PR Watch, Third Quarter 1994, Volume 1, No. 3

Flack Attack

by John C. Stauber

Fifteen thousand PR practioners belong to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and pledge to abide by its seventeen-point "Code of Professional Standards." The code states that a PRSA member "will only conduct his or her professional life in accord with the public interest."

Does anyone really believe that pushing tobacco products is "in accord with the public interest"? If the PRSA code were taken seriously, how could scores of PRSA members justify their continued work for cigarette companies? Yet a quick survey of PR firms by PR Watch could only find nine firms that refuse to represent tobacco interests.

Smokers' Hacks: the Tobacco Lobby's PR Front Groups

by John C. Stauber

Recent news coverage might lead you to believe that tobacco is on its last legs, as its opponents lobby for aggressive public education and strict new regulations to prevent youthful addiction and to protect the public's right to a smoke-free environment.

If you believe this, you're dead wrong, according to the chief PR lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Although tobacco's addicts are dying by the millions each year, sales are growing world-wide, says Tom Lauria of the Tobacco Institute.

At a PR seminar in May, Lauria dismissed tobacco critics as simply the latest "political correctness craze." He ridiculed predictions of tobacco's demise, saying that the media has been preparing smoking's obituary for decades.

Despite the bad press tobacco has been receiving, industry profits are soaring, and the industry is opening new, unregulated mega-markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Third World. Even in the United States, most attempts at serious federal or state regulation or taxation are swatted down by tobacco's skilled army of highly paid lobbyists.

Three out of Four Flacks Agree: No Ifs About Butts

Polling and research by PR Watch shows that three out of four prominent PR firms have no qualms about pushing tobacco addiction.

Of 38 companies surveyed or researched, only 9 said they would decline a contract to represent the tobacco industry.

PR's "Smart Environmentalism"

A June 20 conference on "Smart Environmentalism" featured a scathing attack on environmentalism by right-wing libertarian Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute. Some PR advisors advocate corporate co-optation of the greens, but Taylor calls for all-out corporate war. Ridiculing the capitol's environmental lobbyists as a bunch of ineffectual "creampuffs," Taylor called on the assembled PR practitioners to stand up and fight for their companies, not capitulate.

PR Watch attended the conference, which was organized by Ketchum PR and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Conspicuously absent at the 'Smart Environmentalism' conference were representatives from Hill & Knowlton, E. Bruce Harrison, Dorf & Stanton and Burson-Marsteller, four companies whose anti-environmental PR activities were featured in detail in our previous issue.

Book Review

Thank You For Smoking, by Christopher Buckley (New York, NY: Random House, 1994)

The current travails of the tobacco industry are hitting the front pages at an opportune moment for ex-smoker Christopher Buckley, the author of a wickedly funny new novel titled Thank You For Smoking.

Christopher is the forty-two year-old only child of right-wing icon William F. Buckley Jr. He's also a former Bush speechwriter and a regular columnist in Forbes magazine. His new novel is both a wild satire and a dead-on depiction of the inner workings of the tobacco industry's powerful PR/lobby apparatus.

Smoke and Mirrors: How Tobacco and PR Grew Up Together

by John C. Stauber

The recent public controversy over tobacco companies and their role in misleading the public about the effects of smoking looks remarkably similar to the controversies of 40 years ago.

The first scientific studies documenting tobacco's role in cancer and other fatal illness began to appear in the early 1950s. Internal memos from the industry-funded Tobacco Institute refer to the PR fallout from this discovery as the "1954 emergency."

Hustling for the Junta: PR Fights Democracy in Haiti

by Sheldon Rampton, PR Watch Associate Editor

On December 16, 1990, Haiti held the first democratic elections in the country's history. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Catholic priest, received 67 percent of the vote in a field of 23 candidates, and assumed office on February 7, 1991.

Eight months later, on September 29, soldiers led by Lieutenant-General Raoul Cédras and Colonel Michel François surrounded the presidential palace, seized Aristide and sent him into exile. Bloody repression by the army in the first weeks after the coup killed an estimated 1,500 Haitians. "Boat people" from Haiti began fleeing in large numbers to the United States and other neighboring countries. The United States and the Organization of American States declared a trade embargo against the military regime.

Monsanto Hijacks Safe Food Coalition

The Safe Food Coalition calls itself "an alliance of consumer advocacy, senior citizen, whistleblower protection and labor organizations." Formed in 1987, its members include such public interest heavy-weights as Michael Jacobson's Center for Science in the Public Interest, Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, and Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, which was begun by now Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Ellen Haas.

Another former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, Carol Tucker Foreman, is the coordinator, spokesperson and lobbyist for the Safe Food Coalition, and therein lies the rub. Foreman is also a well-paid Washington lobbyist for clients that include Aetna Life and Casualty Company and the United Food and Commercial Workers union. In early 1993, she became a personal lobbyist for the chemical giant Monsanto, working to promote its highly-controversial milk-inducing cow drug, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH).

Hill & Knowlton Uses Environmentalists to Peddle Coppertone™

The thinning ozone layer leaves us exposed to increasing Ultra Violet (UV) radiation, increasing skin cancer deaths, cataracts and damaged immune systems. Bad news? Not if you are the drug transnational Schering-Plough, or its PR firm, Hill & Knowlton.

Thinning atmospheric ozone is an opportunity to sell more sunscreen, and no one peddles more than Schering-Plough the drug transnational best know for Coppertone™. Now Schering-Plough, through Hill & Knowlton PR, has established "Partners for Sun Protection Awareness," a multi-year PR campaign advocating that people "liberally apply a sunscreen ... to all exposed parts of the body before going outdoors."

Sound Bites Back

Roger Ailes, the PR genius behind Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, now runs America's Talking, the all-talk cable channel which premiered July 4 in more than 10 million homes. Ailes has his own nightly talk hour on the network.

The World Bank, under increasing pressure from activists for its role in worsening third world poverty, economic exploitation and ecological devastation, has hired the PR firm of Herb Schmertz to bolster its image during its 50th anniversary events this year.

Schmertz, a former VP for PR at Mobil Oil, is reknowned for developing in-your-face 'advertorials,' paid opinion advertisements that's run on the editorial page of major papers. He recommends assertive PR attacks against activists.