PR Watch, Third Quarter 2003, Volume 10, No. 3

Flack Attack

Propaganda is the art of persuading people to
accept ideas that are not necessarily in their own best interests. This
is why propagandists often look for ways to conceal the identity and
motives of their client from the people they are trying to influence.
This also explains why public relations firms sometimes find themselves
enmeshed in conflicts of interest.

align="BOTTOM">Past issues of PR Watch have reported on firms that
specialize in working simultaneously for nonprofit organizations, governments
and corporate clients, often for the express purpose of achieving what
the Porter/Novelli PR firm describes as "cross-pollination" - which helped
it persuade the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute
to sign letters supporting the position of P/N's paying clients, including
produce growers and pesticide makers.

align="BOTTOM">Something similar happens, as Sharon Beder illustrates in
her articles for this issue, when utility companies like Enron are able
to recruit environmentalists to support their self-serving positions
in favor of electricity deregulation.

The Electricity Deregulation Con Game

by Sharon Beder

Electricity deregulation was supposed to bring
cheaper electricity prices and more choice of suppliers to householders.
Instead it has brought wildly volatile wholesale prices and undermined
the reliability of the electricity supply. The rising electricity prices
and blackouts in California and the northeastern states of the US are
consequences of the changes engineered by vested interests; changes that
were accomplished through a massive PR campaign to deceive politicians
and opinion leaders about their benefits.

align="BOTTOM">Despite efforts to manufacture an appearance of grassroots
support, deregulation was primarily driven by large industrial users,
who thought they could save money, and energy companies, who thought
they could make money out of it.

How Environmentalists Sold Out to Help Enron

by Sharon Beder

A key component of the PR campaign by private
power companies consisted of efforts to target key environmentalists,
enrolling them to their cause while attacking environmentalists who were
not so easily persuaded.

align="BOTTOM">During the 1970s, environmentalists criticized the expansionist
mindset of the power companies and the rating structure which rewarded
high electricity consumption and provided no incentives for conservation
and efficiency.

Utility Company Propaganda: The Early Years

by Sharon Beder

During the early twentieth century, private electricity
companies and their trade associations developed the arsenal of public
relations techniques that enabled them to survive and grow through the
20th century, with very little government interference, despite growing
evidence of their extortionist practices and despite popular movements
for public control and ownership.

align="BOTTOM">The utilities ran a massive nation-wide propaganda campaign
to persuade the public that government ownership of electricity utilities
threatened the American Way of Life.

Cancer PR Firms Still Addicted to Tobacco

by Paul Goldberg, editor, The Cancer Letter

The American Cancer Society (ACS) had a problem:
it wasn't a major player in cancer politics in Washington.

align="BOTTOM">To move to center stage, the Atlanta-based charity turned
to two PR firms, Shandwick International and, later, Edelman. To develop
an overarching cancer agenda, Shandwick and ACS constructed a political
structure called the National Dialogue on Cancer, and convinced former
President George Bush and the California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein
to lead it.

align="BOTTOM">The Dialogue is a dream opportunity for a PR firm to tap into
a pack of multi-billion-dollar industries, including health care, pharmaceuticals
and food.