Environment

Driving in Circles

The Bush administration has announced that an eight-year-old, $2 billion federal program to create high-mileage gas vehicles was being scrapped and a new program -- focusing on hydrogen fuel-cells -- was being created. According to Jack Doyle, author of Taken for A Ride: Detroit's Big Three and the Politics of Pollution, this new fuel-efficiency initiative is more PR than progress.

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"Greens Get Eaten" as Corporations Buy Their Critics

Burson-Marsteller's hiring of Lord Melchett is the focus of professor George Monbiot's weekly column in The Guardian: "Because regulation works, companies will do whatever they can to prevent it. They will threaten governments with disinvestment, and the loss of thousands of jobs. They will use media campaigns to recruit public opinion to their cause. But one of their simplest and most successful strategies is to buy their critics.

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Melchett Seen As B-M Cash Cow: 'Show Us the Money'

ePublicRelations president Ross Irvine offers his take on Lord Melchett joining Burson-Marsteller. Irvine writes: "Burson-Marsteller's London office has a new cash cow... Lord Melchett has joined B-M as a consultant in the company's corporate social responsibility unit. Here, he can be charged out a high rate, earn a good salary plus expenses, contribute significantly to the bottom line, satisfy WWP Group shareholders who own B-M, and offer little value to clients. ... The marriage of B-M and Lord Melchett raises some interesting questions and situations.

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Leaked Memo Reveals B-M's Plans for Lord Melchett

The British press is lambasting and lampooning both the Burson-Marsteller PR firm and their latest PR hire, Lord Melchett. Here is a satirical 'memo' written as if it leaked from inside B-M: "Lord Melchett will be heading up our new 'corporate conscience' desk, which will work to uncover the hidden humanity inside organisations such as Monsanto... I can't help but think that if this initiative had been around back when Nikolae Ceausescu was our client, he might still be in a position to pay his invoice. ...

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Eco Campaigners Go Corporate

Burson-Marsteller's hiring of Lord Melchett, the former director of Greenpeace UK, prompted the Independent to examine the growing trend of British environmentalists "who have decided to work for the blue chip giants they once sought to humble ...

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B-M's Lord Melchett Booted Off Greenpeace Board

Burson-Marsteller's newest PR hire, Lord Peter Melchett, has been forced to resign from the board of Greenpeace International. Melchett blind-sided his fellow Greenpeace board members and eco-activists this week by taking a consulting job with one of the PR world's most notorious anti-environmental propaganda firms, Burson-Marsteller. Apparently Melchett has convinced himself that accepting a paying position with B-M will somehow help him change corporate behavior.

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Did Burson-Marsteller Genetically Alter Lord Melchett?

Catherine Bennet examines a "deal with the devil," asking "Has Lord Peter Melchett been genetically modified? ... And what other explanation can there possibly be for the decision of Lord Melchett, quondam destroyer of GM crops, to join Burson-Marsteller...? Anyone who believes Lord Melchett's insistence that there is nothing contradictory about his appointment ...fails to appreciate Burson-Marsteller's fabulous coup in signing him up. ...

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An Ex-Greenpeacer Examines the Melchett Affair

A longtime Greenpeace activist sent the following comments to PR Watch: "The Lord Melchetts of the activist (and now corporate) world are only one symptom of a broader contagion. Is there even a real environmental movement anymore? How accountable are NGOs to their own base? ... Look how little is being accomplished in addressing Global Warming in the U.S. at a time when it's obviously a national security issue and a global security issue. I think this is in part because the environmental groups don't believe in mass movement building like they used to.

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Greenpeace's Melchett Now with Burson-Marsteller

The Guardian Unlimited reports that "Lord Melchett, the former head of Greenpeace UK ... (has) taken a job at a PR company which has represented Monsanto and the European biotech industry. ...(T)he former Labour minister and farmer, who is on the board of Greenpeace International, is to become a consultant for Burson-Marsteller....

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A Teflon Correspondent

ABC News correspondent John Stossel comes under harsh scrutiny in a January 7, 2002 Nation article. Journalist Mark Dowie looks into Stossel's rise from humble consumer-interest reporter to million-dollar network star. As network news divisions were forced to become profit centers in early 90s, network executives wanted "talent" to sell the new news product. "Professional attention-grabbers ... became free-market winners. By cleverly blending blue-collar social values with Wall Street economic values, they got rich," writes Dowie.

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