Corporations

Dead People Support Microsoft

Submitted by Laura Miller on

Earlier this year, Utah State Attorney General Mark Shurtleff received two letters from dead people requesting that the state go easy on Microsoft. As it turns out, the letters are part of the computer giant's nation-wide astroturf campaign, targeting the offices of 18 attorneys general who have joined the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit. The Los Angeles Times reports that in recent weeks, Microsoft has been refining its letter writing strategy so that no two letters are identical. The giveaway, however, is in the phrasing.

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Main Source: 
Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2001
Topics: 
Astroturf
Corporations

No More No More Scares?

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

A year ago we reported on the "No More Scares" campaign (www.nomorescares.org), an industry front group aimed at smearing environmental and health activists as "fearmongers." Now it appears that No More Scares has quietly decommissioned itself, and links to its website no longer work. In Trust Us, We're Experts we noted that "corporate-funded front groups ... are sometimes fly-by-night organizations.

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Topics: 
Front Groups
Corporations

McDonald's Practices Hypocrisy, Deserves No Break Today

Submitted by John Stauber on

Yesterday McDonald's announced it would be "providing more information about the specific source of the natural flavoring" it uses. However, today McDonald's refused to provide a spokesperson to CNN for an interview. Yesterday's announcement came after vegetarians filed lawsuits and some Hindus smashed windows upon discovering that McDonald's french fries cooked in oil were also cooked in meat flavorings.

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Topics: 
Genetic Engineering
Corporations
Ethics

Commercial Alert Seeks Support for Student Privacy

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

On June 14, the U.S. Senate passed the Student Privacy Protection Act, which would require parental consent before a corporation or person could extract personal information from a child in school for commercial purposes. However, the bill faces strong opposition from the anti-privacy lobby, advertisers, some publishers and Primedia Inc., which owns Channel One.

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Main Source: 
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/commercial-alert/2001/000089.html
Topics: 
Corporations
Marketing

Boise Cascade Partners With World Wide Fund for Nature

Submitted by Laura Miller on

Boise Cascade is one of the worst transnational logging companies in the world. Its many scandals include: involvement in false imprisonment of peasant environmentalists who opposed Boise's logging in Mexico; a huge proposed woodchipping scheme in Southern Chile; threats of lawsuits and harassment to environmentalists, including a recent threat to ECO's Cath Wallace; and involvement with the campaign to get the Rainforest Action Network's tax-deductibility status removed. Thanks to the World Wide Fund for Nature, however, the company just got a green makeover.

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Topics: 
Corporate Social Responsibility
Environment

3M & Scotchgard -- The Truth Emerges

Submitted by John Stauber on

Remember the PR hype and spin about how socially responsible and proactive 3M corporation was in pulling Scotchgard from the market last year? Well, check this out: "New analyses of 3M's own data, some decades old, reveals that the company knew far more, far earlier, about potential health problems from Scotchgard exposure. The (Scotchgard) story is likely to emerge as one of the apocryphal examples of 20th century experimentation with widespread chemical exposures without adequate testing."

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Main Source: 
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/PFOS/2001-04pfosproblems.h…
Topics: 
Corporations
Environment
Health

Bush vs. Big Business? You Never Know

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

The Bush administration's recently-announced plan to force General Electric to pay for a $460 million cleanup of the Hudson River is designed to battle the popular impression that his White House, particularly on environmental issues, is operating under corporate sponsorship.

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Main Source: 
Time, August 13, 2001
Topics: 
Corporations
U.S. Government

Slam the Can for Dare to Care a Hoax for Smokes

Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on

The Weber Shandwick PR firm created "Slam the Can for Dare to Care," a basketball-themed food drive designed to put a charitable face on the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. "The 16 B&W employees donating the largest number of canned goods during the two-and-a-half week collection period participated in a series of wacky basketball contests at a downtown shopping mall, with the winner receiving two tickets to the NCAA championship games," Shandwick stated in The Holmes Report, a PR industry trade publication. Shandwick declared the program an "unqualified success. ...

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Main Source: 
http://www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=1021&typeid=4
Topics: 
Corporate Social Responsibility
Tobacco

Have a Coke And a Smile (And Forget About Any Human Rights Abuses)

Submitted by Laura Miller on

Coca-Cola, which was ranked as the world's most valuable brand for the third straight year by Omnicom Group's Interbrand unit, apparently has seen little harm to its brand reputation from a recent lawsuit for human rights abuses. The Corporate Crime Reporter writes that the United Steel Workers Union and the International Labor Rights Fund filed suit against Coke and Panamerican Beverages Inc. in federal court in mid-July. The case was initiated by Sinaltrainal, a trade union that represents Coca-Cola workers in Columbia.

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Main Source: 
Corporate Crime Reporter, July 23, 2001; PR Week, July 30, 2001; O'Dwyer's PR Daily, July 31, 2001
Topics: 
Corporations
Human Rights

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