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The PR industry invisibly reaches into virtually every nook and cranny of the modern world. Luckily for us, so too do PR industry whistleblowers.

Just as McDonalds boasts that its hamburgers are identical throughout the world, many PR firms use a global template for their campaigns. This in turn can sometimes enable savvy citizens to "reverse engineer" their strategies. An exposed PR campaign in one corner of the world can enable citizens throughout the globe to understand, anticipate and counter the PR campaigns that they themselves are facing.

Citizen activists everywhere can learn from the recent publication of Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-environmental PR Campaign [2]. Based on hundreds of pages of leaked internal documents from Shandwick New Zealand, Secrets and Lies offers an unpredentedly detailed look into the campaign that Shandwick ran for Timberlands, a logging company owned by the government of New Zealand. The book is guaranteed to shock even the cynical with its revelations about the depths to which corporations will go in their efforts to control public opinion and public policy. Secrets and Lies co-authors Nicky Hager and Australian Bob Burton offer some of those revelations in this issue of PR Watch."Burton and Hagar's story isn't just about one PR firm in New Zealand," says Dave King, a former employee of Shandwick's Washington office. "Having worked for that firm in the US and followed the way the PR industry twists the truth and manipulates the public, I know that this exposé illuminates a global problem."

Fortunately, in this case the story has a very happy ending. While Shandwick advised Timberlands on managing various crises, it wasn't prepared for the political firestorm that its own actions provoked when they were exposed in Secrets and Lies. The book's publication in New Zealand created a political scandal with its revelations about Prime Minister Jenny Shipley's behind-the-scenes maneuverings on behalf of Timberlands.

Following a campaign dogged by questions and protests from supporters of native forest conservation, Shipley went down in defeat in New Zealand's November 1999 elections. The very first act of the new government, on the afternoon after the new ministers were sworn in on Friday, December 10, was to demand Timberlands cancel a planning hearing for the beech logging plan that was scheduled to start on the Monday. Timberlands at first refused before finally conceding and announcing it was withdrawing its logging application. A week later, negotations began about ending the company's other native logging, and Timberlands quietly terminated its contract with Shandwick.

The publication of Secrets and Lies prompted a response from Shandwick, which attempted to distract attention from the book's revelations by accusing the authors of using "stolen" documents. The company admitted, however, that the documents are genuine. Shandwick representative Klaus Sorenson even told O'Dwyer's PR Services Report that he was proud of the work his company did to counteract "environmental extremists" in New Zealand. "We stand by our work and our reputation," he said.

The sad truth is, Shandwick's campaign against New Zealand rainforests is typical--not just of Shandwick, but of the global public relations industry. As O'Dwyer's noted, "most of the things the firm did come right out of the PR playbook."