamed up to launch a new front group aimed at smearing environmental and health activists as behind-the-scenes conspirators who "sow health scares to reap monetary rewards."

In August, the "No More Scares" campaign announced its formation at a Washington, DC press conference attacking Fenton Communications, one of the few public relations firms that represents environmental advocacy groups. No More Scares spokesman Steven Milloy used the press conference to release a report titled "The Fear Profiteers," which described Fenton as the "spider" at the center of a "tangled web of non-profit advocacy groups."

PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber are among the contributors to a new book from MIT Press titled Reclaiming the Environmental Debates: The Politics of Health in a Toxic Culture.

"An expanding array of hazardous substances poses an increasing threat to public health," notes the book's editor, Richard Hofrichter. "But what makes our society a toxic culture are the social arrangements that encourage and excuse the deterioration of human health and the environment. Elements of toxic culture include the unquestioned production of hazardous wastes, economic blight, substandard housing, chronic stress, exploitative working conditions, and dangerous technologies. Toxic culture is also a metaphor for the ways our language, concepts, and values frame debates, ignoring the political conflicts and power relations that influence public health."

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

In the biographical sketch that accompanies "The Fear Profiteers" (see cover story of this issue), Steven Milloy describes himself as the publisher of the Junk Science Home Page and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. "Milloy appears frequently on radio and television; has testified on risk assessment and Superfund before the U.S. Congress; and has lectured before numerous organizations," it adds, noting that he has also "written articles that have appeared in the New York Post, USA Today, Washington Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, and the Investors' Business Daily."

by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Organizations such as the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society estimate that direct smoking kills about 400,000 people per year in the United States--or, if you use the World Health Organization's estimate, about 3 million people per year worldwide.

Philip Morris would not retreat from its decades-long denial that direct smoking causes cancer until the year 1999. Privately, however, its attorneys and PR advisors were already planning a strategic retreat from this position as early as the 1970s. In its place, they set out to build a scientific case against the mounting body of evidence showing that nonsmokers also suffer adverse health effects from secondhand smoke inhaled in bars, restaurants and other public places.

PR Watch editors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have completed a new book, titled Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future.An exposé of the PR techniques used to manufacture "independent experts," Trust Us, We're Experts will be published by Tarcher/Putnam and will be available in bookstores in January.

PR relies heavily on what industry insiders call the "third party technique" of "putting your client's words in someone else's mouth." Trust Us, We're Experts shows that many of these so-called "independent third parties" are often anything but neutral. They are handpicked, cultivated, and packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."