PR Watch, Fourth Quarter 2002, Volume 9, No. 4

Since its founding nine years ago, the Center for Media & Democracy remains the world's only organization dedicated to investigating and exposing special interest propaganda. In those nine years, we've published 37 issues of PR Watch, our award-winning flagship publication. CMD staff members have written three acclaimed books and spoken to thousands of people in most states and many countries. We've conducted hundreds of interviews, from the smallest radio stations to the largest TV networks, and with newspapers including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

"From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. told the New York Times in September. Card was explaining what the Times characterized as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

Officially, President George W.

"This is a serious piece of work; it is not a 'PR' document ... Social reporting is about squarely addressing the issues surrounding our products," said Martin Broughton, the Chairman of British American Tobacco (BAT). Broughton's speech, in July 2002, accompanied the launch of BAT's first "social responsibility report."

BAT is the world's second largest tobacco corporation. It holds a 15% share of the global tobacco market and sold 807 billion cigarettes in 2001. Its social responsibility report marked the culmination of more than two years of work, during which BAT coaxed journalists, health advocates, tobacco control activists and government officials to participate in meetings whose purported mission was to advise the company on how to become a responsible corporate citizen.

BAT's newfound interest in social responsibility came in the context of growing successes by the tobacco control movement. In Western countries especially, anti-tobacco groups have become increasingly successful at persuading governments to restrict tobacco advertising and promotion--restrictions

EQ Management, the consulting firm that helped British American Tobacco develop its first social responsibility report, was formed in 1998 by Malcolm Guy and Deborah Smith, two former employees of the Body Shop, which uses claims of social responsibility to market its line of cosmetic products.

Guy and Smith remain EQ Management's only two full-time employees. On their web site, they claim to have "lived the chaos of ethical challenges" and disavow any association with the public relations industry.

The video version of Toxic Sludge is narrated by Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! Like the book, the video shows how PR functions as invisible propaganda, complementing the visible propaganda found in advertisements.