PR Exec Tells How Industry Manipulates Public Opinion

James Hoggan, the director of the James Hoggan & Associates public relations firm, has authored a book titled Climate Cover Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, in which he describes PR techniques that industry groups use to create the impression of a scientific controversy about climate change. Industries set up front groups, Hoggan says, like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which tried to convince Americans in electoral swing states that coal is clean. Front groups like Americans for Prosperity, which organized the disruptive August, 2009 town hall meeting protests, started out by paying for protesters. Hoggan reports seeing documents that show PR firms charged $1800 per protester. "Companies can buy protesters, and if you are clever with your framing of the issue, these paid protesters attract real protesters," Hoggan explains. His book also reveals the strategy of framing global warming as a United Nations scheme, or a scam by international scientists, to appeal to people who "don't like being told what to do by the UN or some foreigners." The most powerful tools used to manipulate public opinion, Hoggan says, are focus groups, which help PR companies understand how people think on certain issues. Another is the creation of "echo chambers," that involve generating favorable news reports that are repeated over and over by media outlets until the public finally starts repeating it back. "Get Dick Cheney and George Bush and Fox News and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to talk and then just keep repeating what they say -- 'the science is not settled, the science is not settled, the science is not settled' -- until the public starts repeating it back. It’s a frightening phenomenon," Hogan says.

Comments

Brilliant PR work. Your comment would make a PR expert jealous for it's effect of casting doubt onto this revealing book. But the cats out of the bag now.

I'm not a climatologist by any means, but the earth has been around for billions of years and I have a hard time imagining that only two centuries of human involvement can alter that course. I don't think that scientists are looking at other possible causes or even if the phenomenon truly exists. I'd like to see some hard evidence before they started changing building codes, the green police, and cap and trade really fuck up our infrastructure.

Significant climate change would really mess up the infrastructure and jobs and the future. But, I under.stand with all the misinformation out there being stealthily funded by the big oil and coal companies that it can seem as though the issue is more unsettled than it is. Please check out our climate portal for more information about the weight of scientific research on this point: [https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Climate_Change]. And, for me, I find the photos of the rapid changes so far pretty convincing and worrisome: [http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/glaciers.html]. The fact is that these glaciers took thousands and thousands of years to accumulate and previously took thousands of years to recede, as the geologic record and other widely accepted carbon measures attest. But, now, in the span of a few decades many are rapidly melting, in the same period as rapid expansion of the production of greenhouses gases. You might think that's correlation without causation, but the visual record combined with other studies make a strong enough case to suggest that there are tipping points that even those who are doubtful should be concerned about. So, I hope you will reconsider. Lisa

I'm not a climatologist by any means, but the earth has been around for billions of years and I have a hard time imagining that only two centuries of human involvement can alter that course. I don't think that scientists are looking at other possible causes or even if the phenomenon truly exists. I'd like to see some hard evidence before they started changing building codes, the green police, and cap and trade really f*** up our infrastructure.