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poster boy for jrnl degradation? fake paper richmond ecuador permian EJ

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Chevron owns this city's news site. Many stories aren't told

March 28, 2024

Heard on All Things Considered

By David Folkenflik

Miranda Green

Chevron operates a major refinery in Richmond, Calif., a community with high childhood asthma rates. It also owns the city's dominant news site, putting its own spin on events, and runs similar websites in Texas and Ecuador.

Tracy J. Lee for NPR

NPR's David Folkenflik reported this story with Miranda Green ofFloodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

RICHMOND, Calif. — Open flames shot upward from four smokestacks at the Chevron refinery on the western edge of Richmond, Calif. Soon, black smoke blanketed the sky.

News spread quickly that day last November, but by word of mouth, says Denny Khamphanthong, a 29-year-old Richmond resident. "We don't know the full story, but we know that you shouldn't breathe in the air or be outside for that matter," Khamphanthong says now. "It would be nice to have an actual news outlet that would actually go out there and figure it out themselves."

The city's primary local news source, The Richmond Standard, didn't cover the flare. Nor had it reported on a 2021 Chevron refinery pipeline rupture that dumped nearly 800 gallons of diesel fuel into San Francisco Bay.

Chevron is the city's largest employer, largest taxpayer and largest polluter. Yet when it comes to writing about Chevron, The Richmond Standard consistently toes the company line.

And there's a reason for that: Chevron owns The Richmond Standard.

"If you look at Chevron's website and you look at The Richmond Standard, a lot of the information is copy and paste," says Katt Ramos, a local climate activist. "They present a very skewed viewpoint that is bought and paid for by Chevron."

The site's very name evokes the history of Chevron, created when John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil was broken up by federal trust-busters more than a century ago. The Richmond Standard prides itself on being the "number one source for local, community-driven news" about the city.

The city of Richmond exists in the shadow of the nearby Chevron refinery, which has been connected to poor air quality and health issues in the nearby community.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

Around town, in coffee shops, an architect's office, at a Mexican restaurant, even at a waterside National Park Service site, the Standard is recognized as the main source of news about the city. It carries stories about charity drives and street closings. New bars and art exhibits. Youth soccer events and local concerts and safety initiatives.

Decades ago, the city relied on the Richmond Independentand the San Francisco Chronicle to report on the community. And then a pattern familiar across the U.S. unfolded. The Chronicle pulled back. The Independent got folded into a newspaper in nearby Berkeley, which itself shut down in 1984. Papers in other East Bay cities shriveled up. Now the city's news landscape is dominated by its major corporate force.

Markets where news outlets shut down are often called news deserts. The Standard has created something of a news mirage: Stories are told — but with an agenda. Facts displeasing to Chevron are omitted; hard truths softened. The company is seeking to get its point of view across and to convey that it can be trusted.

On a recent February night, a city council meeting focused repeatedly on developments involving Chevron. Not a single journalist attended in person — other than those for NPR and Floodlight.

The same San Francisco public relations firm that operates the Standard for Chevron runs a similar site about developments in the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico, where Chevron has major business interests. It also runs one of the company's sites in Ecuador, where the energy giant has fought back decades of litigation.

The Richmond Standard is a local news site funded by Chevron, which runs the large refinery in town.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

Chevron's bid to control the public discourse comes as efforts to combat climate change threaten the fossil fuel industry, especially in California. State regulators would effectively ban the sales of gas-powered cars by 2035. They released the world's first plan to achieve net-zero carbon pollution. Other states and countries have adopted similar goals.

In February, Chevron revealed that it was taking a loss of about $1.8 billion on assets mainly in California, because of a tougher regulatory climate in the state. Chevron's corporate headquarters is in San Ramon, about a 35-mile drive southeast of Richmond, though the company has moved the bulk of its workforce to Texas.

"The company saw a need to offer the community more news coverage of Richmond, which had been largely ignored by traditional media with the exception of crime stories," said Braden Reddall, a manager of external affairs at Chevron. "Most people in Richmond will tell you there is a lot more to the community than what is known and reported by traditional media outlets. It's a proud community, filled with interesting people who are doing interesting things."

Other outlets more than adequately cover Chevron, added Reddall, who earlier covered the company for the international news service Reuters.

Former schoolteacher Patricia Dornan says she reads The Richmond Standard but skips the stories about Chevron. "I don't read any of the articles about how wonderful their company is," she says.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

Lifelong Richmond resident Patricia Dornan says she cherry-picks which stories she reads in the Standard.

"If you understand that it's going to have a Chevron-Standard Oil point of view, it's fine because most of the stuff that they're putting out has nothing to do with them," says Dornan, a retired middle school teacher. "And so long as it doesn't have to do with Chevron, it's fine. I don't read any of the articles about how wonderful their company is."

Dornan volunteers at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park. She tells visitors about the marvels of American manufacturing in a time of war and about the women welders of Richmond who were able to turn out warships in 51 days rather than two years.

IFrame Content

Her grandmother moved to town in 1905 — just three years after the refinery first opened — and her family has been there ever since. One of the streets in town is named after her father. She says Richmond can't function without Chevron, but a true local news outlet would help hold it accountable to the community.

When she wants to know what Chevron is up to, Dornan says, "I usually ask my friends who are retirees from the refinery — what's going on?"

"Richmond deserves more news coverage"

When the Standard launched in 2014, it proclaimed: "Richmond deserves more news coverage."

"For the first time in more than 30 years, Richmond will have a community-driven daily news source dedicated to shining a light on the positive things that are going on in the community," the site announced.

Chevron presents the Standard as an investment in the Richmond community. The public relations firm operating the Standard wrote, "This site would tell the stories other outlets had lost the resources to tell."

But not all of the stories.

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In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics

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She was an ABC News producer. She also was a corporate operative

A recent review found The Richmond Standard had published 434 stories that touch on its owner, Chevron, since the site's inception. Eight articles refer to flaring incidents. None cite oil spills. The majority of the stories that mention Chevron focus on profiles, awards ceremonies, community projects and celebrations it throws on such occasions as Black History and Hispanic Heritage months.

When Bay Area air pollution regulators secured landmark concessions from Chevron in February to settle a lawsuit, they called it a "decisive victory." The San Jose Mercury News headline cited "$20 million in fines for hundreds of air-quality violations."

The Richmond Standard was more reserved: "Chevron agreement with Air District called win for environment and energy."

The article did not clearly lay out the core of the litigation. The words "fine" and "penalty" did not appear. Careful readers might have been able to piece together what transpired: The news outlet described an agreement involving $20 million that "solidifies the future of energy production at the Richmond Refinery."

"There are a whole host of news outlets around the Bay Area that cover the refinery," said Reddall, the Chevron spokesperson. "The Standard seeks to fill in the gaps. From where I'm sitting, I don't think that it's a refinery that's not written about."

Richmond is a working-class city of 115,000 — nearly half of whom are Latino. Most of the people who work at the Chevron refinery live outside the city.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

A news mirage

Boundaries blur between city and corporation in this largely working-class city of 115,000 people, almost half of whom are Latino. The tech boom of nearby Silicon Valley and the opulence of neighboring Marin County feel like universes away.

The public high school's mascot is the Oilers. Streets are named Ammonia and Petrolite and Xylene. Chevron's network of pipes, low-lying cooling ponds and even sulfuric stench have become defining parts of the town's character. A nature park where tufted egrets and hummingbirds frolic abuts the nearly 3,000-acre refinery itself — an expansive preserve of smokestacks, pipelines and tanks.

Chevron, which recorded $21.3 billion in profits last year, has played an outsized role in Richmond for decades. It supplies the city with jobs — yet most Chevron employees live elsewhere. It pays roughly $50 million a year to Richmond — more than a sixth of the town's annual revenue.

The company's relationship with Richmond turned sour rather abruptly in 2012. An explosion at the refinery engulfed 19 employees in a cloud of light gas oil that had been partially vaporized, according to a federal investigation. The air pollution from the resulting industrial fire could be seen from miles away. In the ensuing days, 15,000 Bay Area residents went to medical centers for respiratory complications.

The Richmond High School mascot is the Oilers.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

State and local prosecutors charged Chevron with criminal negligence and other crimes;the company settled by pleading no contest to six charges, paying out roughly $10 million to affected local residents, agencies and hospitals. Chevron also paid $5 million directly to the city of Richmond to settle a separate civil lawsuit.

By the time of the incident, political sentiment in Richmond started to swing away from the company. As the months passed, progressives were threatening to take control of the city government. They promoted a future without the refinery — just as Chevron was seeking approval from city officials for a sweeping project to overhaul and modernize it.

As the 2014 election cycle dawned, Chevron took action to make sure its voice was heard. It promised a huge investment in scholarships and public health programs.

Chevron also spent $3 million to help propel pro-industry candidates. They all lost. "The election became a referendum on Chevron," said Tom Butt, at the time a city council member who won election as mayor.

Chevron also launched The Richmond Standard that year.

From the outset, the company disclosed its involvement. In small letters at the top of its homepage, the site reads "Funded by Chevron."

Tom Butt was elected mayor of Richmond in 2014. He says that election was a referendum on Chevron.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

In the aftermath of the election, the Standard published a 428-word statement from Chevron in its entirety that defended the company's actions and criticized the city's new leaders. "The question for Richmond is: Will local leaders recognize that business is integral to the city's success?" the Chevron statement read. "Or, will city leaders continue to oppose efforts to create growth, preferring instead to watch the business climate — and the prosperity that business helps generate — decline?"

"We should be outraged"

Katt Ramos, who helps lead Communities for a Better Environment's Richmond chapter, stages tours to demonstrate what she says is Chevron's destructive legacy. It also illustrates what happens when independent local news disappears.

She stops by Peres K-8 School in the Iron Triangle, a nickname derived from the three train tracks that intersect here. Older kids play soccer on a field with a coach while younger ones cavort on a playground. Beyond the school fence, the Chevron plant stands less than a mile away. A sign next to the school's entrance warns of a shallow hazardous liquid pipeline from another petroleum company, Phillips 66, a warning to not dig there.

"Nothing that is normalized about childhood is normalized in Richmond," Ramos says. Adults have to tell kids they can't play outdoors due to a high number of bad air days, she says.

"Nothing that is normalized about childhood is normalized in Richmond," says Katt Ramos, a local climate activist. She says the city's air pollution problems and residents' health issues are rarely covered in the news.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

Perhaps the best way of gauging the seriousness of such concerns is to look at child admissions to emergency rooms for asthma, says Anne Kelsey Lamb, who oversees asthma research for the Oakland-based Public Health Institute. Children in the ZIP code of the Iron Triangle — which includes the refinery as well as the neighborhoods surrounding the Peres school — are admitted for emergency care for asthma at triple the rate for California at large. (The institute provided an analysis of the most recent available state statistics at the request of NPR and Floodlight.)

Parceling out responsibility for air pollution is complicated, given Richmond's many highways and railroads, along with the refinery. The regional board that regulates air quality found that Chevron accounts for 63% of all particle pollution in Richmond and two neighboring towns.

These issues rarely get covered, Ramos says. She starts to weep gently when talking about the city's future.

"I think at best we should be outraged, you know?" she says. "Everyone should be concerned about the conditions that our community has to face."

The PR firm running the Standard

While Chevron owns the Standard, San Francisco-based Singer Associates runs it from across the bay. The consulting firm is known for handling PR crises. Founder Sam Singer is no stranger to Richmond; he grew up in Berkeley and briefly worked at the Richmond Independent and a sister paper before moving on.

Singer Associates has written that the news outlet came about after Chevron developed a "fractured relationship with many stakeholders including city government leaders." The site was part of an effort "to provide the company with greater freedom to operate by increasing awareness for the positive role it plays in Richmond," according to Singer's application for an industry award, as cited in a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee staff report.

A man fishes for leopard sharks in the waterways along Point Richmond that are a thoroughfare for petroleum and have been the site of several oil and chemical spills.

Brian L. Frank for NPR

Most Standard articles are written by Singer Associates employee Mike Aldax, a former reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and the Bay City News Service. (Aldax did not return messages seeking comment.) The site also hired two journalists who live in Richmond to write for the site.

"Our team has worked hard to build relationships with the community, which is why people trust us, and turn to us, to cover community stories," Singer wrote in an email for this story.

The pace of reporting ebbs and flows. Some featured videos on the Standard's homepage are several years old. The metabolism of fresh posts stepped up in early March, shortly after NPR and Floodlight first sent a series of queries about the Standard to Chevron and Singer for this story.

Chevron newsrooms begin in South America

In launching the Standard, Chevron followed a path the fossil fuel giant had first forged thousands of miles to the south.

Since 2009, Singer has run The Amazon Post in Ecuador at Chevron's direction. The English-language site emerged as Chevron confronted lengthy multibillion-dollar litigation seeking to hold it liable for the pollution from oil drilling there. (Chevron had acquired Texaco in 2001, which was responsible for the oil extraction.) Chevron's legal battle spread to other nations, including the U.S. and Brazil. The American attorney who led the suits against Chevron for Ecuadorian farmers and Indigenous peoples was a frequent target of the site. He was ultimately disbarred in New York for his actions in the case.

Flames flicker through the thick green trees of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest — where gas flares, oil wells and refineries darken the landscape and poison the environment — shown in Shushufindi, Ecuador, in 2023. The legacy there of Texaco, which Chevron acquired, has inspired lengthy legal battles in several countries.

Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

The Amazon Post

A subsequent Spanish-language site called Juicio Crudo (an allusion to crude oil) focusessquarely on a damning legal judgment against Chevron that a U.S. court later found to be fraudulent. It reprints text directly from Chevron's Spanish-language press releases.

By contrast, El Oriente, a Spanish-language digital outlet launched in 2019, presents itself as a news site aimed at audiences who reside in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Until recently, it noted at the bottom of its page that it is "sponsored by Chevron." Days after NPR and Floodlight started posing questions about Chevron's sites, the affiliation was moved to the top, just beneath the site's name.

The sites link to one another. Chevron says those sites are managed separately, not by Singer.

In at least one instance, the controversies surrounding Chevron in Ecuador inspired fodder for the Standard back in Richmond.

In 2014, Richmond's then-mayor, Gayle McLaughlin, traveled to see Ecuador's environmental degradation at a time when her party was seeking to force Chevron to pay more to the city.

Shortly after she returned home, the Standard's Aldax reported: "The mayor's six-day trip to Ecuador was in support [of] the South American nation in its ongoing battle against Chevron, which it falsely blames for polluting the rain forest."

Aldax wrote that McLaughlin was late in filing $4,499 in expenses for the trip, which had been paid for by the Ecuadorian government. The article embedded avideoproduced by The Amazon Post.

Gayle McLaughlin, then Richmond's mayor, speaks onstage during a 2014 event in Los Angeles.

Mike Windle/Getty Images

It was a rare instance of the Standard producing anything other than benign community news. She had to pay a $200 fine.

Today, McLaughlin calls her misstep minor. She tells NPR and Floodlight she believes the story was intended as a warning to Chevron's critics that it could embarrass them or just ignore them altogether.

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"The Richmond Standard will never, ever print anything that is critical of Chevron," McLaughlin says, "and it will never print anything that upholds the community's victories against Chevron. And we need to spread the word about those victories."

Expanding to Texas

Chevron launched its latest newsroom, called Permian Proud, in the Permian Basin in August 2022.

The site posts stories about West Texas and New Mexico. They are home to the nation's highest-producing oil fields, where Chevron has substantial drilling interests — and where local news has been hard hit. Permian Proud explained its mission this way: "We aim to complement the important work of existing local media by providing hyper-local news you won't find anywhere else."

Unlike California, Texas is a deeply red state with a broader base of support for the oil and gas industry. Even so, Chevron's future there is similarly deeply reliant on the goodwill of residents and regulators.

"Over the past year and a half, Permian Proud has put a spotlight on national spelling bee contestants, the local arts community, nonprofit organizations, community events, high school sports, industry accomplishments, and much more," Chevron spokesperson Catie Matthews wrote in a statement for this story. "Additionally, the platform has amplified coverage of local stories by other news outlets, and provided a digital arm to some of our rural communities and smaller nonprofit organizations who would otherwise not have one."

Permian Proud also promotes Chevron's perspective.

Many of the articles on the site are rewritten press releases. For example, Permian Proud's article "Chevron's Permian Basin operations to tap into more recycled water," is almost identical to Chevron's press release. The original text read, "By using recycled water in our fracking operations, we help preserve fresh water and groundwater in drought-prone areas." Permian Proud swapped "Chevron helps" for "we help."

Among the few listed bylines: Mike Aldax of Singer and The Richmond Standard.

Ramos says locals share news about Chevron by word of mouth because The Richmond Standard is "giving us the opposite of the truth."

Brian L. Frank for NPR

Relying on word of mouth

In the absence of independent local news sources, Richmond residents say they rely on each other for accurate information.

A husband-and-wife team started a small news site last year. A former mayor shares his thoughts about local politics in a newsletter. When school is in session, journalism students at the nearby University of California, Berkeley cover Richmond as part of their studies. A nonprofit group has held listening sessions about plans to extend a hyperlocal site to the area. And sometimes — when the news is big enough — San Francisco TV stations cross the bay to cover it.

But mostly, there's word of mouth. Activist Katt Ramos points to the February 2021 pipeline rupture. As Chevron publicly conceded, a resident spotted the tainted water long before Chevron or any news outlet alerted the community.

"A lot of our news is really from me, gathered by our local kind of independent folks that go around covering things for us," Ramos said. "Because we have to deal with publications like The Richmond Standard that are giving us the opposite of the truth."

*Felicia Alvarez, Maria Fernanda Bernal and Richard Tzul of the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism contributed to this report.

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amazonwatch

https://theamazonpost.com/post-trial-brief-pdfs/brief/10PX0528.pdf

no lnx

11 Civ. 0691 (LAK)

PLAINTIFF’S

EXHIBIT

528#

ChevronToxico I Chevron Using Six Public Relations Firms to Discredit Indigenous Groups

THE CAMPAIGN FOR JUSTIn INI ECUADOR

ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN NEWS & MULTIMEDIA TAKE ACTION

HOME » News and Multimedia

Chevron Using Six Public Relations

Firms to Discredit Indigenous Groups In

$27.3 Billion Environmental Case In

Ecuador

Lobbyists - Mac McLarty, John Breaux, Trent Lott,

Mickey Kantor, Carla Hills and Others - Charged With

Misrepresenting Facts

FRlliTE DE IlERlNlIA

Amazon Defense Coalition

20 November 2009 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or

... karen@hintoncommunications.com

Caroline Bennett at 510-520-9390 or caroline@amazonwatch.org

start:]

Washington, DC - Chevron has retained at least twelve public relations firms and lobbyists to

discredit claims of Amazon indigenous groups on the eve of an expected multi-billion dollar

judgment against the oil giant in an environmental lawsuit in Ecuador, according to representatives

of the tribes in the U.S.

Although Chevron is near the top of the list of highest-spending lobbyists in Washington, the

campaign seems to be backfiring. Politico, one of the most influential publications on Capitol Hill,

reported this week that Chevron's lobbying was "drawing fire from environmentalists, media

ethicists, state pension funds, New York's attorney general, members of Congress, and even Barack

Obama when he was a Senator."

The article also quoted Rep. Linda Sanchez (D - CA) as calling Chevron's lobbying "clumsy" and

"very heavy handed". Sanchez - who on Tuesday characterized the Chevron lobbying as "extortion"

in testimony before Congress - said she plans to write three letters to Members of Congress,

blasting what she called the oil giant's "misguided approach" to dealing with the lawsuit from the

indigenous groups.

Separately, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the company to determine if

it is misleading its own shareholders about the financial risk from the Ecuador case, where damages

are assessed at up to $27.3 billion, Politico reported.

An American legal advisor to the plaintiffs, Steven Donziger, criticized the public relations and

lobbying effort."Chevron is paying huge fees to lobby the U.S. government to inappropriately quash

a legal case brought by indigenous tribes in the country where Chevron asked for the trial to be

held," said Donziger, who has been working on the matter since it was filed in U.S. federal court in

1993.

The case, which alleges Texaco dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon from 1964

to 1990, was transferred from U.S. federal court to Ecuador in 2002 at Chevron's request. The oil

giant filed 14 expert affidavits in the U.S. court praising Ecuador's court system, but later began a

campaign to discredit those same courts once the evidence in the Ecuador trial pointed to its

culpability.

The public relations firms working for Chevron include Hill & Knowlton, which represented the

tobacco industry and - as it did in the debate over tobacco and cancer - has tried to deny a link

between oil contamination and cancer;Edelman Worldwide, which is believed to be preparing a

Wal-Mart-style political campaign against the indigenous groups in anticipation of an adverse court

judgment;Sard Verbinnem, which handles financial press in an effort to stem a budding shareholder

revolt against Chevron management for its handling of the case; Robinson Lerer Montgomery, a

well-highly connected New York-based agency; Sam Singer and Associates, which handles the

matter in the San Francisco area, where Chevron is located; and the Washington-basedCRC

Public Relations, which helped create a pro-Chevron video by former CNN correspondent Gene

Randall to counteract a highly unflattering 60 Minutes segment on the legal case that broadcast

earlier in the year.

The Randall video, which did not mention that it was paid for by Chevron, was blasted by the

Columbia Journalism Reviewfor "blurring the line between public relations and journalism." The

President of CRC, Greg Mueller, spearheaded the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry and is a

former senior aide to Pat Buchanan.

CVX-RICO-0502246

Plaintiff's Exhibit 528# p. 2 of 4

among Chevron's lobbyists isWayne Berman, former McCain campaign national finance chair who chairs the governmental relations practice at Ogilvy Worldwide; former Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott; Mac McLarty, former chief of state to President Clinton who is lobbying the State Department; Mickey Kantor and Carla Hills, former U.S. trade ambassadors who are lobbying their former agency to cancel Ecuador's trade preferences; 

Peter Romero, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ecuador in the early 1990s under the first Clinton Administration; Brian Pomper, the former staff director toU.S. Sen. Max Baucus; Scott Parvin, a career lobbyist who formerly worked with Kantor at the law firm Mayer Brown; and several members of Chevron's governmental relations office in Washington, headed by William Irwin. Lawyers for the Amazon communities have long said Chevron's public relations and lobbying firms are part of a broader effort by the company to undermine the rule of law in Ecuador in anticipation of an adverse judgment. The company has taken out advertisements in both Ecuadorian and American newspapers attacking lawyers for the communities and various judges who have presided over the case.

The public relations firms and lobbyists also state incorrectly that Chevron was released from further clean-up responsibility in Ecuador by the government in exchange for a limited clean-up in the mid 1990s. But the terms of the release itself expressly exclude the private claims in the current lawsuit and the so-called remediation was a fraud that has led to the indictment of two Chevron lawyers and several former government officials, said Donziger.

:{

}:

Evidence at trial against Chevron includes more than 50,000 chemical sampling results produced by the company itself, which prove that 100% of its former well sites are highly contaminated with cancer-causing toxins, according to an independent court-appointed Special Master who reviewed the evidence in the case and assessed damages. A final decision on liability and damages is expected next year. For more information, become a follower of The Chevron Pit or follow @ChevronPit on Twitter

https://www.desmog.com/**2022/08**/26/fti-consulting-fossil-fuels-work-climate-disinformation-house-natural-resources-subpoena/

a powerful Washington, D.C., consulting and PR firm, with a long history of waging influence campaigns for fossil fuel corporations, is under scrutiny by a congressional committee as part of a broader investigation into the decades-long efforts by the oil industry and its allies to block action on the climate crisis.

FTI Consulting, a billion-dollar firm that has a global presence, is not a household name. But it has been instrumental in an array of oil industry campaigns meant to sow doubt about climate change, attack climate scientists, and play up the benefits of fossil fuels.

Last year, a House committeeheld hearings in which members of Congress questioned oil executives on their role in peddling climate disinformation. But in June of this year, a separate committee, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, sentletters to five PR firms — Story Partners, DDC Advocacy, Blue Advertising, Singer Associates, and FTI Consulting — requesting all documents related to their work running influence or marketing campaigns for oil, gas, and coal companies and their trade groups. The PR industry has been a critical but often overlooked player in the history of climate denial, as DeSmog hasreported. 

“For decades, fossil fuel companies and associations have engaged in public relations campaigns to downplay the threat of climate change and the central role fossil fuels have played in causing it,” the committee’s June letter stated. “Fossil fuel companies and trade groups have partnered with PR firms to use a variety of questionable tactics to undermine legislative and regulatory environmental initiatives.”

Two months after the request, FTI still had not turned over documents. The Committee grew impatient with the stonewalling, and on August 17, it fired off anotherletter, stating that “FTI has not wavered in its blanket refusal to provide even the most basic information about its clients or descriptions of the grounds for its refusal beyond the vaguest assertions of confidentiality and privileges.”

It then went on to warn: “FTI has provided no indication that this obstruction of congressional oversight will come to an end voluntarily. Unless FTI Consulting produces all responsive documents by 5:00 PM on August 24, 2022, the Committee will be forced to consider all of its options for obtaining this information, including, but not limited to, authorizing and issuing a subpoena.”

“Through its past client work and present refusal to cooperate with an ongoing congressional investigation, FTI Consulting is engaging in climate obstruction,”Christine Arena, a former VP at Edelman, who has tried to expose the PR industry’s role working on behalf of its fossil fuel clients, said in a statement to DeSmog. “Refusing to cooperate with the House Natural Resources Committee suggests that FTI knows it has something to hide, yet believes it is beyond reproach. Its flagrant disregard for the negative consequences of disinformation undermines the reputation of the PR and ad industry as a whole.”

A “Permanent Campaign Strategy”

FTI’s work for its fossil fuel clients goes far beyond creating billboards, online ads, or TV commercials, as a run-of-the-mill PR firm might do.

“You only hire a PR company when you have a problem to solve. And you hire an FTI when you’ve got real problems. You need dirty tricks. This is not just like selling a hamburger,” Kert Davies, founder and director of Climate Investigations Center, told DeSmog. “This is designing an influence campaign. It’s like designing a whole intelligence operation.”

The head of FTI’s Strategic Communications for the Americas is a man named Brian Kennedy, who was the communications strategist for drilling contractor Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. Kennedy, who “is best known for his expertise in crisis management,” as hisbio on the FTI website says, headed up Transocean’s PR work during the disaster and in the litigation that followed.

The campaigns waged by FTI for its fossil fuel clients are extensive and wide-ranging. As the New York Timesreported in 2020, FTI helped set up regional astroturf websites for its oil industry clients, such as Texans for Natural Gas, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, Western Wire, and the Arctic Energy Center. The websites artificially created the appearance of grassroots political energy, and shared misleading “news” that downplayed environmental damage from fracking while simultaneously promoting the benefits of pro-drilling policies.

“FTI remains a major, major contractor to the fossil fuel industry. They run front groups, fake news channels, they pose as reporters, they write reports about activists.”

– Kert Davies

The most high-profile climate denial project FTI is involved in is Energy In Depth (EID), a pro-fracking constellation of websites that spreads industry talking points. Ostensibly a project linked to the Independent Petroleum Association of America, EID — which promotes fracking, attacks climate scientists and environmental activists, and plays up the benefits of fossil fuels — was jointly launched with FTI back in 2009.

The website wasn’t just a project of small and medium-sized independent oil producers. In 2011, DeSmogrevealed that Energy In Depth had the early backing of some of the largest oil companies, including BP, Anadarko, Halliburton, Chevron, Shell, XTO Energy (owned by ExxonMobil), and several other oil companies and trade associations. Without that financial backing from major oil companies, the project “would not be possible,” according to a 2009memo DeSmog found.

In 2019, Huffington Postreported that the Independent Petroleum Association of America spent close to $2 million annually on Energy In Depth. That amounts to roughly afifth of the trade group’s budget.

“We know some of the contracts FTI has with various trade associations,” Davies said. “But the truth is, we don’t know the half of it.”

Earlier this year, DeSmog published a 2015 FTI presentation in which the firm bragged about its deep connections with the oil industry and trumpeted its work on behalf of its fossil fuel clients. FTI’s presentation highlighted its work, through Energy In Depth, at “debunking” peer-reviewed studies that link fracking to water contamination, as well as providing “facts” to media about how methane emissions from oil and gas were in decline.

A screenshot from FTI Consulting’s 2015 presentation.]

Energy In Depth acts as “a public-facing clearinghouse” and a “permanent campaign strategy” for the oil industry, Melissa Aronczyk, a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, told DeSmog in an email.

“FTI works for oil and gas clients by trying to shut down the conversation about climate-related problems before they happen – or especially, before they become a problem for their clients,” Aronczyk said.

The firm took the lessons learned with Energy In Depth around the world. FTIboasted at an industry conference in Brazil in 2014 that Energy In Depth had the ability “to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”

In another instance that has not previously been reported, FTI gave a presentation at a 2012 industry conference in Canada, in which it shared its experience “generating pro-gas news” in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, and how the firm intended to do the same in Quebec. At the time, the gas industry was facing publicopposition to fracking in the Canadian province, and FTI, via Energy In Depth, wanted to shift public opinion in the industry’s favor. That included proactively creating pro-gas news in the media, as well as a sponsored trip for Quebec farmers to travel to fossil fuel-rich Alberta to learn about how shale gas is produced.

A screenshot of a 2016 Earth Day message from Energy In Depth, a fracking industry project of FTI Consulting and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.]

“FTI remains a major, major contractor to the fossil fuel industry. They run front groups, fake news channels, they pose as reporters, they write reports about activists,” Davies said. “They do all manner of strategic communications work to defend the honor of fossil fuel companies and trade associations.”

The House Committee has also sent a letter to a separate PR firm called Story Partners. Established in January 2010 by well-known PR executive Gloria Dittus, Story Partners has also run multiple influence campaigns for the fossil fuel industry in recent years. The firm led the American Petroleum Institute’s Vote for Energy campaign, which sought to equate drilling for oil and gas with jobs. Story Partners also ran campaigns for Venture Global LNG, a Gulf Coast LNG export company. And it also helped Noble Energy defeata ballot measure in Colorado that would have increased setback distances between fracking operations and homes and businesses, a measure that would have encroached upon Noble Energy’s assets.

As it happens, Gloria Dittus previously founded Dittus Communications, which was acquired by FTI in 2005. In 2009, the Energy In Depth website was registered by “FD Dittus Communications,” a unit of FTI, according to the website’s registration.

According to a Story Partners spokesperson, “Gloria Dittus left FTI Consulting in early 2009 after the 2005 sale of Dittus Communications was finalized to Financial Dynamics (FD) and fully integrated into FTI Consulting at the end of 2008. Any Energy in Depth work was outside her tenure and likely launched following her leave from FTI.”  Story Partners did not respond to questions from DeSmog about their role running climate disinformation campaigns for fossil fuel companies.

Arena said that FTI is among a small group of “pariah” PR firms that “do not represent the majority of the PR and ad industry, but they are our industry’s biggest reputational liability.”

[twt ca]

"But the bigger point here is that these are deceptive practices that no ethical marketing firm should engage in, for any client. They muddy public understanding and suppress the truth by design and should therefore be repudiated by the PR and ad industry at large,” she added. “The silver lining here is that this moment of reckoning has the potential to change the communications industry for the better.”

Ultimately, FTI’s mission has been “to preserve the reputation of the fossil fuel industry as it has come under pressure around climate change,” Davies said. Referring to FTI’s direct involvement in spreading climate disinformation, he added: “In doing so, you are now part of the effort to hide the truth.”

In a statement to DeSmog, Matthew E. Bashalany, a spokesperson for FTI Consulting, said: “Our company takes the Subcommittee’s request very seriously.  We continue to be in regular contact with subcommittee staff as we progress our efforts to be responsive to the chair’s request in a manner consistent with our legal obligations to preserve our clients’ confidentiality and privileges. FTI Consulting is called upon by clients in dozens of industries globally, including those involved in traditional, renewable and alternative energy development, and we are committed to ensuring that all professional services we deliver align with our firmwide position to support action to address climate change.”

It is unclear what will happen next, but the House Committee could subpoena documents or have executives appear before the congressional panel. The August 24 deadline came and went, and now the firm faces a potential subpoena. In an email to DeSmog on August 25, a day after the deadline, a spokesperson for the Committee said: “The Committee has not yet gotten an adequate response from FTI.”

Another spokesperson for the Committee told DeSmog, “stay tuned.”

===

amazonwatch

on the run from a landmark $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuador, fighting enforcement actions in three countries that threaten strategic company assets, and gearing up for make-or-break appellate hearings does not bode well for the prospects of Chevron CEO John Watson and his management team.

No worries. Chevron got a little help from its friends in the corporate media last week. The resulting echo chamber is a startling reminder that, like the big banks, Chevron is considered by many to be too big to fail. It is clear that business journalists will come out of the woodwork to defend the company from attacks on their own kind, even if the truth about Chevron’s human rights violations is sacrificed in the process.

The lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian rainforest communities against the oil giant is seen not only as a singular threat to Chevron’s bottom line, but a historic symbol for corporate accountability. This is an unwelcome message to the oil-industrial complex which assumes that environmental damage and human rights abuses can be externalized and that justice can be so delayed that affected communities will never receive the redress or remediation they deserve. After all, Chevron has vowed to fight the Ecuadorians “until hell freezes over, and then we’ll fight it out on the ice.”

In a case like this with global implications for the environment, human rights, and corporate accountability, it’s telling to see who Chevron’s bedfellows are.

Over the 21 years of the Aguinda v. Chevronlitigation, the list runs long. It includes people and institutions that have run to the company’s defense, or outright done its dirty work – Ecuadorian government officials, military, judges, junk scientists, convicted felons, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,and the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador, among others.

We can now add a trifecta of reporters to that list – two of whom have just published new books. These reporters have swallowed Chevron’s narrative raw and whole. Sadly, this is not so surprising, coming as they do fromFortune Magazine, Businessweek, and American Lawyer (the latter considered the right wing litigation bible of corporate America) Roger Parloff, Paul Barrett, and Michael Goldhaber respectively, have been tripping over themselves to promote their books and articles, referencing, cross-referencing, citing, quoting, and linking to each other, to dizzying, albeit deceitful effect.

Let’s focus on Paul Barrett of Businessweek, whose book “Law of the Jungle” (get it, there’s no law in the jungle. Ha!), is a pro-Chevron tour de farce of the Aguinda v. Chevron litigation, as well as Chevron’s countersuit using the RICO statute in New York Federal Court. He plays lip service to one of the indigenous leaders who lost two children due to oil contamination and builds up U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger, only to then take him and his clients down using Chevron’s deceitful narrative. The majority of Barrett’s book is written as if he spent extensive time on the ground in Ecuador, and was at many of the events described. However, he wasn’t.

Barrett watched the documentary film, Crude, by Joe Berlinger. He then wrote as if he was standing right there in front of toxic waste pits, or in the judge’s office, or at the hotel preparing Emergildo Criollo for the shareholders meeting. It’s a deceitful tactic that purports to lend “jungle cred” to Barrett, as if his book is some kind of in-depth investigation from the sweaty Amazon court room or next to rusting Chevron pipelines that siphon off overflowing oil sludge into streams below, to be drunk later by unsuspecting villagers downriver.

Watching another journalist’s film is no substitute for actual reporting. The reality is that Barrett spent precious little time in the Ecuadorian rainforest – two weeks at most. He did not speak to the lawyers for the communities, let alone Donziger, for the book. He never attended even a day of the trial. Barrett speaks no Spanish, so a thorough review of the 200,000 plus Ecuadorian trial record was out of the question. Ultimately, the book is mostly taken from Chevron’s legal briefs.

A revealing example of Barrett’s pro-Chevron bias occurs in chapter two. He begins by describing an entire scene from the film Crude as if he were there. As evidence of his simple acquiescence to Chevron’s arguments, Barrett uses Chevron’s deceptively edited outtakes from the film to paint a sinister scene of Donziger bullying and pressuring a judge. Barrett’s citation is as follows:

We’re going down to have a little chat with the judge. This is something that you would never do in the United States. But in Ecuador this is how the game is played, it’s dirty. We have to – occasionally – use pressure tactics to neutralize their corruption. And today is one of those examples.

Except the actual transcription is as follows:

We’re going to confront the judge who we believe is paid by Texaco. We believe he is corrupt, and we’re gonna confront him, ah, with – with our suspicions about his corruption and let him know what time it is. And, ah, you know, this is something that you would never do in the United States. I mean, this is something you would, I mean, this is just out of bounds, both in terms of judicial behavior, and what – what lawyers would do. But Ecuador, you know, there’s almost no rules here. And this is how the game is played, it’s dirty. And, you know, they’re playing dirty, we’re honest, they’re dirty. They play dirty, we have to occasionally use, um, pressure tactics to neutralize their corruption. And today is one of those examples.

Barrett left out the bolded text above, changing the context and intent of what was said into its opposite. That’s not reporting; that’s hit job journalism.

That is not the only instance where Barrett obfuscates the facts, turning what are decidedly black and white issues into murky grey – another Chevron tactic. One of the company’s trademark products, beside crude, is doubt. Doubt has long been the go-to tool of big business litigators to turn the tables on their adversaries by flipping logic and reason of disciplines like epidemiology on its head. The intentional manipulation of facts creates just enough second guessing of the dangers of chemicals and toxins to allow said guilty company off the hook.

This tactic was used by Chevron in the Ecuador case. What about the causation between sick communities and the waste pits they live on top of? Well, hydrocarbons aren’t necessarily toxic, claims Chevron. According to Chevron’s Manager of Global Issues and Policy, Silvia Garrigo in an interview with 60 Minutes:

“I have makeup on, and there’s naturally occurring oil on my face. Doesn’t mean that I’m going to get sick from it.”

Interesting though, that when you enter a gasoline station in California there’s a sign disclosing that your mere presence at the pump could expose you to carcinogens. But in Ecuador’s Amazon, you can live on top of a Chevron waste pit and any causality link to carcinogens is questioned.

Barrett avoids the truly scandalous and criminal examples of Chevron’s tactics to hide contamination during the Ecuador trial, like swapping toxic soil samples with clean ones, and avoiding sampling at depths at which Chevron knew contamination existed, at locations Chevron knew were still contaminated, and were downgradient from known contamination. You’d think that a book purportedly covering the largest environmental litigation in history would merit a real review of the evidence, much of which was provided by even the skewed soil and water samples taken by the company.

Other corrupt and illegal acts that were Chevron’s standard practice during the Ecuador trial are glanced over or omitted by Barrett. This includes the company’s successful cancellation of a judicial inspection of a major toxic site through collaboration with the Ecuadorian military to produce a phony security threat. Perhaps most audaciously, Barrett fails to adequately mention a sting operation where Chevron employees posed as remediation contractors in an attempt to entrap the presiding judge.

Barrett also overlooks all the arguments that render Chevron’s fraud claims ridiculous. If the trial was marred by fraud, why hasn’t Chevron filed an action to nullify the judgment under the fraud protection statute in Ecuadorian courts? Three layers of Ecuadorian courts – eight appellate judges – reviewed and upheld the $9 billion verdict, and threw out Chevron’s claims of fraud. But for Barrett, apparently U.S. courts are the only legitimate court system in the world. Barrett lets Judge Kaplan off the hook for his colonial overreach in judging a country’s legal system that he knows nothing about. Kaplan can’t read the native language, nor did he read the trial record. On top of that, Barrett seems unconcerned that Chevron’s star witness received some $300,000 in payments for his testimony, plus a new life for him and his family in the United States, thanks to a Chevron financed and supported asylum bid. Even Kaplan called it a corporate witness protection plan.

Not only does Barrett’s bias show throughout the book, his extracurricular activities lay bare his leanings. On July 20, 2014, Barrett joined Chevron and its legal team from Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher for a Congressional subcommittee hearing organized by Chevron lobbyists on Latin American democracy. Alongside a Chevron lawyer, and a representative from the American Enterprise Institute, Barrett played the role of expert on Latin America, lamenting Chevron’s legal plight in the country jurisdiction of its choosing, without irony.

So what we’re left with is a book that’s a copy-paste job from Chevron’s legal briefs and reads as if the case, and the plight of the affected communities, is over. Peter Maass, author of the book “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil,” reviewed Barrett’s book for Outside Magazine, and concluded: “There are two sides to the story of the biggest environmental lawsuit ever, but a new book tells only one of them.”

Parloff, Barrett, and Goldhaber are quick to claim that from the outset they had high hopes for the Ecuadorian villagers. They had hope that U.S. courts could be used to hold corporations accountable for human rights violations abroad. But given the overwhelming evidence against Chevron, we have to seriously question these claims. Two of the pillars of American business reporting, and a conservative legal magazine hoped that the Ecuadorian rainforest communities who procured the largest environmental judgment in history from the second largest U.S. oil company would prevail? That’s doubtful. The reporters have held on to that story merely to give the appearance of objectivity and to reinforce their framework claiming Chevron as the true victim. Immediately after publishing a number of articles, their “journalist” buddies began chiming in. Thus, the pro-Chevron feedback loop was set in motion.

For example, after Barrett’s book launched on Sept. 23, Joe Nocera, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote a piece about Barrett’s account. Nocera unquestioningly sides with Barrett and Chevron, while failing to mention that his wife’s law firm represented Chevron in a discovery matter directly related to the Ecuador litigation. Shouldn’t a journalist cite such an obvious conflict of interest?

Then cue Debra Saunders, the “token conservative” columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Saunders writes an article the next day about Nocera’s article about Barrett’s book. Feeling dizzy?

Saunders ends her piece quoting Nocera, with an alleged quote from Donziger, excerpted from the movie Crude, and edited and used by Chevron during the RICO trial. The quote is this: “Facts do not exist. Facts are created.” Sounds incriminating, right? Except Donziger goes on to say, “…and you talk to Texaco, because they create facts. Texaco creates facts. They create standards. … That’s what I am saying. They create fiction.”

This is how the Chevron media echo chamber continues to feed itself. A book repeats Chevron’s flawed arguments during the RICO trial almost verbatim, which produces articles and reviews of the book, which then produces yet more articles about articles about the book – all recycling and reinforcing Chevron’s false and misleading narrative. The great irony is that Nocera, Saunders, and Barrett and the others accuse Donziger of trying the case in the media, when in fact it’s Chevron and its minions who continue to prop up the company’s crumbling house of cards in the court of public opinion, because its legal case is meritless.

We all know that a good “David vs. Goliath” story sells. But what sells better is the ‘Hero’s fall from grace’ frame that Chevron’s defenders are pushing about Donziger. Except, the demonize Donziger narrative is not new. In fact, it’s been part of Chevron’s playbook long before the New York RICO trial began

Enter Sam Singer, from Chevron’s PR firm Singer and Associates. Singer is not merely Chevron Apologist-in-Chief; he’s a long time Bay Area PR hit man who prides himself on cleaning up the image of his corporate clients. He’s like the “Wolf” in *Pulp Fiction* – the guy you call to clean up your mess, hide the bodies, or whatever other unmentionables are needed. A recent piece in *SF Weekly*, “Trust Me: Who Are you Gonna Believe, San Singer or Your Own Eyes?” exposes Singer and his tactics:

When your workspace is engulfed in flames; when your mistress threatens to reveal your illegitimate family; when your restaurant serves up E. coli burgers; when your employees inadvertently kill a young child; when a wild beast rampages through your place of business – you better call Sam Singer. “When things go bump in the night,” assures Singer, “we are there.”

“The truth, after all, isn’t exactly Singer’s milieu. His mission is to push ‘the facts as our clients see them,'” writes Joe Eskenazi for the Weekly. That’s what Singer does for Chevron.

According to internal Chevron emails with Singer, the plan was to target Donziger from the get go. Singer’s strategy was to paint Ecuador “as the next major threat to America” like Iran or a “Cuban missile crisis in the making” and Donziger as “the most powerful man in Ecuador, pulling the strings of an emerging banana republic.”Indeed, another Chevron strategist in an internal memo to colleagues was more blunt, noting that the company’s [long-term] strategy is to demonize Donziger.”

But even Singer and Chevron’s strategy was wearing thin after Donziger and the Ecuadorians proved more resilient that Chevron thought possible. A recent article in Rolling Stone was a turning point, finally putting the spotlight on Chevron’s phony narrative and the vacuousness of its arguments for anyone willing to look past Chevron’s talking points. Despite this, Parloff, Barrett, and Goldhaber have been quick to take up the slack.

In the meantime, Chevron was unhappy with the unfavorable coverage it continued to receive in Richmond, California, home to the company’s largest and oft exploding refinery.Richmond’s mayor traveled to Ecuador to tour Chevron’s toxic legacy and saw firsthand the company’s impact on the rainforest and human health. Since then, she has been a vocal critic of Chevron’s disaster in Ecuador. Combined with coverage of a controversial $1 billion refinery expansion plan and Chevron dumping $1.6m into local elections, there was little positive traction for the company in the local press. What was Chevron to do? If you can’t influence the media, become the media!

Thus, the Richmond Standard was born. A Chevron-funded daily, the Richmond Standard is an Orwellian extension of the corporate media. An LA Times piece by Michael Hiltzik titled, “A Chevron PR website pretends to be an objective news source,” explains:

This is what the news business has come to in communities where economics have wiped out traditional local newspapers. Self-interested corporations have stepped into the vacuum. You’d be hard-pressed to find a case as flagrant as Richmond’s.

As the Financial Timesdescribes it:

The Richmond Standard is one of the more polished sites to emerge in the age of hyper-local digital news brands such as Patch and DNAinfo.com. That may be because it is run and funded by Chevron, the $240bn oil group which owns the Richmond refinery that in August 2012 caught fire, spewing plumes of black smoke over the city and sending more than 15,000 residents to hospital for medical help.

The only writer for the “paper” is an account executive for Singer and Associates, Mike Aldax.According to Aldax, “my function is to report the news you’re not seeing in Richmond.” Translation: pro-Chevron stories. Hiltzik reports:

Aldax says Chevron doesn’t review or edit his stories, but it doesn’t have to. It provides his paycheck, and even subconscious self-censorship can undermine news gathering – especially if one defines news as information its subject doesn’t want the public to know.

According to Singer, the Standard has at least found some support. “The rappers…They love us!”[huh?]

For Chevron and the Ecuador case, there’s no need to bypass corporate media when you have Parloff, Goldhaber, and Barrett. As the company’s prime cheerleaders, they give voice and credibility to Chevron’s recycled claims that were rejected by Ecuadorian courts.Meanwhile, the voices of indigenous and farming communities, who continue to suffer on the ground in Ecuador, are largely drowned out in the U.S.. These three pro-business American reporters give cover to Chevron’s board of directors whose oversight of the liability has been called out by its own shareholders. Parloff, Goldhaber, and Barrett help immunize CEO John Watson who, as Chief Architect for the Texaco acquisition, has let the Ecuador issue come to define the company, while the liability has ballooned into the billions. And they’ve wrongly lifted the spirits of Chevron’s stockholders who are led to believe that the issue is over.

But here’s the rub. Chevron never intended to file a RICO suit, nor did Watson ever think it would get this far.The company’s strategy has always been to outlast and out-resource the Ecuadorian communities and their legal team. It was Judge Kaplan who, presented with edited outtakes from the movie Crude that Chevron now admits were not properly translated or did not include the full transcript, asked, “does RICO play here at all?” A U.S. federal judge suggested that Chevron ought to file RICO charges, and the company quickly obliged. Kaplan navigated Chevron and its legal team through the trial, and issued a ridiculous verdict ripe to be overruled.

Which is why, during the four years in the run up to and during the trial, Chevron has sought to eviscerate the plaintiffs, their legal counsel, their funders, NGOs, or anyone who has ever dared to support the communities. The company hoped to outlast Donziger and the plaintiffs in a resource and PR battle, because they know exactly how hard it is to win the case on the merits. Ironically, given the tremendous amount of resources and time Chevron has invested in its scorched earth strategy, the communities and their counsel are not only still alive, they are in a remarkably good position.

The seven-week bench trial that Kaplan presided over – and that Parloff, Goldhaber, and Barrett sat through – may have generated back slaps and high-fives from San Ramon to Midland, Texas. But it was never built to last. Which is why, at least according to the rumor mill, Chevron is looking for an exit strategy. The company likely hopes the Ecuadorian government will play a role in its hoped-for rescue.

With a panel from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals looming over the company, Watson has reason to be worried. The last time the Second Circuit had a crack at Judge Kaplan, it vacated his preliminary injunction in the case almost immediately. It was also an embarrassing public depantsing of Gibson Dunn lawyer Randy Mastro, who was literally laughed out of court. Don’t expect to see Randy making the oral arguments this time.

But before the Second Circuit hearing, another critical hearing is slated for December. In Canada, the country’s Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether the Ecuadorian communities can indeed go after Chevron’s massive assets as a way of enforcing their judgment. These are major, make-or-break hearings for Chevron. But you wouldn’t know that by reading the work of Parloff, Barrett, or Goldhaber. These three gringos who have been guzzling Chevron’s Kool-Aid for the last four years may very soon wake with a hangover of a lifetime.

Chevron Cofan Corporate Accountability Dirty Energy Ecuador Oil and Gas

===

clean creatives ff ceo 2 9 22 mention in report

SINGER ASSOCIATES

Chevron / AFPM (American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers)

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chron punked? [from singer site]

How Chevron Turned the Tables in Ecuador Public Relations Battle with Singer Associates, Other PR Agencies

By David Baker – San Francisco Chronicle

Faced with a $19 billion fine for polluting Ecuador’s rainforest, Chevron Corp. has done a remarkable job of turning the tables on its foes.

The lawyers who sued Chevron in Ecuador, winning that eye-popping judgment, have come under non-stop attack from the oil company. Chevron has hauled them into court in New York, accusing them of fraud and extortion. The company has gone after Ecuador’s judicial system as well, claiming judges there conspired with the other side.

That aggressive strategy has worked wonders, putting Chevron’s opponents on the defensive and convincing many people that the Ecuador suit is a sham.

And you can trace much of that strategy back to a 2008 memo by San Francisco’s master of crisis communications, Sam Singer.

Singer has built up an impressive practice of counseling companies, public agencies and government officials facing controversy. (Chronicle reporter Heather Knight, writing last year in our City Insider blog, called Singer the kind of crisis manager who can make shoplifting politicians seem sympathetic.) In October of 2008, he sent Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson a four-page memo outlining steps the company could take to change public perceptions of the Ecuador lawsuit.

Singer recommended going on the offensive. The company should portray Ecuador’s court system as corrupt, with collusion between judges and the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Pointing out the leftward tilt of Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa wouldn’t hurt. And Singer recommended “counter attacks” on the plaintiffs and their legal team, particularly lead lawyer Steven Donziger.

Bear in mind that the memo was written more than two years before the Ecuadoran judge presiding over the lawsuit ruled against Chevron, in February of 2011.

Fast-forward to 2013. Much of what Singer suggested has come to pass.

Chevron has gone after Donziger with a vengeance, making him the focus of the extortion suit and even obtaining his personal diary.

The company regularly criticizes Ecuador’s judiciary and, early this year, produced a statement from a former judge who said the plaintiffs agreed to pay a $500,000 bribe to win the suit. (The plaintiffs, in return, accused Chevron of offering judges bribes in return for false statements about the case. The company agreed to pay that particular judge $38,000 for his time and effort, along with $10,000 per month in living expenses.)

Some of Singer’s recommendations didn’t fly. For example, he suggested portraying Ecuador as “the next major threat to America.” But the company took much of his advice to heart.

To the plaintiffs, who obtained the memo in court, the document is proof that Chevron’s extortion suit and attempts to discredit Ecuador’s judiciary are nothing more than a well-planned public relations campaign. They note that Chevron, years ago, fought to have the pollution lawsuit moved from New York to Ecuador, arguing that Ecuador’s court system was competent and fair.

“Any reasonable person reading this memo, knowing that the company promised under oath to abide by the court’s findings in Ecuador in order to get the case moved there from New York, would surely conclude that Chevron is an unethical company, a corporate outlaw using its wealth and power to stiff the Ecuadorian people whose lands and water they ruined out of the $19 billion they are owed,” said Bill Hamilton, a spokesman for the plaintiffs.

To Singer, however, his suggestions were just solid strategy — offense once again being the best defense.

Back in 2008, the company had not yet obtained  — via court order — outtakes from the documentary movie “Crude” that showed Donziger talking about trying to pressure judges and calling evidence in the trial “smoke and mirrors and bulls**t.” Chevron also hadn’t yet obtained his diary or many of his e-mails concerning the lawsuit. But the company, Singer said, was convinced that it was being railroaded.

“In listening very carefully to Chevron and their attorneys, they knew and believed that they had the evidence and that the story being presented by Donziger and the plaintiffs was fraudulent,” Singer said.

Other public relations consultants and attorneys were giving Chevron the same advice, he said.

“That’s what we started doing in 2008, and at first it was a tough battle,” Singer said. “But the plaintiffs handed us the hammer and the nails to build their own coffin.”...video? quotes taken out of context, kaplan pow]

sw

on April 13, 2008 the Goldman Environmental Prize announced that one of it's annual prizes for 'eco-leaders' had been awarded to Pablo Fajardo Mendoza, 35, and Luis Yanza, 46, from Ecuador. "In the Ecuadorian Amazon, Fajardo and Yanza lead one of the largest environmental legal battles in history against oil giant Chevron, demanding justice for the massive petroleum pollution in the region," the prize announcement stated.[1]

Defending Communities and Defending A Clean Up

In the supporting statement, the Goldman Environmental Prize sketched an overview of what is described as "an unprecedented community-driven legal battle against a global oil giant". Led by Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo, local residents have launched legal action against Chevron, which took over Tewxaco in 2001, demanding that they pay for a cleanup of what they allege was "nearly 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of drilling wastewater" that were dumped "directly into the Ecuadorian Amazon". (The legal action is referred to in legal parlance as as Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco.) Yanza co-founded the Amazon Defense Front, which launched the legal action against Chevron on behalf of the the northern Ecuadorian Amazon while Pablo Fajardo, is the lead lawyer in the case.

The Goldman Environmental Prize found that the work of pair has prompted the government of Ecuador to pass stronger environmental laws and had a substantial effect on public thinking.The foundation also noted that "Yanza, Fajardo, their families and a number of their colleagues have become targets of death threats, harassment and intimidation. In December 2005, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States issued precautionary measures for Yanza and Fajardo in an effort to protect their lives. Fajardo’s brother was killed just months after he joined the legal team; no investigation has taken place and no one has been arrested for the homicide. Fajardo has been forced to vary his daily routine, often sleeping in a different place each night."[2]

Chevron's Reaction

In a classic PR crisis management counter-attack, Chevron responded early and aggressively, seeking to position itself as the 'victim' and ensure that any media coverage of the awards for Fajardo and Yanza mentioned Chevron's counter-claims. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross wrote that "once San Ramon's Chevron got wind of the Goldman Foundation selections, the oil giant began gearing up for a full-scale media counterattack" including hiring "high-priced San Francisco PR crisis manager Sam Singer to push its assertion that the company is the victim of trumped-up charges and greedy lawyers." It also sent a letter on Friday - two days before the awards ceremony -- to Richard Goldman, the founder of the Goldman Environmental Prize.[3]

On the Sunday, the day that the prize for the Ecuadorian activists was announced, Chevron's public affairs spokesman, Kent Robertson,circulated a media advisory. Instead of of criticizing the Goldman Environmental Prize directly, they also sought to portray them as having been duped. "Chevron regrets that the organizers of the Goldman Environmental Prize were skillfully misled into naming Mr. Fajardo and Mr. Yanza as prize winners ... These two men have twisted the facts in a legal case waged against Chevron for pure financial gain. Fictitious claims of cancer made by their associates have been thrown out of Federal Court in San Francisco. Mr. Fajardo and Mr. Yanza are ignoring the ongoing pollution in Ecuador by Petroecuador and are using it to seek billions of dollars in damages for decades ago operations in the region by Texaco Petroleum. Chevron became a convenient but unjust lawsuit target after it acquired Texaco in 2001," Robertson claimed.[4]

At 7am the the following morning, Roberston issued a further media alert announcing that Chevron officials would be available at the Fairmont Hotel "to speak with reporters about the company's objection to the Goldman Foundation" over Fajardo and Yanza being awarded the prize. (In its alert, Chevron tagged Fajards as a "personal injury lawyer").[5] After discovering that Fajardo and Yanza had scheduled a news conference at the Fairmont Hotel on Monday at 10 a.m.,[6] "Chevron held one of its own one floor up, at 9," Lisa Richardson reported in the Los Angeles Times.[7]

While the Goldman Environmental Prize defend the duo as being "motivated by a single desire: to ensure that their corner of the Amazon – one of the world’s most contaminated industrial sites – is cleaned up" - Chevron had further counter-attacks in the pipeline. In an interview with Associated Press reporter Michael Liedtke, Chevron spokesman, Don Campbell, foreshadowed that the company would run an aggressive full-page advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle on the Tuesday after the awards ceremony. "We feel these guys are nothing but con men," Campbell said.[8]

Chevron's Legal Woes

The air of desperation to Chevron's claims reflected their increasingly dire legal situation in the case before to Ecuadorian courts. Several weeks earlier, a geologist appointed by the court had estimated that the range of costs for the cleanup of Texaco's operations ranged between $7 and $16 billion.[9]In late March 2008, Amazon Watch revealed that in a February 2008 submission to the the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Chevron wrote that it expected "a near-term unfavorable finding from the Ecuadorian court and potentially enormous ... financial liability." In a letter urging the U.S. Securities and Excahnge Commission to take action against the company for failing to keep shareholders informed, Amazon Watch executive director, Atossa Soltani, argued that "Chevron misleads its shareholders by claiming in public that it has no liability in Ecuador, while in private it claims to face an enormous liability."[10]

In an interview with Business News Americas, a Chevron attorney, Sylvia Garrigó, explained the company's legal and PR predicament. "The cards do seem to be increasingly stacked against us. For the first couple years of the trial, things were going pretty well," she said.

"What can we do?," Garrigó rhetorically asked. "First and foremost, we're defending ourselves in court because we're creating a record to demonstrate we're not getting a fair and impartial trial and that there are external influences on the judge that don't permit him to act in an independent and objective manner," she said.

"Our second strategy," she continued, "is to have the public and opinion leaders and US constituents made aware of the fact the process has been completely corrupted, that the expert analysis also is corrupt. Eventually, any judgment that comes out of the court system in Ecuador, if it continues on this track, is also going to be a product of this fraud and corruption. As such, if there is a political agenda against the company in Ecuador and an adverse judgment is issued, that political agenda will only have effect in Ecuador. In other words, the judgment will not be enforceable outside Ecuador. No court that adheres to due process, adheres to the rule of law and looks at this judgment to determine whether it was based on legitimate evidence, will enforce it."

Of particular concern to the company, is that in return for pushing to have the case moved from the U.S. court system to the Ecuadorian court, it had agreed to have any findings enforceable in the U.S. With the realization that the case wasn't going its way, Chevron has determined that it will do everything to avoid complying with any adverse findings. Chevron's PR adviser, Kent Robertson, explained to Business News Americas that "we do have to work through the in-country process first. We have to exhaust our options there, which still will take several years." Once their options before the Ecuadorian courts are exhausted, Chevron is anticipating it could seek international arbitration.

Chevron's Advertising Artillery

For Chevron, its reaction to the Goldman Environmental Prize award to Fajardo and Yanza was simply designed to dovetail int to its long-term legal strategy of avoiding U.S. enforcement of an adverse judgment from the Ecuadorian courts. The company's advertisement in theSan Francisco Chronicleand its public commentary on the awards was less designed for a local audience and more to help gain national coverage aimed at discrediting the Ecuadorian courts.

To maximise the impact of an ad in a local paper, Chevron's Kent Robertson dispatched a media alert with the full text of the ad. While the preamble to the ad text once more re-iterated the claim that Fajardo and Yanza "are deceiving the Goldman Foundation, the public and the media about oil pollution in Ecuador's rainforest" the advertisement itself zeroed in solely on Fajardo.

Chevron's ad:

The same day as the advertisement, Chevron's vice president and general counsel, Charles A. James, had an opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle -- titled "Chevron victim of a shakedown" -- echoed the themes of the advertisement.In its James argued that the Texaco subsidiary, TexPet, which had been a one-third shareholder in an oil operation with Petroecuador until 1992 had spent $40 million as its share of clean up costs and been given a release of liability by Petroecuador and the then government. James argued that as the lawsuit was solely against Chevron "Petroecuador has been given a free licence to pollute", that the legal proceedings were biased as "Ecuador's judicial system has allowed itself to be compromised" and that "the very lawyer responsible for all the Ecuador litigation was recently fined and sanctioned by a federal judge in San Francisco after bringing a new case against Chevron." James concluded by posing a rhetorical question: "If the environmentalists truly care about the environment and lawyers act in the interests of their clients, why haven't they also waged their campaign against Petroecuador?"

(Curiously, neither Chevron's advertisement or James's opinion column are featured in Chevron's main website[12] or its Ecuador specific website.[13])

Countering Chevron's Parry

The day after Chevron's advertisement and Charles A. James's opinion column were published, Luis Yanza and Pablo Fajardo responded to their key claims in a detailed four-page rebuttal as a letter to the Chevron's CEO and Chairman of the Board, David O'Reilly. "Chevron’s assertions that use false information to hide the likelihood of a massive potential liability from shareholders, and which put us and others leading the lawsuit at even greater personal risk of harm, cross the line that separates healthy debate from outright misinformation," they wrote.[14]

in particular they took issue with:

In their letter, Yanza and Fajardo wrote that "as a former Assistant Attorney General of the United States and a sophisticated lawyer, Mr. James must surely know he is falsifying information. The Aguinda matter has never been dismissed by any court. It was sent to Ecuador in 2001 by a U.S. judge at Chevron’s request because the U.S. court accepted Chevron’s argument that Ecuadorian courts were transparent and impartial. As a condition of this removal, Chevron consented to jurisdiction in Ecuador. Only recently, when the evidence in the Ecuador trial began to clearly point to Chevron as being responsible for the contamination, and when it became clear that Chevron itself was proving the existence of extensive contamination at its former sites, did your company launch a misinformation campaign that claimed the trial was unfair."

"The San Francisco court case referenced," Yanza and Fajardo wrote, "had no connection to the Aguinda case and never involved anybody we represent; the lawyer in that case has no ties to the current litigation in Ecuador. Again, Mr. James and your public relations representatives are falsifying information by trying to conflate the claims in the dismissed case with our own, when in fact they are completely different."

In response Yanza and Fajardo wrote that Chevron's 'remediation' was for "a limited, cosmetic clean up of a small portion of the total number of waste pits in Ecuador" and that "Chevron excluded most of the pits, the soils around all of the pits, groundwater contamination under and near the pits, health and economic impacts, impacts to indigenous culture, and infrastructure problems that continue to produce contamination from the oil production system Chevron installed."As for the company's claim that it had been granted indemnity from liability Yanza and Fajardo wrote that "the release Chevron received from the Ecuadorian government did not apply to the claims in the Aguinda case, which at the time was already pending in a New York court. Those claims and all others held by private citizens were clearly carved out in the plain language of the release. Yet Chevron falsifies the scope of its limited release to try to convince the public that it applies to all claims, when in fact it applies only to claims the government could bring. Further, the court expert found that Chevron’s so-called remediation had no impact – trial results demonstrate there is simply no difference in the levels of toxins found at Chevron sites that were remediated compared to those that were not. As a result, Ecuador’s government has filed a fraud against Chevron with the U.S. Department of Justice, raising the possibility Chevron used deception to secure the limited release."

"Chevron had admitted at trial that it dumped on a daily basis millions of gallons of toxic waste water into the Amazon instead of re-injecting into wells, which had been the customary oil industry practice for decades before Chevron entered Ecuador. In addition, Chevron gouged roughly 1,000 waste pits out of Ecuador’s jungle floor and filled them with toxic and carcinogenic drilling muds and sludge. These contaminated pits, some the size of football fields, still leech toxic substances into the soil and groundwater and decades later their grotesque forms are visible to anybody who visits the region. Chevron knew that the state-owned oil company that inherited this flawed production system would continue to use it, yet Chevron never invested the capital to upgrade the system before leaving Ecuador in 1992. Therefore, Chevron continues to bear responsibility not only for the contamination it caused, but also for the contamination others have caused using the same negligent system Chevron designed, built, and operated knowing it violated legal standards. That said, base communities in the Amazon work closely with the existing oil company in Ecuador to deal with underlying problems left by Chevron – but that does not alter Chevron’s ultimate responsibility for these problems," they continued.

"In the interests of basic decency and your own fiduciary obligations to shareholders, we ask that you correct these factual inaccuracies immediately and order your General Counsel and public relations representatives to cease repeating them. We are copying this letter to Chevron’s Board of Directors, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the United States Department of Justice," they concluded.

Chevron have not responded to their letter.

Chevron's 'Victim' Pitch Doesn't Cut Much Ice With Readers ....

The public reaction to Chevron's counter-attack on the Ecuadoran activists was skeptical. "If someone hires San Singer, then that is sufficient evidence that they are guilty," wrote one in a comment posted to the website of the San Francisco Chronicle.[15] Another reader echoed the sentiment: "Sam Singer has no credibility, and Chevron has shown their true colors hiring him."[16]

If Charles James was playing for the sympathy vote with his disingenuous opinion column, he didn't get far. "Now that an independent expert has said they need to pay up to $16billion to clean up their mess, they are going after environmental activists in a desperate attempt to hide the truth and divert attention. It's pathetic and it won't work. Chevron can lie and hide, but the reality is they are responsible for the worst oil related environmental disaster in the world, and they WILL pay to clean it up," wrote one.[17] "For shame! Caught red handed perpetrating one of the worst environmental disasters in history, Chevron now goes on the offensive, calling itself the "victim" and blaming everybody but itself: the Ecuadoran government and courts, the indigenous people themselves, other oil companies, and "trial lawyers" (an irony for a hatchet job written by the company's general counsel, who oversees a huge litigation budget)," wrote another.[18] "Scapegoating activists who won an international prize for pointing out the pollution you swept under your rugs and stacked in your closets is poor form and unworthy of the company your advertising insists you are,"wrote another.[19]

Another was more blunt: "Public relations can save you for the moment but you will end up as just another chapter in the history books of Corporate Criminality. Hope your grandchildren are better than you are."[20] They also had a practical suggestion for Chevron executives and lawyers: "Why not truck up some of the water from the areas that have been so effectively cleaned up? Have all of the Chevron lawyers and CEOs drink it for a year. And have their wives and children drink it for a year. Any takers Chevron? It is clean water after all."[21]

While some respondents to James's op-ed did echo his themes, one took issue with the San Francisco Chronicle itself. "If the Chronicle dared to have an Open Forum to the let Chevron's VP air its sad victim story, it should have allowed a similar space for the activists on the other side: Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza. The way the Chronicle handled this story was far from objective. Shame on the Chronicle!"[22] (The Chronicle has not published an equivalent op-ed presenting Fajarado and Yanza's point of view).

... But Impresses A Wall Street Journal Editorialist

While James's "victim" pitch didn't get far in San Francisco audience, not surprisingly it got a far more receptive hearing on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which echoed Chevron's central complaints. The company, they wrote, "will seek international arbitration should it lose in Ecuador's kangaroo courts" and opined that the case "deflects attention from the real source of Ecuador's pollution while burnishing the country's reputation as a banana republic." The estimate by a consultant appointed the Ecuadoran court estimated that Chevron should pay, at the low end, $2.9 billion and, at the high end, and additional $8.3 billion for "unjust enrichment", also came in for derisive treatment from the anonymous WSJ editorial writer. The consultant, Richard Stalin Cabrera, was tagged "'expert'" - a designation the editorial writer was clearly wary of accepting.[23]

The WSJ also echoed Chevron's claim that in return for the $40 million remediation plan the government of Ecuador "'absolved, liberated and forever freed' the company from 'any claim or litigation by the Government of Ecuador concerning the obligations acquired' by Texaco." The editorial also implied that the Fajardo and Yanza case was a re-incarnation of another case against Chevron that had been dismissed by the U.S. courts. In all respects, the WSJ's was entirely uncritical of Chevron's claims.[23]

However, the WSJ editorialist's embrace of Chevron's arguments didn't go without challenge. Steven Donziger, a legal adviser to the plaintiffs, wrote that "the special master whom Mr. James accuses of being part of an "extortion" plan is a respected geologist whom Chevron paid in the past for his work as a court-appointed expert."As for both Chevron and the WSJ editorial writer's disdain for the Ecuadoran legal system, Donziger had little time.  "Once the weight of the evidence started to tilt against Chevron, Mr. James launched a full-scale assault on the court. What had once been a trial Chevron sought in courts it praised became an 'extortion' plot. I think we can identify the animating principle: Praise the fairness of foreign courts when you think you can win and claim 'extortion' when it appears you are going to lose."[24]

Ecuador's Ambassador to the U.S., Luis Gallegos, also took issue with the WSJ editorial writer's characterization of his country's judicial system. "To avoid trial in the U.S., Chevron filed 10 affidavits before U.S. federal judges praising the fairness of Ecuador's court system. Chevron then stipulated to a U.S. federal court that it consented to jurisdiction in Ecuador as a condition of transferring the case.," he wrote.[25]

"President Rafael Correa's government has drawn a clear line between where sympathy for contamination victims ends and interference in an ongoing complex legal dispute begins. The same cannot be said for Chevron, which has lobbied various Ecuadorian presidents, including Mr. Correa, to use their authority to halt litigation. It is Chevron, not Ecuador, that would like to "politicize" the case. Happily, its PR efforts have been frustrated by the fact that Ecuador no longer has "banana republic" institutions that can be controlled through extrajudicial pressure. Chevron should respect the legal process and let it conclude," he wrote.[25]

Atossa Soltani, the Executive Director of Amazon Watch, took issue with both Chevron and the WSJ editorial's claim that Chevron was being unfairly singled out despite being in a joint venture with Petroecuador and the suggestion that Fajardo and Yanza's case was the same as one that had been dismissed by U.S. courts. "Chevron," she wrote, "was the sole operator of the concession and as such is entirely responsible for building a system that was designed to pollute. The dismissed San Francisco case against Chevron has no connection to the Ecuador matter and involved entirely different legal claims."[26]

Articles and Resources

...

===

off bs

Sam Singer

President

**singer@singersf.com**

One of the nation’s leading communications strategists, Sam Singer is a former journalist and political campaign manager. His agency, Singer Associates is the winner of the “Public Affairs Agency of the Year” and “Public Relations Agency of the Year.”

Mr. Singer is nationally known for handling some of most significant public affairs, corporate communications, and crisis communications campaigns. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and well-regarded corporations, including Chevron, San Francisco 49ers,Lennar, Stanford University, Levi Strauss & Co., The Gap, Visa International, MBIA, Ford Motor Co.,AirBnb, Disney, Warner Brothers, EA Sports, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner,Bay Area Rapid Transit District, and other prominent corporations, non-profits, political issues and elected leaders.

He has been dubbed “The Fixer” by the San Jose Mercury News, a “Top Gun for Hire” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and one of the most powerful people in the San Francisco Bay Area by 7×7 Magazine for his ability to impact the news for his agency’s clients.

His agency, Singer Associates, is the driving force behind some of the most successful digital and social media campaigns for corporations and issue advocacy campaigns. Groundbreaking digital work includes assignments for Chevron, City of San Bruno, Transbay Joint Powers Authority, thelaw firm of Bartko, Zankel, Bunzel & Miller,Children’s Hospital of Oakland, the Chevron Richmond Refinery, and others.

Singer’s contributions to the communications strategy helped Chevron Corporation turn the table in exposing a fraudulent $19 billion lawsuit against the oil company in Ecuadorand his pioneering strategy for the City of San Bruno was credited with helping the city win $70 million in restitution from PG&E  as well as a record $1.6 billion penalty against PG&E, the largest fine levied against a utility in the U.S. for its negligence in the largest natural gas disaster in United States history.

Mr. Singer led the corporate reputation team handling Levi Strauss & Company’s largest layoffs and plant closures in its history. PR News, a trade industry weekly, praised the effort as the “best handled crisis of the year.”

He has worked on some of the largest real estate and transportation development projects in California, including the redevelopment of Treasure Island, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard; Mare Island Naval Shipyard,El Toro Marine Corps Air Station; the $4 billion redevelopment of San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal; BART to the Airport; California High Speed Rail, the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and others.

Mr. Singer received the Bronze Anvil, the highest national award for public relations projects granted by the Public Relations Society of Americafor his work for the State of Nevada in opposing a nuclear waste repository near Las Vegas. His work in creating a series of print advertisements on the issue of homelessness in San Francisco was selected for permanent display in the U.S. Library of Congress.

Mr. Singer worked with the President of Jack-in-the-Box Restaurants in response to a food poisoning outbreak linked to contaminated ground beef. His agency helped the San Francisco Zoo tell its story to the world when a tiger escaped, and he represented the Bar Pilots Association after the Cosco Busan struck the Bay Bridge, among other notable assignments.

A former executive newspaper editor and television reporter, Mr. Singer has extensive experience in news media relations, public policy issues, and political campaign management. Prior to forming the agency, Mr. Singer was Communications Director and Press Secretary to Nevada Governor Richard Bryan in his successful bid for the U.S. Senate. He was credited by a national political journal with rejuvenating the campaign and was called “a master spin doctor” by the Las Vegas Review-Journal after Bryan’s U.S. Senate victory. He served as State Campaign Manager of Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner’s campaign for State Attorney General and as campaign manager for Miriam Shearing, the first woman elected to the Nevada Supreme Court.

His previous agency experience includes positions at three of California’s leading public relations and advertising agencies. Prior to starting his agency, Mr. Singer was President and Western Region Director of GCI, a division of Grey Advertising, New York. Previously, he was an executive at The PBN Co. and a manager at Solem/Loeb & Associates.

He began his career as a newspaper reporter for the Richmond Independent and Berkeley Daily Gazette, later serving as the managing editor of the Gazette. He worked as Washington-based television and radio correspondent with Medill News Service covering Congress for CBS News affiliates.

Mr. Singer is the son of two UC-Berkeley professors, Dr. Jerome R. Singer, professor of physics, and the late Dr. Margaret T. Singer, professor of psychology.[brainwashing?] A native of Berkeley, Calif., he is married and has twin sons and two step-sons.

By primary| March 28th, 2019|Comments Off

===

http://richmondconfidential.org/2014/10/31/the-master-of-disaster-shapes-public-opinion-in-richmond-and-beyond/

master of disaster

By Bonnie ChanPosted October 31, 2014 7:43 am

The phone rang shortly after 6:30 p.m. It was a Monday night in August and Sam Singer was still at his office in downtown San Francisco, writing and brainstorming strategies for clients. He picked up.

The call was from the Chevron refinery in Richmond. They were, they said, “having an issue.”

The “issue” was visible as soon as Singer began inching across the Bay Bridge in rush-hour traffic. A massive column of black smoke was climbing into the sky and spreading like a wool blanket over the horizon.

One of Singer’s associates was already at the refinery by the time he arrived. Singer rolled up his sleeves and got to work with his team, becoming, as he put it, “extra arms and legs and eyes for the Chevron staff.”

He gathered details, asked questions and crafted messaging. He moved quickly and with practiced efficiency. That night, dressed in a tie and sporty white sneakers, he stood before a battalion of reporters at a press conference and introduced the refinery’s general manager, Nigel Hearne, with the jauntiness of someone introducing a stand-up comedian at a nightclub.

As Hearne, eyes pouchy with exhaustion, gave a brief update to reporters, Singer raced around passing out copies of Chevron’s official statement.

He stayed until 2 a.m. and was back at the refinery at 6 a.m., wearing new clothes.

The details, now familiar to people across the Bay Area, unfolded quickly over the next few days. A pipe in the refinery’s no. 4 crude unit had ruptured, causing a noxious cloud of hydrocarbon vapor followed by a massive fire. About 15,000 Richmond residents went to local hospitals for respiratory ailments. It was a public relations disaster for a corporation that has strained to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the city for over a century.

Singer, who has partnered with Chevron for nearly 30 years, makes his livelihood off of public relations disasters. He helms Singer Associates, Inc., a San Francisco-based PR firm that specializes in crisis communications for companies and public figures.

This was a crisis for Chevron, indeed, and not just for the financial costs. Richmond, a working-class Bay Area city of just over 100,000 people, had been a Chevron-controlled company town from the turn of the century until 2010, when progressive leaders won the City Council for the first time in the city’s history. Chevron had been fighting to take back the City Council with its own favored candidates – and now, here was this nightmare, mere months before the 2012 November election.

There was no denying that a fire had happened, not with black columns of smoke still fading into the sky.

So the spin that Singer helped to engineer became Chevron’s willingness to be entirely transparent, to be held accountable and to make amends.

“Our priority right now is containing the fire, and protecting the health and safety of our employees and our community,” Hearne said during the press conference on the night of the fire.

“Right now, safety is our number one priority. We will be transparent. As we learn things, we will share those immediately with the city, the county and the media,” said Mark Ayers, Chevron Richmond’s Chief of Emergency Services, a day later.

Several weeks later, the message evolved.

“To many of our workforce, Richmond is not just the place where they work, but it’s also the community they call home, and it’s where their family and friends live,” Hearne said at a media briefing, without mentioning that less than 10 percent of the refinery’s employees live in Richmond.

“That said, we did have a fire. And we will learn from what went wrong and take all appropriate corrective actions.”

In time, the burned refinery cooled and the soot dissipated across the region. Aside from the crude unit, refinery operations resumed. Both progressive candidates were defeated in their bids for City Council that November, and Chevron was successful less than two years later in getting the City Council to approve its ambitious, long-desired $1 billion plan to spruce up the aging refinery and make possible the processing of higher-sulfur crude – though approval of the project did come only after a promise of $90 million in community benefits.

Singer Associates doesn’t just handle crisis communications for Chevron Richmond. The firm also supports Chevron’s legal team in its 20-year battle in Ecuador, where the oil giant has been accused of polluting the Ecuadorian Amazon and devastating indigenous tribes.

The firm also employs the spokesperson for Moving Forward, the independent campaign committee into which Chevron has poured $3 million to swing Richmond’s 2014 municipal elections to its favored candidates.

And as Chevron comes under increasingly heated scrutiny for its repeated safety violations and efforts to win elections, Singer has affirmed his position as one of the most influential behind-the-scenes shapers of public opinion in the Bay Area.

FEW PEOPLE WOULD RECOGNIZE Sam Singer if they saw him on the street. But his job is not to have a memorable face – it’s to have memorable message.

On a recent weekday morning, Singer, 56, is a decidedly average white man in a black suit coat sitting outside of Espresso Roma in Berkeley’s Elmwood district. He has a large to-go coffee in one hand, a dog leash attached to a quivering Norwich terrier in the other. Singer is alert but still fumbling, trying to find a way to effectively wipe croissant crumbs from his hands while still remaining attached to the leash.

“I love my job,” he says, wiping and then putting down a greasy napkin. He has a gruff Midwestern-sounding farmer’s voice that complements his neatly parted grayish-blond hair. “It’s like being an elected official without campaigning.”

He chose Espresso Roma because he lives right up the way if you follow Ashby Avenue into the Claremont hills. Singer grew up in Berkeley, the son of two UC Berkeley professors, and went to Berkeley High School. It was at Berkeley High that he immersed himself in the student newspaper and found his calling as a newspaperman. He had grown up in the idealistic tumult of Berkeley in the 1960s and ’70s, when freedom of speech, and having a voice that people listened to, were some of the most profound abilities one could exercise.

After graduation, he landed a job at the Berkeley Daily Gazette as a copy boy, which was the only job available to him without the requisite years of reporting experience. He rose in the ranks and became a reporter for the Gazette and the Richmond Independent before going off to earn adegree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

He became the editor of the Berkeley Daily Gazette in 1984, just in time to edit the last edition before the paper folded. The next year, he was fired from a post as managing editor of the Berkeley Voice.

Singer switched tracks, becoming press secretary to Nevada’s then-governor, Richard Bryan, during Bryan’s successful bid for the U.S. Senate. It was during that job that Singer found he was as good in front of reporters as he had ever hoped to be as a reporter himself. He enjoyed verbal sparring and learned that he could handily win arguments if he had solid facts to back himself up.

This was a skill he had picked up from his mother.

“Being 100 percent Irish, my mother could argue from dawn ’til dusk and never take a breath,” Singer says. “She was one of the best researchers I’ve ever known. I learned from her solid research, solid argument, and never giving up in battles against bad guys.”

Margaret Singer, who died in 2003 at the age of 82, was a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Berkeley and a world-renowned expert on brainwashing, having spent her career researching cults and indoctrination. She was a vehement anti-cultist and testified at over 200 trials, including against the Symbionese Liberation Army at the 1976 trial of Patty Hearst. Her profession earned Mrs. Singer dozens of death threats.

In that regard, her son is no stranger to controversy, neither in terms of his late mother’s profession nor his own. Singer readily admits that he is unfazed by others’ negative opinions about the work he does.

“I appreciate it when people don’t agree with me,” he says. “It makes me consider my position even more thoroughly. I enjoy an honest debate probably more than the next guy.”

Still, the most striking thing about Singer is how earnest he is, particularly for a man who spins messages for a living. Over coffee, he eats with his hands and feeds croissant to his dog, clumsily and without embarrassment. He enthuses about tribal art from Papua New Guinea and the Himalayas, which he and his wife – Sharon Rollins Singer, chief financial officer of Singer Associates – collect from ethnographic art museums from around the world.

When asked to describe himself, he pauses for a moment, and then says:

“I’m never working hard enough, even when I am. I’m a half-Catholic, half-Jewish Most Worried Man Alive.”

“I’m a very humble guy,” he adds. “I have very strong opinions but I’m humble. I don’t think the hubris that many people have does them or their clients any good.”

Despite Singer’s self-professed humility, his crisis communications work has by now earned him such industry nicknames as “The Fixer” and “Master of Disaster.”

Sam Singer is the guy to call when you’re in a mess; and if you call Sam Singer, you truly must be in a mess.

Those who know Singer say that his effectiveness as a PR professional comes on two fronts: from his background as a reporter, and from his deft understanding of people.

“Sam is good at what he does because he knows how reporters, editors and producers work,” said Chuck Finnie, a PR professional at San Francisco-based BMWL & Partners who has known Singer since they were both reporters. “He’s quick, he’s smart, and you don’t have to wait a week and a half for him to get back to you when you’re on deadline.”

Harvey Myman, Singer’s first editor at the Berkeley Daily Gazette and Richmond Independent, agreed that Singer’s instincts come from his reporting days.

“Sam’s rhythms are a newspaper guy’s rhythms,” Myman said. “There’s a focus and an energy and an enthusiasm. There’s nothing jaded about Sam. He doesn’t sit around with a drink and go, ‘These assholes, I’m taking their money.’ I trust him the way I trust my brothers. His focus is always to get ahead of your story. He’s not a guy who ever believes in hunkering down.”

Just as potent as Singer’s background in newspapers is his background as the son of a world-class psychologist and brainwashing expert.

“He gets it from his mother,” Myman said. “Sam has always been a very keen observer and understands people very well. I wish I was as good a listener as he is, ’cause he really doesn’t miss anything.”

SINGER CITES JOURNALISM as the starting point for any work that he does as a PR guy.

“Journalism has really been my life’s pursuit,” he said during a telephone interview. “We do the exact same thing, in many ways, that journalists do. We disseminate information, we write news, we’re interested in the three C’s – clear, concise and correct. The biggest difference between a pure journalist and a public relations agency is that we advocate our clients’ point of view, so we’re much more advocates than a traditional journalist.”

But even the idea of journalistic objectivity is changing, Singer said, as media becomes increasingly decentralized. Blogs, hyperlocals and independent press allow for more individual perspectives and points of view. In Singer’s opinion, the creation of the Internet is comparable to Gutenberg’s moveable type for what it has done for a revolution in communications.

“For the first time, you don’t have to be born a Hearst, a DeYoung, a Pulitzer or wealthy to start your own newspaper and to write about what interests you,” Singer said. “This is a revolution still in its early stages. The media, individuals and corporations have not even begun to realize its power and importance.”

One of Singer’s greatest coups so far in harnessing that power is the creation of the Richmond Standard, a community news website funded by Chevron.

Singer proposed the idea of a Chevron-funded news site to Mike Aldax, a former San Francisco Examiner crime reporter, late last year. The two first met when Aldax spoke with Singer for a story that Aldax was writing about the San Francisco Zoo, one of Singer’s clients. Singer’s proposal piqued Aldax’s interest for a number of reasons – chief among them, it would give Aldax the opportunity to realize a long-held dream of running his own neighborhood-oriented community news site.

“It would be your call, you would get to do the coverage you like to do,” Aldax remembered Singer telling him. “Just make sure you provide interesting, important information to the public.”

Aldax was a crime reporter who had started the Examiner’s crime section “Law & Disorder.”An admirer of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (“I went pretty far to get an apartment that overlooked Dashiell Hammett Street,” he admitted),Aldax’s Law & Disorder was filled with language that swaggered across the page. Suspects and criminals became “slippery copper crooks,” “rapscallions” and “black-hearted miscreants.” But more than freewheelin’ stories of lawlessness, Aldax yearned to do the kind of vivid neighborhood reporting crackling in news sites like Bernalwood and Mission Local.

When Singer came along with the opportunity to run just such a site, Aldax accepted and joined Singer Associates’ payroll as a senior account executive. Aldax hatched the name Richmond Standard – a reference to Chevron’s early days as the Standard Oil Company – and became the site’s editor and reporter, a veritable one-man band.

But the idea of a news site funded by Chevron and edited by a PR agency employee has drawn ire from other journalists and cultural critics since the site launched in January. Media Matters accused Chevron of “using propaganda disguised as news to promote its corporate efforts,” and the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hiltzikwrote that “this is what the news business has come to in communities where economics have wiped out traditional local newspapers.” With the Richmond Standard as a central case study, the Financial Times published a long article about “the invasion of corporate news.”

Singer brushes these criticisms aside by referencing one of the tenets long held by advocates of independent press: the necessity of alternative perspectives.

“There deserves to be many different voices in the discussion, none of them necessarily right or necessarily wrong,” Singer said. “The public gets the best opportunity to make an informed decision by listening to a lot of opinions.”

Singer is a believer in a “multiplicity of voices.” He sees his work as contributing to a greater number of perspectives – and in that vein, Singer says what he does is simply make sure that his clients’ voices are heard along with everyone else’s. He gives his clients, many of whom are deep-pocketed corporations, “a fighting chance to be understood.”

Much has been said, of course, about the dubiousness of the claim that a multibillion-dollar corporation like Chevron would need to fight to be understood. In the weeks leading up to Richmond’s city elections, media outlets from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC condemned Chevron’s political spending to influence public opinion and election results, in what the media outlets say amounts to nascent plutocracy. But to Singer – who has taken on clients pro bono because he “believes in their cause” – power doesn’t necessarily rest with who has the most money, but with who can tell the most credible story. And if Chevron isn’t telling a convincing story, then his job is to help Chevron to become convincing.

“We tend to represent people who are underdogs in a particular situation,” he said. “And when you’re an underdog, it doesn’t matter if you’re the most powerful person or have the most money in the world – it means you’re at a disadvantage in that situation, and we represent underdogs.”

Myman, his old editor, is more circumspect. “Sometimes his clients are probably the good guys,” Myman said, “and sometimes they’re not.”

ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2007, a Siberian tiger escaped her enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked a group of young men, killing 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. and mauling his two friends before being shot to death by responding police officers.

With no cameras or witnesses to testify to what had happened, questions rose immediately. How could the tiger have left her enclosure? What had gone wrong? There was a dead teenaged boy, a dead Siberian tiger, a trail of blood on the grounds of a family destination, and a clamor for answers.

The San Francisco Zoo hired Sam Singer.

Within a day of Singer’s arrival, a narrative took hold that the young men had been drunk and high on marijuana, and that they had provoked the tiger by taunting and throwing sticks at her. A few days later, a witness surfaced to say that she had been at the tiger enclosure with her family when she saw the young men taunting the tiger.

“There is a lesson to be learned from this terrible tragedy,” the San Francisco Examiner quoted Singer as saying. “Don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke marijuana and don’t taunt man-eating animals.”

The zoo reopened to the public, with little fanfare, nine days after the incident.

The families of the young men ultimately settled a civil suit with the zoo, claiming “that public relations specialist Sam Singer ruined their reputations by emphasizing that they had been drinking and smoking marijuana before heading to the zoo that day,” according to the Examiner.

Five years after the tiger attack, ABC7 News reported that the San Francisco Zoo, “to the delight of many,” had adopted another Siberian tiger, who quickly became “one of the zoo’s most popular attractions.”

When discussing Singer, fellow PR professionals always bring up the tiger attack. The event was a literal beast of a debacle, every zoo-going family’s goriest nightmare come to life – and with Singer at the helm, the zoo seemed to have emerged nearly unscathed. The bulk of the public’s suspicion of wrongdoing turned toward the young men who had fallen prey to the tiger.

Singer’s PR messaging works in part because he has proven, time and again, that he is a reliable source for reporters working on breaking news deadlines. He is always immediately available, always happy to be quoted and has always done meticulous research.

“Sam understands what news is and how his clients’ needs and objectives fit into the definition of news,” Finnie said. “When he talks to reporters, reporters trust him. What Sam tells you adds up at the end of the day.”

The long list of Singer’s past and current clients include high-profile crises that have become the stuff of public relations legend.

Take, for example, Jack in the Box. When an E. coli outbreak from undercooked beef patties nearly bankrupted the fast food chain in 1993, Singer helped Jack in the Box become a leader in stringent food safety guidelines. Singer then followed up by helping to give life to “Jack,” the charmingly irreverent fictitious CEO whose smiling foam head soon adorned car antennas across the country.

More recently, Singer helped the City of San Bruno secure $70 million in restitution following a PG&E pipeline explosion that devastated a San Bruno neighborhood four years ago, killing eight people. He continues to represent the city in an effort to hold PG&E responsible for up to $2.5 billion in federal and state fines.

Part of what makes Singer compelling as a man-behind-the-scenes is that it’s never quite clear which strings he is pulling or how far his influence reaches. Singer himself is rarely willing to disclose his part in his firm’s public relations victories.

Back at the Berkeley coffee shop, Singer responds to a question about the role he played in Chevron Richmond’s crisis management, post-fire, by deflecting credit.

“Most all of the things that we work on, in particular with Chevron, are a team effort – a group of people who come up with good ideas.”

But he’s the only one who’s known as the Master of Disaster.

Singer shrugs.

“It’s like being a quarterback on a football team. They either give you too much credit or too much blame.”

And with that, the Master of Disaster stands, crumples his napkin and gathers up his terrier. It’s a Wednesday and he has a standing meeting with city officials in San Bruno. He’s off to tell the underdogs’ side of the story.

Filed under: community, Company Town, Economy, Election 2014, Environment, Featured, Front

Tagged: city council, Company Town, Richmond City Council, Sam Singer

===

fake newspaper

Big Oil’s influence on corporate media has American news outlets shamefully shirking climate coverage. But oil companies won’t be satisfied by merely controlling the national news. In the poor Californian city of Richmond, where Chevron wants to upgrade a polluting refinery that is wont to explode, the oil giant has started an online newspaper.

The:{Richmond Standard:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: is a hyperlocal journalism site launched in January with the hallmarks of a typical Patch site (before said service was dumped by AOL): minimally reported stories about local crime, public meetings, and sports, told with the inverted-pyramid style of traditional news writing.

But the Standard is not your typical, well-intentioned but underfunded local reporting initiative; it’s a Chevron propaganda rag that’s run and written by the company’s flacks. *The San Francisco Chronicle* delves into the ethics of such an initiative:

The idea of the nation’s second-largest oil company funding a local news site harkens back to an era of journalism when business magnates often owned newspapers to promote their personal financial or political agendas. Now that mainstream newspapers are struggling to survive, online news sites are testing ways to fund their operations, said Edward Wasserman, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

But the idea of a company sponsoring news in a community where it operates still poses problems, he said.

“The tradition of press independence — even though in many times it’s more aspirational than real — is nevertheless a cornerstone principle,” Wasserman said. The Standard “is a different model. It’s clearly meant as a community outreach effort, so it’s born in an ethically challenged area.”

The Standard claims to be Richmond’s first “community-driven daily news source” since prior to 1990, yet Wasserman’s school runs Richmond Confidential — a rival site that frequently covers Chevron. The Standard has a “Chevron speaks” section, which has so far been used to introduce the website (which it says could “blaze the trail for a new model of corporate-sponsored, community-generated news”), and tocriticize negative press coverage of its plans to upgrade the refinery. But the positive coverage of Chevron and its refinery also spills into the “News” section.

Chevron’s San Francisco-based PR consultants poached colorful crime reporter Mike Aldax away from the San Francisco Examiner late last year, hiring him to work as an account manager and to write Richmond Standard’s articles. A Chevron spokesperson described the writer as “independent,” but a recent tweet reminds us that Aldax’s loyalties lie with his client:

“Richmond residents are not going to be fooled — they know where we’re coming from,” Aldax said. “The onus is on me to provide information that’s factual and accurate.”

Note that Aldax doesn’t say anything about “balance.” As theChronicle points out, Aldax didn’t quote activists who oppose the refinery upgrade in a recent story about the project’s “robust” environmental impact report.

Perhaps we can look forward to more such ventures in other communities where Chevron operates. The *Ecuador Standard*, anyone?

==

San Francisco - Amazon Watch today blasted San Francisco consultant Sam Singer for letting himself be used by Chevron to wage a personal and unsubstantiated attack on two renowned Ecuadorian environmental activists who were in town to receive the prestigious Goldman Prize this week.

"Sam Singer should be ashamed of himself for helping Chevron do its dirty work against two environmental heroes who are trying to hold the company accountable for its blatant legal violations in Ecuador," said Atossa Soltani, the executive director of Amazon Watch, a San Francisco-based NGO that for nearly ten years has been working closely with Amazon communities affected by Chevron's pollution.

The activists, Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza, have been leading a lawsuit in Ecuadorian courts that is considered the largest environmental damages case in the history of Latin America. Both were being recognized this week by the Goldman Foundation, whose award is considered the "Nobel" prize of the environment.

Today, Fajardo and Yanza are being honored in Washington at a Goldman Prize ceremony at the National Geographic Society expected to draw several Washington dignitaries. With the other prize-winners, the pair are slated to have lunch with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday.

Chevron announced over the weekend that it had hired Singer, who fashions himself an expert in crisis communication, to deal with the growing controversy over the company's long-running Ecuador lawsuit. Earlier this month, an independent court-appointed expert found Chevron was responsible for extensive toxic contamination and might have to pay up to $16 billion in damages.

The court expert also found that Chevron was responsible for 428 excess cancer deaths to human exposure to oil-related contaminants in the area of the Amazon where it operated from 1964 to 1990. Indigenous groups claim they have been decimated by Chevron's practices, which include the dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways.

Chevron was ready to pounce when Fajardo and Yanza arrived in San Francisco a few days ago. The company initiated a series of attacks that claimed the winners were trying to scam the company, the same argument Chevron has been using against Nigerian plaintiffs suing in San Francisco over the oil company's alleged human rights violations in that country. Yesterday, Chevron bought a full-page ad in the Chronicle that attacked Fajardo as a fraud and blamed the problems on Ecuador's state oil company.

Fajardo, an internationally-renowned lawyer who grew up in abject poverty cleaning oil spills as a child, was recognized by CNN in December as a "Hero" and was featured in a positive 15,000-word article in Vanity Fair by award-winning writer William Langewische.

Fajardo and Yanza have received death threats in Ecuador during their work on the case, and the brother of Fajardo was murdered in 2004 in what observers think may have been a case of mistaken identity.

The damages claim in the Ecuador court is primarily to clean up 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater, laced with carcinogens, heavy metals and crude oil, dumped directly by Texaco (now Chevron) into a vast area of rainforest where tens of thousands of people live. Those communities are now suffering a public health crisis and are awaiting the judge's decision, expected later this year, on Chevron's liability.

Mr. Singer's corporate and non-profit clients have included the Alameda Alliance for Health, BART, the San Francisco 49ers, and Sony. On the website of his company, Singer claims expertise at handling corporate crises including "layoffs, bankruptcy, or an explosion at a factory".

Soltani said: "Sam Singer's fingerprints are all over this. The Bay Area business community should be aware that Singer has become a corporate hit-man for Chevron's campaign to misinform the public about the worst oil-related environmental disaster on the planet and hide its potential liability from shareholders.

"We refuse to let consultants like Singer operate with impunity in corporate-financed campaigns that try to cover up environmental problems or that deny human rights to vulnerable people in other countries. We are calling him out and informing his roster of clients of his leading role in designing and executing this hit-and-run attack for Chevron against two people who have been welcomed to the Bay Area."

Since taking on the case against Chevron in 2004, Fajardo has been subjected to death threats and the lawyers for the plaintiffs have suffered two mysterious robberies. Both the UN and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have publicly called for an end to the pattern of humans rights abuses against the plaintiffs. In a separate incident, Yanza's nine-year-old daughter suffered an attempted kidnapping.

The damages in Ecuador occurred when Texaco (now Chevron) was the sole operator of a consortium that built 356 wells that produced millions of barrels of oil over a 26-year period. The plaintiffs estimate that Chevron's limited attempts at clean-up applied to less than 1% of the actual damage, and even those efforts were ineffective.

To view syndicated cartoonist Mark Fiore's animated satire of Chevron management's mishandling of the company's Ecuador disaster, visit: http://youtube.com/watch?v=rdJ9W39HdDU

===

prweek BS

I recently interviewed Sam Singer, president of Singer and Associates, for an upcoming video. Among other things, we talked about how his client Chevron is...

by Aarti Shah 23 June 2009

I recently interviewed Sam Singer, president of Singer and Associates, for an upcoming video. Among other things, we talked about how his client Chevron is facing a $27-billion lawsuit in Ecuador. I asked Singer his thoughts on his client's controversialmove to hirea former CNN reporter to tell its story. Singer said:

The hiring of former CNN reporter Gene Randall was a stroke of genius by Chevron. As a former international correspondent for CNN, he brings great credibility to whatever he does. What made this effort even more successful is that Amazon Watch took a reactionary posture and embarrassed itself in criticizing Gene Randall and Chevron for using a respected former news reporter to assist Chevron in telling its side of the story to the public.

Last month in The New York Times, Amazon Watch called Chevron's video"'embarrassing public relations tactics' because credible news sources had not sufficiently framed the report the way they would like, namely, 'to place all of the blame for Texaco's environmental disaster in Ecuador on PetroEcuador,' Texaco's former partner."

For more from Singer, stay tuned for video on PRWeek's home page, which will discuss Chevron's overall PR strategy, as well as the complexity of crisis communications during a downturn.

Subject Tags:

===

Sam Singer  3rd degree ion3rd

Singer Associates Public Relations, Public Affairs, Crisis Communications

Singer Associates Public Relations and Public Affairs

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Singer Associates Public Relations in San Francisco is one of the California's leading public relations, crisis communications and issues management firms.

Singer Associates services include: Public Relations, Litigation Communications, Public Affairs, Crisis Communications, Advertising, Web Design, Social Media, Reputation Management, Litigation, Labor Issues, Land Entitlement, Real Estate, Construction, Environmental Issues, Healthcare, Transportation, Telecommunications, Industrial, Government Relations, Employee Communications.

Clients include: Chevron; Disney; Warner Brothers; EA Sports; Visa; ESPN; 49ers; Oracle; Airbnb; The America's Cup; California Institute for Regenerative Medicine; Transbay Joint Powers Authority; Stanford Hospital and Clinics; Lucille Packard Children's Hospital; UCSF Children's Hospital; Port of Oakland; The Irvine Co.; Bay Meadows Land Co.; Ford Motor Co.; Lennar; Calpine; Sims Metal Management; Nike; California Pacific Medical Center; Marriott Hotels; Hilton Hotels; Starwood Hotels and Resorts; San Francisco Hotel Council; San Francisco Bar Pilots; San Francisco Opera; San Francisco Ballet; San Francisco Zoo; Anschutz Entertainment Group; SMG; Jack in the Box; Taco Bell; Coca-Cola; City of San Bruno; City of Oakland; Port of Oakland; AC Transit District; Bay Area Rapid Transit District; Caltrain; Marin Water District; California Academy of Sciences; AutoReturn; AIMCO; Recology; Webcor construction; DFJ Ventures; Public Storage; and others.

Specialties: Public Relations, Litigation Communications, Crisis Communications, Advertising, Web Design, Social Media Communications, Reputation Management, Litigation, Labor Issues, Land Entitlement, Real Estate, Construction, Environmental Issues, Healthcare, Transportation, Telecommunications, Industrial, Government Relations, Employee Communications.

Collector of Oceanic art, Himalayan art, Indonesian tribal art. Honorary co-president of 2019 Bourgogne Tribal Art Fair, France. Singer Associates Public Relations in San Francisco is one of the California's leading public relations, crisis communications and issues management firms. Singer Associates services include: Public Relations, Litigation Communications, Public Affairs, Crisis Communications, Advertising, Web Design, Social Media, Reputation Management, Litigation, Labor Issues, Land Entitlement, Real Estate, Construction, Environmental Issues, Healthcare, Transportation, Telecommunications, Industrial, Government Relations, Employee Communications. Clients include: Chevron; Disney; Warner Brothers; EA Sports; Visa; ESPN; 49ers; Oracle; Airbnb; The America's Cup; California Institute for Regenerative Medicine; Transbay Joint Powers Authority; Stanford Hospital and Clinics; Lucille Packard Children's Hospital; UCSF Children's Hospital; Port of Oakland; The Irvine Co.; Bay Meadows Land Co.; Ford Motor Co.; Lennar; Calpine; Sims Metal Management; Nike; California Pacific Medical Center; Marriott Hotels; Hilton Hotels; Starwood Hotels and Resorts; San Francisco Hotel Council; San Francisco Bar Pilots; San Francisco Opera; San Francisco Ballet; San Francisco Zoo; Anschutz Entertainment Group; SMG; Jack in the Box; Taco Bell; Coca-Cola; City of San Bruno; City of Oakland; Port of Oakland; AC Transit District; Bay Area Rapid Transit District; Caltrain; Marin Water District; California Academy of Sciences; AutoReturn; AIMCO; Recology; Webcor construction; DFJ Ventures; Public Storage; and others. Specialties: Public Relations, Litigation Communications, Crisis Communications, Advertising, Web Design, Social Media Communications, Reputation Management, Litigation, Labor Issues, Land Entitlement, Real Estate, Construction, Environmental Issues, Healthcare, Transportation, Telecommunications, Industrial, Government Relations, Employee Communications. Collector of Oceanic art, Himalayan art, Indonesian tribal art. Honorary co-president of 2019 Bourgogne Tribal Art Fair, France. …see more

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4,758 followers4,758 followers

Sam Singer posted this • 1w1w

Congratulations to  Bartko Zankel Bunzel & Miller  and top attorneys Patrick M. Ryan, Stephen Steinberg, and P. Casey Mathews for their important IP lawsuit for famed UK designer Nicky Laatz against  Zazzle  for fraudulent misrepresentation and concealment, promissory fraud, copyright and trademark infringement, and breach of contract.  hashtag#iplaw   hashtag#attorneys   hashtag#intellectualproperty   hashtag#lawsuits   hashtag#designer…show more

British Designer Sues Zazzle, Claiming Brazen Font Theft

bloomberg.com • 1 min read

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Sam Singer posted this • 3w3w

San Francisco finally has an opportunity to prioritize new housing with the Affordable Homes Now measure on the Nov. 8th ballot. Backed by  Nor Cal Carpenters Union   Housing Action Coalition  Mission Housing Development Corporation   Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco   Greenbelt Alliance   SPUR  SF YIMBI  hashtag#housing   hashtag#affordablehousing   hashtag#housingcrisis   hashtag#housingmarket   hashtag#californiahomes…show more

How can it take the better part of a decade to approve a single housing project?

sfexaminer.com • 3 min read

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Sam Singer commented on a post • 1mo1mo

Lon, congrats! Great city, wonderful gig. All the best, Sam

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Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco logo

PresidentPresident

Singer Associates Public Relations and Public AffairsSinger Associates Public Relations and Public Affairs

Jan 2000 - Present · 22 yrs 9 mosJan 2000 - Present · 22 yrs 9 mos

San Francisco Bay AreaSan Francisco Bay Area

Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco specializes in reputation and issues management. The firm is one of the nation's leading public relations, crisis communications, public affairs and corporate communications agencies. Singer Associates Public Relations is based in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area.Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco specializes in reputation and issues management. The firm is one of the nation's leading public relations, crisis communications, public affairs and corporate communications agencies. Singer Associates Public Relations is based in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area.…see more

Grey Group logo

President/Managing Director West CoastPresident/Managing Director West Coast

Grey GroupGrey Group

Jan 1999 - Jan 2000 · 1 yr 1 moJan 1999 - Jan 2000 · 1 yr 1 mo

San Francisco Bay AreaSan Francisco Bay Area

President and West Coast Managing Director, GCI Public Relations, a division of Grey Advertising.President and West Coast Managing Director, GCI Public Relations, a division of Grey Advertising.

Founder and CEOFounder and CEO

Kamer Singer & AssociatesKamer Singer & Associates

Jun 1990 - Jan 1999 · 8 yrs 8 mosJun 1990 - Jan 1999 · 8 yrs 8 mos

San Francisco Bay AreaSan Francisco Bay Area

Founder and CEO (later GCI Kamer/Singer), one of California's leading public affairs agencies. Singer built the agency into one of the nation's most highly regarded public affairs agencies and then sold it to Grey Global Group. He then became president of GCI's west coast operations, heading its offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Colorado.Founder and CEO (later GCI Kamer/Singer), one of California's leading public affairs agencies. Singer built the agency into one of the nation's most highly regarded public affairs agencies and then sold it to Grey Global Group. He then became president of GCI's west coast operations, heading its offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Colorado.…see more

State Campaign ManagerState Campaign Manager

California Attorney GeneralCalifornia Attorney General

Jan 1990 - Jun 1990 · 6 mosJan 1990 - Jun 1990 · 6 mos

Served as California State Campagn Manager for Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner for California Attorney GeneralServed as California State Campagn Manager for Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner for California Attorney General

The PBN Company logo

Senior Account ExecutiveSenior Account Executive

The PBN CompanyThe PBN Company

Jan 1989 - Jan 1990 · 1 yr 1 moJan 1989 - Jan 1990 · 1 yr 1 mo

San Francisco Bay AreaSan Francisco Bay Area

Political Campaign Management, Corporate Communications, Litigation Communications, Healthcare Communications, Real Estate Communications, Advocacy and Lobbying, Advertising and Marketing Communications, Land Use Entitlements, AdvertisingPolitical Campaign Management, Corporate Communications, Litigation Communications, Healthcare Communications, Real Estate Communications, Advocacy and Lobbying, Advertising and Marketing Communications, Land Use Entitlements, Advertising…see more

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EducationEducation

Northwestern University logo

Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University

Masters, JournalismMasters, Journalism

1983 - 19841983 - 1984

Tulane University logo

Tulane UniversityTulane University

BA, History and PhilosophyBA, History and Philosophy

1979 - 19821979 - 1982

Activities and societies: Elected Phi Beta Kappa Society; Dean's List; Honor Roll; graduated Magna Cum Laude from Tulane.Activities and societies: Elected Phi Beta Kappa Society; Dean's List; Honor Roll; graduated Magna Cum Laude from Tulane.

Berkeley High School logo

Berkeley High SchoolBerkeley High School

High School Diploma, Journalism, History, EnglishHigh School Diploma, Journalism, History, English

1973 - 19761973 - 1976

SkillsSkills

Crisis CommunicationsCrisis Communications

Endorsed by Robert Tappan and 26 others who are highly skilled at thisEndorsed by Robert Tappan and 26 others who are highly skilled at this

Endorsed by 2 colleagues at Singer Associates Public Relations San FranciscoEndorsed by 2 colleagues at Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco

99+ endorsements99+ endorsements

Public RelationsPublic Relations

Endorsed by Alex Clemens and 59 others who are highly skilled at thisEndorsed by Alex Clemens and 59 others who are highly skilled at this

Endorsed by 2 colleagues at Singer Associates Public Relations San FranciscoEndorsed by 2 colleagues at Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco

99+ endorsements99+ endorsements

Corporate CommunicationsCorporate Communications

Endorsed by Deborah Lilienthal Hellinger and 8 others who are highly skilled at thisEndorsed by Deborah Lilienthal Hellinger and 8 others who are highly skilled at this

Endorsed by 2 colleagues at Grey GroupEndorsed by 2 colleagues at Grey Group

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ReceivedReceived

GivenGiven

Cynthia Chiarappa MBA, FACHE profile picture

Cynthia Chiarappa MBA, FACHECynthia Chiarappa MBA, FACHE

Integration & Lean Transformation, Strategy Deployment, Change Management, CommunicationsIntegration & Lean Transformation, Strategy Deployment, Change Management, Communications

November 22, 2008, Cynthia was Sam’s clientNovember 22, 2008, Cynthia was Sam’s client

Sam Singer is an outstanding expert in managing public affairs issues - in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is THE BEST you can find! He is able to quickly assess any situation and advise on the best approach and key messages. He is accessible, easy going and great fun to work with. I wholeheartedly recommend Sam to anyone dealing with issues that will be public. This is your guy!Sam Singer is an outstanding expert in managing public affairs issues - in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is THE BEST you can find! He is able to quickly assess any situation and advise on the best approach and key messages. He is accessible, easy going and great fun to work with. I wholeheartedly recommend Sam to anyone dealing with issues that will be public. This is your guy!

Alex Clemens profile picture

Alex ClemensAlex Clemens

Co-Founder at Lighthouse Public AffairsCo-Founder at Lighthouse Public Affairs

March 29, 2008, Alex worked with Sam but they were at different companiesMarch 29, 2008, Alex worked with Sam but they were at different companies

Sam sets the standard - he runs a top-flight communications shop, he attracts the best people, he works with the biggest clients on the most complex and challenging challenges in the Bay Area. Despite the fact that he's already been there and done that a bunch of times, he still comes up with the right creative angle to advance the interests of his clients. He's top-notch.Sam sets the standard - he runs a top-flight communications shop, he attracts the best people, he works with the biggest clients on the most complex and challenging challenges in the Bay Area. Despite the fact that he's already been there and done that a bunch of times, he still comes up with the right creative angle to advance the interests of his clients. He's top-notch.

Jef Loeb profile picture

Jef LoebJef Loeb

Creative director/strategist/writer/director at Brainchild CreativeCreative director/strategist/writer/director at Brainchild Creative

December 10, 2007, Jef worked with Sam but they were at different companiesDecember 10, 2007, Jef worked with Sam but they were at different companies

Sam is one of San Francisco's true class acts - a breed that's all too rare these days. Obviously highly talented, he's built a top tier public affairs firm on the strength of brilliant intelligence, integrity and strength of character. It doesn't hurt that he has a rock star team behind him.Sam is one of San Francisco's true class acts - a breed that's all too rare these days. Obviously highly talented, he's built a top tier public affairs firm on the strength of brilliant intelligence, integrity and strength of character. It doesn't hurt that he has a rock star team behind him.

Honors & awardsHonors & awards

Public Relations Agency of the YearPublic Relations Agency of the Year

Issued by PRWeek Magazine · Jun 2015Issued by PRWeek Magazine · Jun 2015

Associated with Singer Associates Public Relations and Public AffairsAssociated with Singer Associates Public Relations and Public Affairs

PRWeek awarded Singer Associates Public Relations its "PR Agency of the Year Award" for our work for Chevron, Stanford, Children's Hospital Oakland, Sutter Health, Recology, and our groundbreaking work in helping generate the largest fine and penalty in the history of United States against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for its criminal negligence in

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// forbes

suspended Ex-Attorney Steven Donziger Condemned To Pay Chevron $3.4 Million

If I were a legal journalist, I would track down Mr. Donziger's legal ethics professor at Harvard. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. I would be d… 

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How Chevron Turned the Tables in Ecuador Public Relations ...

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May 25, 2017 — How Chevron Turned the Tables in Ecuador Public Relations Battle with Singer Associates, Other PR Agencies ... Faced with a $19 billion fine for ...

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Jul 7, 2022 — Singer is nationally known for handling some of most significant public affairs, corporate communications, and crisis communications campaigns.

Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco | LinkedIn

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Our expertise in energy and the environment, transportation, healthcare, housing, litigation communications, politics, labor relations, land use entitlements, ...

https://www.linkedin.com › sam-singer-3b60813

San Francisco, California, United States · President · Singer Associates Public Relations and Public Affairs

Singer Associates Public Relations in San Francisco is one of the California's leading public relations, crisis communications and issues management firms.

Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco | Facebook

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Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco is a leading public relations agency ... Disgraced attorney Steven Donziger is not a “human rights lawyer.

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Chevron Ecuador case: the pathetic attempt to avoid disbarment by disgraced attorney Steven Donziger https://flipboard.com/…/a-ONfXoGhkQjSESHcbkQGkBg%3Aa%3A3199 ...

Singer Associates Public Relations San Francisco - Twitter

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Steven Donziger's “legal fraud of the century” against Chevron in #Ecuador exposed as the Godfather of corruption cases. Read the court docs: #Hollywood # ...

Sam Singer Tells PR Pros to Be Skeptical and to Raise the ...

http://sfprrt.org › sam-singer-tells-pr-pros-to-be-skeptic...

Apr 5, 2022 — Singer explained that American attorney Steven Donziger, who brought the case against Chevron, “committed fraud, extortion and money laundering, ...

No BlackBerrys Near the Yoga Mat and Other Life Lessons ...

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Trudie Styler helped participate in the Steven Donziger-led fraud against Chevron in Ecuador. Sam Singer. 486 followers. More information.

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Apr 11, 2016 - Steven Donziger, the American lawyer behind the fraudulent lawsuit ... Sam Singer: my thoughts on the fraud against Chevron in Ecuador.

https://theamazonpost.com › brief

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ChevronToxico I Chevron Using Six Public Relations Firms to Discredit Indigenous ... well-highly connected New York-based agency; Sam Singer and Associates, ...

Chevron Targets Journalist With Cyberattacks ... - Chevron in Ecuador

https://www.chevroninecuador.com › 2015/05 › chevro...

Also working on behalf of Chevron to target Klasfeld is Sam Singer of Singer Associates, a longtime Chevron public relations "crisis communication" firm in ...

Business Journalists Rush to Rescue Chevron from Its ...

https://amazonwatch.org › 2014

Sep 30, 2014 — Chevron got a little help from its friends in the corporate media last ... Enter Sam Singer, from Chevron's PR firm Singer and Associates.

...

Sam Singer defense of Chevron's video tactics | PR Week

https://www.prweek.com › article › sam-singer-defense-...

Jun 23, 2009 — I recently interviewed Sam Singer, president of Singer and Associates, for an upcoming video. Among other things, we talked about how his client ...

Missing: donziger ‎| Must include: donziger

Chevron Plays 'Victim' To Deflect Media Coverage of Goldman ...

https://www.sourcewatch.org › index.php › Chevron_Pl...

Nov 3, 2009 — In a classic PR crisis management counter-attack, Chevron ... hiring "high-priced San Francisco PR crisis manager Sam Singer to push its ...

Lawyer who sued Chevron sentenced to six months ... - Reuters

https://www.reuters.com › world › lawyer-who-sued-chev...

Oct 1, 2021 — Donziger, a Harvard Law School graduate, won a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in an Ecuadorian court in 2011. San Ramon, California-based ...

Motion to Vacate - Juicio Crudo

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Nov 25, 2015 — Factual Background – The Dirty Hand of Chevron . ... Singer Associates, Inc. ("Singer Associates"), a public relations finn based out of San.

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Jun 25, 2018 — this move by characterizing Donziger as “some sort of PR guy” ... sfweeNly.com/sanfrancisco/sam-singer-chevron-tatiana-the-tiger-public-.

Le Pétrole contre le Droit. Quand Chevron s'acharne sur un ...

https://www.terrestres.org › Blog

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Nov 2, 2020 — En plus, si Donziger est condamné à de la prison, il n'y aura plus ... les dirigeants de Chevron, conseillés par Sam Singer, un lobbyiste de ...

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Ecuadorian Judicial Fraud - Steven Donziger Fraud Exposed

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Witness tampering, ghostwriting, obstruction of justice. Multiple international courts confirm wrongdoing.

Ecuador Political News · ‎Confessions Of A Fraud · ‎Environmental Claims · ‎Facts Sheet

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