B M 2

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see main node, also tagcapt 817

=see brulle 11/21
<a href="https://link-springer-com.oca.ucsc.edu/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://link-springer-com.oca.ucsc.edu/content/pdf/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4.pdf</a>
Table 5 PR frm engagements by sector, 1989–2020sectors: Oil/Gas Coal/Steel   Rail  Environmental Movement  Utilities Renewable  EnergyEdelman 40 47% 20 23% 1 1% 23 27% 1 1%Burson Cohn & Wolfe 37 56% 4 6% 1 1% 24 36% 0 0%Weber Shandwick 21 32% 0 0% 0 0% 44 67% 0 0%Cerrell 33 79% 3 7% 0 0% 6 14% 0 0%Dittus Communications/Story Partners 15 50% 2 6% 0 0% 13 43% 0 0%==rebrand? merger? letters green logo
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe</a>
Burson Cohn & Wolfe is a multinational <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations" title="Public relations" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">public relations</a> and communications firm, headquartered in New York City. In February 2018, parent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPP_Group_PLC" class="mw-redirect" title="WPP Group PLC" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">WPP Group PLC</a> announced that it had merged its subsidiaries Cohn & Wolfe with Burson-Marsteller. The combined agency is now known as Burson Cohn & Wolfe.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-PR-Week-merge1-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a><div id="toc" class="toc" role="navigation" aria-labelledby="mw-toc-heading" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table;"><input type="checkbox" role="button" id="toctogglecheckbox" class="toctogglecheckbox" style="margin: 0px; position: absolute; opacity: 0; z-index: -1; display: none;" /><div class="toctitle" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="text-align: center; direction: ltr;"><h2 id="mw-toc-heading" style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border: 0px; line-height: 1.3; display: inline;">Contents</h2><label class="toctogglelabel" for="toctogglecheckbox" style="cursor: pointer;" /></div><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Operations" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1Operations</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#History" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2History</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Burson-Marsteller" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3Burson-Marsteller</a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#History_2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1History</a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#1950s_and_1960s:Company_founding_and_early_history" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1.11950s and 1960s: Company founding and early history</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#1970s:General_Motors" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1.21970s: General Motors</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#1980s:Young&Rubicam_and_worldwide_expansion" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1.31980s: Young & Rubicam and worldwide expansion</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#1990s:Global_presence_and_Philip_Morris" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1.41990s: Global presence and Philip Morris</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#2000s" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1.52000s</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Services" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.2Services</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Training" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.3Training</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Crisis_management" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.4Crisis management</a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Tylenol" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.4.1Tylenol</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Bhopal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.4.2Bhopal</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Other_cases" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.4.3Other cases</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-16" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Corporate_PR" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.5Corporate PR</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Technology" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.6Technology</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-18" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Public_affairs" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.7Public affairs</a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-19" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Romania" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.7.1Romania</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-20" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Indonesia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.7.2Indonesia</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-21" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Argentina" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.7.3Argentina</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-22" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Ukraine" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.7.4Ukraine</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-23" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Turkey" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.7.5Turkey</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-24" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Healthcare" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.8Healthcare</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-25" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Google_smear_campaign" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.9Google smear campaign</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-26" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Brand_marketing" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.10Brand marketing</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-27" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Cohn_and_Wolfe" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4Cohn and Wolfe</a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-28" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#History_3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4.1History</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-29" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Subsidiaries_and_affiliates" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">5Subsidiaries and affiliates</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-30" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#See_also" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-31" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">7References</a><ul style="list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-32" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Bibliography" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">7.1Bibliography</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-33" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#External_links" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">8External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Operations[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Operations" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h2>BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe) is the world's third-largest public relations firm by revenue, as of 2018.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-ImperatoCEO-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a> It employs more than 4,000 people in 42 countries.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Shah27Feb2018-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a> BCW is part of the BCW Group, whose brands include: AxiCom, BWR, Direct Impact, GCI Health, HZ, PSB, Prime Policy Group, and Goodfuse.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Moore18-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Rittenhouse-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-BWR-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a>BCW offers clients creative content and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_marketing_communications" class="mw-redirect" title="Integrated marketing communications" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">integrated communications</a> services across the following sectors: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-business" title="Business-to-business" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">business-to-business</a>, consumer, corporate, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_management" title="Crisis management" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">crisis management</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility" title="Corporate social responsibility" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">corporate social responsibility</a>, healthcare, public affairs, and technology.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-HolmesReportProfile-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[9]</a>Donna Imperato serves as global chief executive officer (CEO).<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Shah27Feb2018-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a> She was previously CEO at Cohn & Wolfe.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Bennett-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[10]</a> BCW is split into divisions by geographic region: North America, Latin America, Europe and Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Each region is led by a regional president who reports directly to the global CEO.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Sudhaman18-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[11]</a> Other notable employees include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Hughes" title="Karen Hughes" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Karen Hughes</a>, former senior aide to U.S. President <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">George W. Bush</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Ciarallo08-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[12]</a><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">History[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: History" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h2>BCW traces its roots to the founding of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Burson-Marsteller" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Burson-Marsteller</a> in 1953 and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#Cohn_and_Wolfe" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Cohn & Wolfe</a> in 1970. As part of a restructuring strategy, in 2018 parent company WPP <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_limited_company" title="Public limited company" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">PLC</a> merged Burson-Marsteller, the sixth-largest PR firm worldwide, and Cohn & Wolfe, which ranked 12th.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Shah-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[13]</a> The merger created the third-largest PR firm, which was named BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe).<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Gregg-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a> WPP stated that it merged the firms due to their complementary skills, including Burson-Marsteller's public affairs and corporate work and Cohn & Wolfe's digital creative content, consumer, and health care work.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Bradley-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[15]</a>In August 2018, BCW acquired HZ, an integrated creative agency, headquartered in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockville,Maryland" title="Rockville, Maryland" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Rockville, Maryland</a>, with additional offices in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Gregg-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Rittenhouse-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a><h2 style="margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Burson-Marsteller[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Burson-Marsteller" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h2><h3 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">History[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: History" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h3>Prior to its merger with Cohn & Wolfe, Burson-Marsteller comprised 77 offices and 85 affiliate offices, operating in 110 countries across six continents.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[16]</a> The company was founded by Harold Burson (1921–2020) and William Marsteller in 1953, and, by the early 1980s, had become one of the largest public relations companies in the world. In 1979, it became a subsidiary of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%26_Rubicam" class="mw-redirect" title="Young & Rubicam" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Young & Rubicam</a>, which in turn was acquired later by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WPP_Group_PLC" class="mw-redirect" title="WPP Group PLC" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">WPP Group PLC</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Karmali-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a> In 2018, it merged with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohn%26_Wolfe" class="mw-redirect" title="Cohn & Wolfe" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Cohn & Wolfe</a> and renamed Burson Cohn & Wolfe.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[18]</a><h4 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1950s and 1960s: Company founding and early history[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: 1950s and 1960s: Company founding and early history" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h4><div class="thumb tleft" style="float: left; clear: left; margin: 0.5em 1.4em 1.3em 0px; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="thumbinner" style="min-width: 100px; border: 1px solid rgb(200, 204, 209); padding: 3px; background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 222px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg" class="image" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><img alt="Side on view of Burson and Marstellar talking in front of map of Europe" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg/220px-Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="171" class="thumbimage" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg/330px-Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg/440px-Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg 2x" data-file-width="760" data-file-height="589" style="border: 1px solid rgb(200, 204, 209); vertical-align: middle; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></a><div class="thumbcaption" style="border: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; padding: 3px; text-align: left;"><div class="magnify" style="float: right; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 0px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: url(" w="w" resources="resources" src="src" mediawiki.skinning="mediawiki.skinning" images="images" magnify-clip-ltr.svg="magnify-clip-ltr.svg" e="e" display="display" block="block" text-indent="text-indent" px="px" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden" width="width" height="height" user-select="user-select" none="none" /></div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: url(" w="w" resources="resources" src="src" mediawiki.skinning="mediawiki.skinning" images="images" magnify-clip-ltr.svg="magnify-clip-ltr.svg" e="e" display="display" block="block" text-indent="text-indent" px="px" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden" width="width" height="height" user-select="user-select" none="none">Harold Burson and Bill Marsteller plan out their firm's expansion into Europe</a></div></div></div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burson_and_Marsteller_at_work.jpg" class="internal" title="Enlarge" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: url(" w="w" resources="resources" src="src" mediawiki.skinning="mediawiki.skinning" images="images" magnify-clip-ltr.svg="magnify-clip-ltr.svg" e="e" display="display" block="block" text-indent="text-indent" px="px" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap" overflow="overflow" hidden="hidden" width="width" height="height" user-select="user-select" none="none">Prior to the establishment of Burson-Marsteller, co-founders Harold Burson and William "Bill" Marsteller owned separate agencies, focused on public relations and advertising, respectively. Burson had established Harold Burson Public Relations in 1946 and was based in New York City. Meanwhile, Marsteller had founded the Chicago-based advertising agency Marsteller Gebhardt and Reed (later renamed Marsteller Inc.) in 1951.</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-York-19" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[19]</a> Burson and Marsteller met in 1952 when Marsteller needed a PR agency to work on an account for his client, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_International" title="Rockwell International" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Rockwell Manufacturing</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Much-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a> and was referred to Burson. The two agencies shared the Rockwell account and, later, an account for Clark Engineering Equipment Company.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[21]</a> In 1953, they entered into a partnership,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Holmes-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a> creating a new public relations firm that was owned jointly by Burson and by Marsteller's advertising agency.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[23]</a>Beginning with a staff of four and just two main clients,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Beckett-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[24]</a> operations quickly grew, and in the early 1960s Burson-Marsteller began to establish a presence outside of the United States. In 1960, they opened an office in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto" title="Toronto" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Toronto, Ontario</a>, Canada, becoming the first U.S. PR agency to do so.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-25" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[25]</a> One year later, in 1961, following the founding of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Market" class="mw-redirect" title="Common Market" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Common Market</a> in Europe, the company established its first European office in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva" title="Geneva" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Geneva</a>, followed shortly by an office in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels" title="Brussels" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Brussels</a> in 1965.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Burrell-26" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[26]</a> At this time <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill%26_Knowlton" class="mw-redirect" title="Hill & Knowlton" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Hill & Knowlton</a> was the only other U.S. PR firm with an office outside the United States.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Karmali-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a> In 1967, Burson-Marsteller opened its first London office.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Burrell-26" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[26]</a><h4 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1970s: General Motors[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: 1970s: General Motors" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h4>One of the firm's earliest clients was the Electro-Motive Division of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors" title="General Motors" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">General Motors</a> (GM) that made <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotives" class="mw-redirect" title="Diesel locomotives" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">diesel locomotives</a>, beginning in 1956. It was the only PR agency retained by GM at the time.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-27" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[27]</a> In 1970, Burson-Marsteller was engaged by the main division of GM to manage its PR,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Much-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a> following stiff competition from larger firms. According to Harold Burson, GM was seeking outside PR management following the publication of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader" title="Ralph Nader" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ralph Nader</a>'s book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed" title="Unsafe at Any Speed" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Unsafe at Any Speed</a>, which called into question GM's design practices, and led to negative media representation of the company. GM remained a client of Burson-Marsteller for the next 11 years.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-28" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[28]</a> At the time they took on GM, Burson-Marsteller was the 10th largest PR firm in the United States.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Hynum-29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[29]</a> In 1974, Wolcott and Company, a Los Angeles-based public relations firm founded by Robert "Bob" B. Wolcott Jr., merged with Burson-Marsteller. Wolcott Co. had offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Bob Wolcott joined the executive management team and was in charge of West Coast and Asian operations.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-30" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[30]</a><h4 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1980s: Young & Rubicam and worldwide expansion[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: 1980s: Young & Rubicam and worldwide expansion" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h4>In 1979, the company was sold to the communications group Young & Rubicam. In his memoirs, Burson described the decision as being made for two primary reasons. First, Burson-Marsteller required capital to finance its expansion. Second, Marsteller's advertising agency had declined in profitability and "needed management fixing".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Karmali-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[17]</a> Following the takeover, Burson became executive vice-president and a board member of Young & Rubicam.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-York-19" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[19]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Izat-31" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[31]</a> As part of Young & Rubicam in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Burson-Marsteller became known for its crisis management work.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Sobczynski-32" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[32]</a> Notable clients consulting Burson-Marsteller for crisis management included: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babcock%26_Wilcox" title="Babcock & Wilcox" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Babcock & Wilcox</a>, following the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident" title="Three Mile Island accident" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Three Mile Island accident</a> in 1979; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%26_Johnson" title="Johnson & Johnson" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Johnson & Johnson</a>, during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders" title="Chicago Tylenol murders" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1982 Tylenol crisis</a>;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Piper-33" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[33]</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Carbide" title="Union Carbide" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Union Carbide Corporation</a> following the 1984 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster" title="Bhopal disaster" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Bhopal disaster</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-OReilly-34" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[34]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Klingbeil-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a> The company was also involved in the introduction of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke" title="New Coke" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">New Coke</a> in early 1985. In interviews Burson has stated that the negative reaction of the public to the new product was unexpected.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Klingbeil-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a> Following the reintroduction of the original Coke recipe, the strategy that Burson-Marsteller advised <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company" title="The Coca-Cola Company" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Coca-Cola</a> to employ was to "be humble" and apologize to the U.S. public for making the decision to change to New Coke.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Hynum-29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[29]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Piper-33" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[33]</a> Just two months after original Coke was reintroduced as Classic Coke, sales of Coke, Coca-Cola Classic and Cherry Coke had risen 10 percent compared with the previous year.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-36" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[36]</a>The 1980s also saw the company become involved in large-scale publicity events. In 1984, Burson-Marsteller first brought entertainment and sports together to generate publicity for its clients with the organization of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T" title="AT&T" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">AT&T</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Summer_Olympics_torch_relay" title="1984 Summer Olympics torch relay" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Olympic Torch Relay</a>, sponsored by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_company" class="mw-redirect" title="Telecommunications company" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">telecommunications company</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-37" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[37]</a> This was the largest promotional event that the company had undertaken to date, with up to 150 people working full-time on organizing the 8,000-mile relay.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-38" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[38]</a> One year later, Burson-Marsteller executive Geoff Nightingale came up with the idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_Across_America" title="Hands Across America" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Hands Across America</a> as a fundraising event for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_for_Africa" class="mw-redirect" title="USA for Africa" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">USA for Africa</a> sponsored by its client Coca-Cola.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-McDougal-39" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[39]</a>By 1983, Burson-Marsteller had become the world's largest PR firm, with $63.8 million in revenue for that year.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Much-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a> The following year it acquired Cohn & Wolfe, an Atlanta-based public relations firm,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-ReferenceB-40" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[40]</a> which operated as a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller until 2000. Burson-Marsteller had established its first offices in Asia in 1973, with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur" title="Kuala Lumpur" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Kuala Lumpur</a> and Tokyo,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Hynum-29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[29]</a> and by the mid-1980s it had further expanded overseas operations with the founding of offices in Australia and New Zealand.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Walford-41" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[41]</a> A subsidiary of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhua_News_Agency" title="Xinhua News Agency" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Xinhua News Agency</a> (New China News Agency) went into partnership with Burson-Marsteller in 1985, providing commercial public relations for foreign firms in China and for Chinese companies internationally.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Hooper-42" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[42]</a> This subsidiary later became China Global Public Relations, mainland China's first specialized public relations consulting firm.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-43" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[43]</a> Following Burson-Marsteller's appointment as the official public relations counsel for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Summer_Olympics" title="1988 Summer Olympics" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Seoul Olympics</a> in 1988,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Holmes-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a> it was the first foreign public relations firm to be granted a license to open a wholly owned communications and marketing office in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea" title="South Korea" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">South Korea</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Yoshihara-44" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[44]</a>Burson-Marsteller also expanded into Central and South America during the 1980s. Offices were established in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan,Puerto_Rico" title="San Juan, Puerto Rico" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">San Juan, Puerto Rico</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Paulo" title="São Paulo" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">São Paulo</a>. A regional headquarters was established in Miami, Florida, in May 1989,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Mexico_Venture-45" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[45]</a> and with the regional headquarters in place, the company won <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterCard" class="mw-redirect" title="MasterCard" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">MasterCard</a> International's Latin American account, which became one of the firm's largest accounts at the time.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Growth_Potential-46" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[46]</a>The agency's business grew by about 24% annually during the 1980s, according to Burson, and PR Week stated in 1988 that Burson-Marsteller was "the largest international PR firm in the world" by that point.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Holmes-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a> The following year, Burson stepped down as CEO of the firm. He continued to work on major accounts such as Coca-Cola and Merrill Lynch,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Klingbeil-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a> while James H. Dowling succeeded him as the second ever CEO of Burson-Marsteller.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-47" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[47]</a><h4 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1990s: Global presence and Philip Morris[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe&action=edit&section=8" title="Edit section: 1990s: Global presence and Philip Morris" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none; white-space: nowrap;">edit</a>]</h4>By 1990 Burson-Marsteller had branches in 28 countries, with 52 offices and over 2,300 employees.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Izat-31" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[31]</a> Notable international work carried out by Burson-Marsteller in the early 1990s included a public relations campaign undertaken for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Tourism(Egypt)" title="Ministry of Tourism (Egypt)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Egyptian Ministry of Tourism</a> in 1993, following terrorist attacks on tourists in Egypt. The campaign aimed to encourage tourists to visit Egypt, focusing on recent archaeological discoveries.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Holliday-48" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[48]</a>In December 1994, the company received attention after an executive at Burson-Marsteller was killed by a mailbomb sent by the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski" title="Ted Kaczynski" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Unabomber</a>". <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post" title="The Washington Post" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Washington Post</a> reported that Ted Kaczynski targeted Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas Mosser due to a belief <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil" title="ExxonMobil" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Exxon</a> had consulted with Burson-Marsteller during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill" title="Exxon Valdez oil spill" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Valdez oil spill</a>. Burson-Marsteller stated that they had advised Exxon in the past and had been asked to review and analyze Exxon's handling of the disaster afterwards, but had not been engaged to manage the crisis itself.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-49" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[49]</a>In the 1990s the company also received considerable attention for PR campaigns on behalf of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_company" class="mw-redirect" title="Tobacco company" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">tobacco company</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria" title="Altria" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Altria</a> (formerly Philip Morris Companies Inc.) in which it was engaged to discredit anti-smoking research and legislation attempts.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-50" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[50]</a> In 1993 Burson-Marsteller helped organize a response to a 1992 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency" title="United States Environmental Protection Agency" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">United States Environmental Protection Agency</a> (EPA) report which had identified <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondhand_smoke" class="mw-redirect" title="Secondhand smoke" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">secondhand smoke</a> as a Group A human carcinogen.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Ong-51" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[51]</a> The strategy employed by Burson-Marsteller was to build doubt among consumers about the scientific validity of the EPA report and to target legislators who supported curbs on smoking.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-52" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[52]</a> As part of this strategy, the company organized a smokers' rights group called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Smokers_Alliance" title="National Smokers Alliance" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Smokers Alliance</a> (NSA),<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Gellene-53" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[53]</a> to target politicians who supported anti-smoking legislation.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-54" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[54]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-55" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[55]</a> The NSA was founded with an estimated $4 million in Philip Morris seed money and the involvement of some fifty other tobacco industry players.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-56" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[56]</a>Their activities also included support for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Advancement_of_Sound_Science_Coalition" class="mw-redirect" title="The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition</a> (TASSC), which was created in 1993 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APCO_Worldwide" title="APCO Worldwide" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">APCO Worldwide</a>, another major public relations firm, with funding from Philip Morris.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-legacy.library.ucsf.edu-57" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[57]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-ong-glantz-58" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[58]</a> In Europe, Burson-Marsteller provided support for an advertising campaign in 1996 carried out by Philip Morris. Advertisements were published comparing the health risks of secondhand smoke exposure with a range of other activities. This campaign received significant coverage in the media across Europe.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Rogers-59" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[59]</a> Burson-Marsteller was criticized in the media for its involvement with Philip Morris, and in 1999 a demonstration was held outside the firm's headquarters, protesting their role as PR for Philip Morris.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-60" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[60]</a> Those involved went to great lengths not to reveal the tobacco industry support of these organizations, to give the appearance they represented grassroots opposition to anti-smoking laws rather than the business interests of their sponsors.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-ncbi.nlm.nih.gov-61" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[61]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-monbiot-62" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[62]</a>At the end of the 1990s, the firm had retained its position as the largest PR agency in the world, with fees of over $274 million for that year.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Klingbeil-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a> As part of the company's continued growth, it acquired grassroots lobbying organization Direct Impact in April 1999.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-63" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[63]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-64" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[64]</a> In the same year, Harold Burson was named by PR Week as the PR industry's "most influential person of the 20th century".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Much-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burson_Cohn_%26_Wolfe#cite_note-Klingbeil-35" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[35]</a><h4 style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2000s</h4><div>...</div>=new an 1119Inside Purdue Pharma’s media playbook: How it planted the opioid ‘anti-story’

Written by David Armstrong / ProPublica November 21, 2019

In

2004, Purdue Pharma was facing a threat to sales of its blockbuster

opioid painkiller OxyContin, which were approaching $2 billion a year.

With abuse of the drug on the rise, prosecutors were bringing criminal

charges against some doctors for prescribing massive amounts of

OxyContin.That

October, an essay ran across the top of The New York Times’ health

section under the headline “Doctors Behind Bars: Treating Pain is Now

Risky Business.” Its author, Sally Satel, a psychiatrist, argued that

law enforcement was overzealous, and that some patients needed large

doses of opioids to relieve pain. She described an unnamed colleague who

had run a pain service at a university medical center and had a patient

who could only get out of bed by taking “staggering” levels of

oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin. She also cited a study

published in a medical journal showing that OxyContin is rarely the only

drug found in autopsies of oxycodone-related deaths.

“When

you scratch the surface of someone who is addicted to painkillers, you

usually find a seasoned drug abuser with a previous habit involving

pills, alcohol, heroin or cocaine,” Satel wrote. “Contrary to media

portrayals, the typical OxyContin addict does not start out as a pain

patient who fell unwittingly into a drug habit.”The

Times identified Satel as “a resident scholar at the American

Enterprise Institute and an unpaid advisory board member for the

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.” But readers

weren’t told about her involvement, and the American Enterprise

Institute’s, with Purdue.

Among the connections

revealed by emails and documents obtained by ProPublica: Purdue donated

$50,000 annually to the institute, which is commonly known as AEI, from

2003 through this year, plus contributions for special events, for a

total of more than $800,000. The

unnamed doctor in Satel’s article was an employee of Purdue, according

to an unpublished draft of the story. The study Satel cited was funded

by Purdue and written by Purdue employees and consultants. And, a month

before the piece was published, Satel sent a draft to Burt Rosen,

Purdue’s Washington lobbyist and vice president of federal policy and

legislative affairs, asking him if it “seems imbalanced.”

On the day of publication, Jason Bertsch, AEI’s vice president of development, alerted Rosen to “Sally’s very good piece.”
“Great piece,” Rosen responded.Purdue’s

hidden relationships with Satel and AEI illustrate how the company and

its public relations consultants aggressively countered criticism that

its prized painkiller helped cause the opioid epidemic. Since 1999, more

than 200,000 people have died from overdoses related to prescription

opioids. For almost two decades, and continuing as recently as a

piece published last year in Slate, Satel has pushed back against

restrictions on opioid prescribing in more than a dozen articles and

radio and television appearances, without disclosing any connections to

Purdue, according to a ProPublica review. Over the same period, Purdue

was represented by Dezenhall Resources, a PR firm known for its

pugnacious defense of beleaguered corporations. Purdue was paying

Dezenhall this summer, and still owes it money, according to bankruptcy

filings.Purdue

funded think tanks tapped by the media for expert commentary,

facilitated publication of sympathetic articles in leading outlets where

its role wasn’t disclosed, and deterred or challenged negative

coverage, according to the documents and emails. Its efforts to

influence public perception of the opioid crisis provide an inside look

at how corporations blunt criticism of alleged wrongdoing. Purdue’s

tactics are reminiscent of the oil and gas industry, which has been

accused of promoting misleading science that downplays its impact on

climate change, and of big tobacco, which sought to undermine evidence

that nicotine is addictive and secondhand smoke is dangerous.

Media

spinning was just one prong of Purdue’s strategy to fend off limits on

opioid prescribing. It contested hundreds of lawsuits, winning

dismissals or settling the cases with a provision that documents remain

secret. The company paid leading doctors in the pain field to assure

patients that OxyContin was safe. It also funded groups, like the

American Pain Foundation, that described themselves as advocates for

pain patients. Several of those groups minimized the risk of addiction

and fought against efforts to curb opioid use for chronic pain patients.
Purdue’s

campaign may have helped thwart more vigorous regulation of opioid

prescribing, especially in the decade after the first widespread reports

of OxyContin abuse and addiction began appearing in 2001. It may also

have succeeded in delaying the eventual reckoning for Purdue and the

billionaire Sackler family that owns the company. Although Purdue

pleaded guilty in 2007 to a federal charge of understating the risk of

addiction, and agreed to pay $600 million in fines and penalties, the

Sacklers’ role in the opioid epidemic didn’t receive widespread coverage

for another decade. As backlash against the family swelled, the company

filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September.“Efforts

to reverse the epidemic have had to counter widespread narratives that

opioids are generally safe and that it is people who abuse them that are

the problem,” said Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Center for Drug

Safety and Effectiveness at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

Health, who has served as a paid expert witness in litigation alleging

that Purdue’s marketing of OxyContin misled doctors and the public.

“These are very important narratives, and they have become the lens

through which people view and understand the epidemic. They have proven

to be potent means of hampering interventions to reduce the continued

oversupply of opioids.”Satel,

in an email to ProPublica, said that she reached her conclusions

independently. “I do not accept payment from industry for my work

(articles, presentations, etc),” she wrote. “And I am open to meeting

with anyone if they have a potentially interesting topic to tell me

about. If I decide I am intrigued, I do my own research.”
As for

Purdue’s funding of AEI, Satel said in an interview that she “had no

idea” that the company was paying her employer and that she walls

herself off from information regarding institute funders. “I never want

to know,” she said. She didn’t disclose that the study she referred to

was also funded by Purdue, she said, because “I cite peer-reviewed

papers by title as they appear in the journal of publication.”

The

sharing of drafts before publication with subjects of stories or other

interested parties is prohibited or discouraged by many media outlets.

Satel said she didn’t remember sharing the draft with Rosen and it was

not her usual practice. “That’s very atypical,” she said. However, Satel

shared a draft of another story with Purdue officials in 2016,

according to emails she sent. In that case, Satel said, she was checking

facts.
Satel said she didn’t remember why the doctor with a patient

on high doses of painkillers wasn’t named in the Times story. The draft

she sent to Purdue identified him as Sidney Schnoll, then the company’s

executive medical director, who defended OxyContin at public meetings

and in media stories. In an interview, Schnoll described Satel as an old

friend and said her description of his patient was accurate. He left

Purdue in 2005 and now works for a consulting company that has Purdue as

a client, he said.
Purdue, in a statement, said it has held

memberships in several Washington think tanks over the years. “These

dues-paying memberships help the company better understand key issues

affecting its business in a complex policy and regulatory environment,”

it said. “Purdue has been contacted over the years by policy experts at a

variety of think tanks who are seeking additional context on industry

issues for their work. Our engagement has always been appropriate and

aimed at providing a science-based perspective that the company felt was

often overlooked in the larger policy conversation.” The company

declined to discuss specific questions about internal documents and

emails reviewed by ProPublica.

A spokeswoman for the Times,

Danielle Rhoades Ha, said in an email that the company doesn’t know the

details of how the Satel story was handled because the editors who

worked on it are no longer employed there. She noted that the Times

labeled the article as an “Essay” and cited Satel’s connection to AEI.

Currently, she said, Times editors “generally advise reporters not to

share full drafts of stories with sources in the course of

fact-checking,” but there is no formal rule.
Purdue launched

OxyContin in 1996, and it soon became one of the most widely prescribed

opioid painkillers. By 2001, it was generating both enormous profits as

well as growing concern about overdoses and addiction. That August, a

column in the New York Post opinion section criticized media reports

that OxyContin was being abused. The piece — headlined “Heroic

Dopeheads?” — mocked a “new species of ‘victim,’ the ‘hillbilly heroin’

addict.” The real victims, the article contended, were pain patients who

may lose access to a “prescription wonder drug.”
At 5:17 a.m. on the

day the article was published, Eric Dezenhall, the founder of

Washington, D.C., crisis management firm Dezenhall Resources, sent an

email to Purdue executives, according to documents filed by the Oklahoma

attorney general in a lawsuit against opioid makers.
“See today’s New York Post on OxyContin,” he wrote. “The anti-story begins.”

Purdue

had hired Dezenhall Resources that summer. Dezenhall’s hard-nosed

reputation fit the blame-the-victim strategy advocated by Purdue’s

then-president, Richard Sackler. “We have to hammer on the abusers in

every way possible,” Sackler wrote in a 2001 email quoted in a complaint

by the state of Massachusetts against the company. “They are the

culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”
Purdue later

followed this approach to fend off a New Jersey mother who was urging

federal regulators to investigate the marketing of OxyContin. Her

daughter had died while taking the drug for back pain. “We think she

abused drugs,” a Purdue spokesman said without offering evidence. Purdue

later apologized for the comment.
However, pain patients with

legitimate prescriptions for OxyContin and similar painkillers can and

do become addicted to the drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention warns that “anyone who takes prescription opioids can become

addicted to them,” and that “as many as one in four patients receiving

long-term opioid therapy in a primary care setting struggles with opioid

addiction.” A review article in The New England Journal of Medicine

reported rates of “carefully diagnosed addiction” in pain patients

averaged just under 8% in studies, while misuse, abuse and

addiction-related aberrant behaviors ranged from 15% to 26% of pain

patients.Although

Dezenhall Resources was working for Purdue until recently, it rarely

has been linked publicly to the company. Purdue paid Dezenhall a total

of $309,272 in July and August of this year and owes it an additional

$186,575, according to bankruptcy court filings. The total amount paid

to Dezenhall since 2001 was not disclosed in records reviewed by

ProPublica.
Dezenhall Resources has also defended Exxon Mobil

against criticisms from environmental groups and former Enron CEO

Jeffrey Skilling as he fought against fraud charges, according to a 2006

BusinessWeek profile of Eric Dezenhall that called him “The Pitbull of

Public Relations.” (Skilling was later convicted.) It reported that

Dezenhall arranged a pro-Exxon demonstration on Capitol Hill to distract

attention from a nearby environmental protest, and that the company

discussed a plan to pay newspaper op-ed writers to question the motives

of an Enron whistleblower. “We believe a winning outcome can only be

achieved by directly stopping your attackers,” Dezenhall Resources

states on its website.ProPublica

reviewed emails to Purdue officials in which Dezenhall and his

employees took credit for dissuading a national television news program

from pursuing a story about OxyContin; helping to quash a documentary

project on OxyContin abuse at a major cable network; forcing multiple

outlets to issue corrections related to OxyContin coverage; and gaining

coverage of sympathetic pain patients on a television news program and

in newspaper columns.
“Dezenhall

has been instrumental in helping with the placement of pain patient

advocacy stories over the last several years,” Dezenhall Executive Vice

President Sheila Hershow wrote in a 2006 email.
Eric Dezenhall told

ProPublica that he does not confirm or deny the identity of clients.

While declining to answer questions about Purdue, or comment on the

BusinessWeek article about him, he said that his company acts

appropriately and seeks fair and truthful coverage.
“We regularly

work with experts and journalists, including Pro Publica, to ensure

accuracy in reporting and persuade and dissuade them regarding various

storylines with facts and research,” he wrote. “Ultimately, these

journalists and experts decide how to use the information provided.”One of Dezenhall Resources’ first moves, after being hired by Purdue, was to cultivate Satel.

In July 2001, Hershow reported to Purdue officials that she and Eric

Dezenhall had lunch with Satel and the doctor was “eager to get

started.” Hershow said Satel had read a “debunking package” and was

“interested in doing an opinion piece on the medical needs of patients

being sacrificed to protect drug abusers.”
Satel said that the meeting with Dezenhall was not unusual, and that “I often talk to people who have interesting stories.”Satel

was raised in Queens and has an Ivy League pedigree. She attended

Cornell University as an undergraduate before going to medical school at

Brown University. She was a psychiatry professor at Yale University for

several years and then moved to Washington. For a little over a decade

beginning in 1997, she was a staff psychiatrist at a methadone clinic in

the city.
She has become an influential voice on opioids, addiction

and pain treatment. Her writings have been published in The Wall Street

Journal, USA Today, The Atlantic, Slate, Health Affairs, Forbes,

Politico and elsewhere. She frequently appears on panels, television

shows and in newspaper articles as an expert on the opioid crisis and

pain prescribing guidelines. “We’ve entered a new era of opiophobia,”

she recently told The Washington Post.Satel

has been a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute since

Among the notable figures who have spent time at AEI are the late

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former Trump national security

adviser John Bolton. Current fellow Scott Gottlieb returned to AEI this

year after serving as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration, which approves and regulates prescription drugs like

OxyContin.
Purdue

said its annual payments of $50,000 to AEI were part of the institute’s

corporate program. That program offers corporations the opportunity to

“gain access to the leading scholars in the most important policy areas

for executive briefings and knowledge sharing,” according to the

institute’s website. Corporations can choose between three levels of

donations: At $50,000 a year, Purdue was in the middle level, the

“Executive Circle.” Besides the annual payments, Purdue has also paid a

total of $24,000 to attend two special events hosted by the institute,

according to a company spokesman.Internal

emails show the main Purdue contact with AEI was Rosen, the drugmaker’s

in-house lobbyist based in Washington. In one email, Rosen described

the leaders of the think tank as “very good friends” and also noted that

former FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan ascended to that job after a

stint at AEI as a scholar. Rosen also organized a group of pain reliever

manufacturers and industry funded groups into an organization called

the Pain Care Forum. It met to share information on government

efforts to restrict opioid prescribing, according to records produced in

litigation against Purdue.
Veronique Rodman, a spokeswoman for AEI,

said the institute does not publicly discuss donors. She said that the

institute does not accept research contracts, and that its researchers

come to their own conclusions. “It makes sense” that Satel would be

unaware of AEI funders, she said.Dezenhall’s

courting of Satel soon paid off. A month after the lunch with Dezenhall

and Hershow, Satel defended Purdue’s flagship drug in an article for

the opinion page of The Boston Globe.
“Something must be done to keep

OxyContin out of the wrong hands, but the true public health tragedy

will be depriving patients who need it to survive in relative comfort

day to day,” she wrote.
In February 2002, AEI held a panel discussion

at its headquarters to answer the question, “Who is responsible for the

abuse of OxyContin?” The panel of experts included Satel, a Purdue

executive and a Purdue lawyer. Covering the event, Reuters Health

reported that the panel “mostly agreed that Purdue Pharma should not be

viewed as the culprit in the problem of the abuse of its long-acting

painkiller OxyContin.”
Two months later, Purdue approved spending

$2,000 to pay for Satel to speak to the staff of a New Orleans hospital

about addiction, according to internal company records. Satel said she

had “absolutely no memory of speaking at a hospital in New Orleans.” The

physician who organized the planned event said he doesn’t recall if it

took place, and the hospital no longer has records of medical staff

talks from that period.In 2003, a Dezenhall staffer recommended Satel as a guest to a producer for “The Diane Rehm Show” on NPR.

The firm and Purdue executives, including Vice President David Haddox,

helped prep Satel for the appearance. Haddox passed along what he called

“interesting intel for Sally” that Rehm’s mother suffered from chronic

headaches. “Thanks for helping us get her up to speed for the show,”

Hershow replied.
A spokeswoman for WAMU, the NPR station in

Washington that produced the Rehm show, said there was no policy to ask

guests about funding of their organizations, or if there was a financial

connection to the show’s topic. “For most segments, the producers would

try to bring as many perspectives to the table as possible so that

listeners would be better able to make their own informed judgment of

the topic at hand,” wrote the spokeswoman, Julia Slattery.
ProPublica was unable to reach Haddox for comment.Also

that year, when conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh revealed

that he was addicted to prescription painkillers, Purdue declined a

request from CNN for a company representative to discuss the news on the

air. Instead, Purdue recommended Satel, who assured viewers that

OxyContin was a “very effective and actually safe drug, if taken as

prescribed.” Dezenhall’s Hershow told Purdue executives in an email that

she was “very glad Sally went on.” Hershow, a former investigative

producer at ABC News, declined comment for this article.In

September 2004, Forbes magazine published a Satel article under the

headline, “OxyContin doesn’t cause addiction. Its abusers are already

addicts.”
“I am happy this morning!” Purdue’s then general

counsel, Howard Udell, emailed other company executives and Eric

Dezenhall with the subject line “RE: Forbes Article.” Three years later,

Udell and two other Purdue executives would plead guilty in federal

court to a misdemeanor criminal charge related to misleading patients

and doctors about the addictive nature of OxyContin.
As part of that

2007 settlement, Purdue admitted to acting “with the intent to defraud

or mislead” when it promoted OxyContin as less addictive and less

subject to abuse than other painkillers.

In an article for The Wall Street Journal headlined “Oxy Morons,” Satel

defended the company. “The real public-health damage here comes from

the pitched campaign conducted by zealous prosecutors and

public-interest advocates to demonize the drug itself,” she wrote.After

Purdue and Dezenhall launched their “anti-story,” media reports of

OxyContin addiction and abuse declined for several years. In 2001, there

were 1,204 stories that included the words “OxyContin,” “abuse” and

“Purdue” published in media outlets archived on the Nexis database. The

number plummeted to 361 in 2002 and to 150 in 2006.
Purdue’s counterattack against an ambitious investigative series about OxyContin abuse may have contributed to that drop.

An October 2003 series in the Orlando Sentinel, “OxyContin Under Fire,”

found that Purdue’s aggressive marketing combined with weak regulation

had contributed to “a wave of death and destruction.”The

series, however, was marred by several errors that were detailed in a

front-page correction nearly four months later. The reporter resigned,

and two editors on the series were reassigned. While acknowledging the

mistakes, the newspaper did not retract the series, and its review

upheld the conclusion that oxycodone was involved in a large number of

the overdoses in Florida.
Dezenhall Resources, in an email, took

credit for forcing the newspaper to issue the corrections. “Dezenhall’s

efforts resulted in a complete front-page retraction of the erroneous

5-day, 19-part, front-page Orlando Sentinel series,” Hershow wrote in a

2006 email summarizing Dezenhall’s work for Purdue under the subject

line “Success in Fighting Negative Coverage.”
Purdue officials and

the company’s public relations agencies came up with a 13-point plan to

generate media coverage of the errors. It included getting a doctor to

talk about how the series “frightened and mislead (sic) the people of

Florida” and having a pain patient write a newspaper opinion column on

the subject. The Sentinel series, one Purdue official wrote to other

company executives and Dezenhall’s Hershow, was an opportunity to let

the country know about “all of the sensational reporting on OxyContin

abuse over the past 4 years. The conclusion: this is the most overblown

health story in the last decade!”
In the six years after Purdue

challenged the Sentinel’s findings, the death rate from prescription

drugs increased 84.2% in Florida. The biggest rise, 264.6%, came from

deaths involving oxycodone. The state became a hotbed for inappropriate

opioid prescribing as unscrupulous pain clinics attracted out of state

drug seekers. The route traveled by many from small towns in Appalachia

to the Florida clinics was nicknamed the “Oxycontin Express.”In

2017, 14 years after the Sentinel series was published, the Columbia

Journalism Review described it as “right too soon” and said it “eerily

prefigured today’s opioid epidemic.”
Purdue couldn’t hold off

restrictions on opioid prescribing forever. Since 2011, a growing number

of states, insurers and federal health agencies have adopted policies

that have led to annual declines in prescribing. Advocates for pain

treatment have complained that this turnabout has gone too far, and the

CDC recently advised doctors against suddenly discontinuing opioids.

Still, the U.S. remains far and away the world leader in per capita

opioid prescriptions.Under

increasing pressure, Purdue enlisted other public relations firms known

for aggressively helping corporations in crisis. Burson-Marsteller,

which after a merger last year is now known as BCW, signed an agreement

in 2011 to provide Purdue “strategic counsel.” Burson-Marsteller

represented Johnson & Johnson as it responded to the Tylenol

poisoning case and Union Carbide after the deadly Bhopal explosion in

India. According to documents, it helped Purdue identify and counter

“potential threats,” such as congressional investigators and the group

Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. A 2013 proposed work plan

between the companies called on Burson to perform as much as $2.7

million of work for Purdue. BCW did not respond to requests for comment.Purdue also employed the services of Purple Strategies,

a Washington-area firm that reportedly represented BP after the

Deepwater Horizon disaster. Purdue paid $621,653 to Purple Strategies in

the 90 days prior to the drugmaker’s Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing and

owes it an additional $207,625, according to court filings. Purple

Strategies did not respond to requests for comment.
Purdue also added

Stu Loeser to its stable. The head of an eponymous media strategy

company, Loeser was press secretary for Michael Bloomberg when he was

mayor of New York City, and he is now a spokesman for Bloomberg’s

possible presidential bid.Soon

after Loeser began representing Purdue, Satel wrote in a 2018 piece for

Politico headlined, “The Myth of What’s Driving the Opioid Crisis,”

about “a false narrative” that the opioid epidemic “is driven by

patients becoming addicted to doctor-prescribed opioids.”Loeser

told Purdue executives in an email that “we are going to work with AEI

to ‘promote’ this so it comes across as what it is: their thoughtful

response to other writing.” His team was working to target the Satel

story “to land in social media feeds of people who have searched for

opioid issues and potentially even people who have read specific stories

online,” he added.
Loeser said in an interview that he didn’t end up working with AEI to promote the story. He said Purdue is no longer a client.
<div></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">A two-page document that Definers distributed about Freedom From Facebook noted that “at least four of the groups in the coalition receive funding or are aligned with George Soros, who has publicly criticized Facebook.” The four groups named in the document do appear to have received funding from Mr. Soros’s Open Society Foundations.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">A second, 12-page document sought to link Freedom From Facebook to Mr. Soros and to David Brock, a Democratic operative who is widely portrayed in conservative circles as a master of political dirty tricks. While pushing the connection to Mr. Soros, the document highlighted that protesters from Freedom From Facebook held up signs with images reminiscent of old, anti-Semitic propaganda.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Definers said in a statement that the document was “entirely factual and based on public records.”</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Eddie Vale, a Freedom From Facebook spokesman, said the coalition’s primary funder was the computer scientist David Magerman but he declined to disclose other funders. Mr. Vale said the coalition did not receive money from corporations. Open Society Foundations said it did not fund the coalition.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for Open Society Foundations, said the philanthropy’s president spoke with Ms. Sandberg on Thursday and requested that Facebook commission an independent review of the company’s relationship with Definers, with results made public within three months.</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">
</div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">The recent work by Definers was not the first time Facebook has tried to smear its rivals. In 2011, Facebook hired the public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller to urge reporters to investigate Google for invading people’s privacy. The move backfired when reporters revealed the plan.</div></div><div></div>2x?<a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes">https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes</a><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Burson-Marsteller</h1>A Corporate Profile

By Corporate Watch UK
Completed July 2002
<hr style="border: none; height: 1px; background: rgb(221, 221, 221); clear: both; float: none; width: 710px; margin: 0px 0px 1.45em;" /><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em;">4. Corporate Crimes</h2><url /><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#regimes" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.1 Working for Repressive Regimes</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#biotech" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.2 Greenwashing Biotech</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#climate" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.3 Climate Change</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#rio" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.4 Stuffing Rio</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#antienv" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.5 Organising anti-environmental action</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#tobacco" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.6 Defending Big Tobacco</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#pollution" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.7 Fighting for Environmental Pollution</a></li><li style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#other" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.8 Other</a></li>
<hr style="border: none; height: 1px; background: rgb(221, 221, 221); clear: both; float: none; width: 710px; margin: 0px 0px 1.45em;" /><h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="regimes" id="regimes" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.1 Working for Repressive Regimes</a></h3>Nigeria

B-M flacked for both the Nigerian Government and Royal Dutch/Shell during and after the Biafran war. Reports of instability and genocide at the time had hurt Nigerias international image, they hired B-M to discredit these reports[24].

The relationship continued long after the Biafran war. From 1991-2 the Nigerian military junta paid B-Ms lobbying subsidiary, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (acquired in 1991) over $1m in fees[25].

Indonesia

After the invasion of East Timor around 200,000 people, one third of the population were murdered, the Indonesian government has also been accused of genocidal policies against the peoples of Irian Jaya, amongst many other human rights abuses. In 1996, BM was hired by the Indonesian government to clean up its image[26]. B-M does however deny handling the issue of genocide in East Timor.

Argentina

BM worked for the Argentinian military junta led by General Jorge Videla, which seized power in a coup d'_tat in 1976. B-Ms job was to improve the country's international image and create the impression of stability to attract foreign investment. During Videla's reign, 35,000 people 'disappeared' and thousands of political prisoners were tortured. Videla is now serving a life sentence for murder.

Harold Burson commented that, "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clear-cut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities."[27]

Saudi Arabia, et al.

B-M has worked for a host of regimes with appalling human rights records including the notoriously repressive and corrupt government of Saudi Arabia, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, and the governments of Sri Lanka and Singapore[28]. Three days after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, in which 13 of the 16 alleged suicide bombers were Saudis, Saudi Arabia again hired B-M to ensure that its national image remains untarnished[29].

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<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="biotech" id="biotech" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.2 Greenwashing Biotech</a></h3>
rBGH/BST

In the 1980s recombinant bovine growth hormone or bovine somatatrophin (rBGH/BST) was Monsantos flagship biotechnology product. A genetically engineered substitute for the cows growth hormone, rBGH was developed to increase the milk yield of dairy cows, a market that Monsantos CEO R.J. Mahoney estimated in 1985 to be worth $1bn a year. It was also one of the first biotech products to be readied for the market and as such the whole biotech industry had an interest. The only problems were gaining approval for its commercial use and some unfavourable scientific opinions of the artificial hormone. Monsantos own tests showed an increased risk of mastitis in rBGH treated cattle, that the milk went off quicker and that it contained higher levels of pus. FDA scientist, Dr Richard Burroughs concluded from analysing test data that Monsanto was manipulating the figures. In 1989 he was sacked after complaining to Congress that his superiors were suppressing his accusations.To deal with the expected controversy Monsanto assembled an army of PR companies to aid them of which B-M was one. Pro-rBGH information was rapidly distributed to the dairy industry, the press and the general public. In this way a grass-roots coalition was formed and extensive lobbying of legislators began[30].B-M employees were twice exposed working covertly during the rBGH campaign.Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union was the author of a report on rBGH. Before the report was published, he was contacted by a B-M employee claiming to be a scheduler for ABC Televisions show, Nightline. She asked for a preview of the report and Hansens CV, under the pretext of researching rBGH for a Nightline program on the issue. Hansen was suspicious however and inquiries at ABC revealed that no one from Nightline had called Hansen. The fax number she gave turned out to belong to B-M[31].B-M also tried to infiltrate the campaign against rBGH, run by academic, author and environmental campaigner Jeremy Rifkin. A B-M employee claiming to represent a non-existent group called Maryland Citizen Consumers Council, attended anti-rBGH meetings, but her manner aroused suspicions amongst the activists who quickly exposed her. Burson-Marsteller disavowed all knowledge of her activities, suggesting that she was attending in her free time[32].

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Europabio

Burson-Marsteller also devised the PR strategy for Europabio, the European industry association for biotech companies. They famously advised the industry to stay off the communications killing fields that are the public issues of environmental and human health risk, i.e. to avoid participating in any public debate on these issues. The strategy recommended leaving it to regulatory bodies and other third parties to deal with these issues, and to communicate through symbols and stories, not logic. A positive image of biotechnology may be created through highlighting new products and potential beneficiaries, and developing a very close relationship with the media; EuropaBio must turn itself into the journalist's best and most reliable continuing source of biotechnology/bioindustries inspiration and information - the first-stop help desk where they get no industry propaganda but practical, editor-pleasing, deadline-beating, connect to interesting stories and personalities - even adversarial - relevant to their readerships.[33]Monsanto

Details of further lobbying and PR operations conducted by B-M client, Monsanto can be found <a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes?lid=209" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">here</a>.<a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#top" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Back to top</a>

<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em;"><a name="climate" id="climate" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.3 Climate Change</a></h3>In July 2001 B-M issued a denial that it had set up the Global Climate Coalition, a controversial lobbying group for the fossil fuels industry that works toward voluntary codes of conduct and market based solutions to climate change and against mandatory emissions limits. The allegation, which has been quoted in many other sources, originated with PR Watch who, after much fact checking, had to admit that they had made a mistake[34]. Although it remains a mystery why B-M, an industry leader in perceptions management, should have taken so long to refute the claim.Despite this B-M has worked hard to oppose emissions capping legislation. They helped to set up the Business Council on Sustainable Development [see below] which successfully prevented the 1992 Rio Earth from dealing with climate change, and have orchestrated many other anti-emissions control campaigns.Foundation for Clean Air Progress

Burson-Marsteller is behind a deceptively-named group called the "Foundation for Clean Air Progress" (FCAP), which was founded in 1995. Describing itself as Your source for public information and education about improving air quality in America[35], you might think that the FCAP supports measures to control air pollution. In fact, it was formed specifically to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to adopt tougher air pollution controls. The Washington Post reported on June 17, 1997 that FCAP participates in a "multimillion-dollar campaign to turn back EPA regulations for smog and soot. ... The nerve centre behind the attack is a coalition of more than 500 businesses and trade groups that calls itself the Air Quality Standards Coalition. Created specifically to battle the clean air proposals, the coalition operates out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade group. Its leadership includes top managers of petroleum, automotive and utility companies as well as long-time Washington insiders such as C. Boyden Gray, a counsel to former president George Bush. The same industries would likely bear the brunt of the costs for the new regulations, which the EPA estimates at more than $ 6 billion a year.[36]BTU Tax

In 1993 Burson-Marsteller led a $1.8 million campaign to defeat a proposed tax on fossil fuels. President Clintons BTU Tax was the most ambitious measure to combat climate change yet proposed by an American government. The BTU Tax was to be levied on fossil fuels, specifically on the heat generating capacity of fossil fuels a BTU (British Thermal unit) is a measure of how much heat will be released by a given mass of fuel. The tax would have added 25 cents to the price of a gallon of petrol.The tax was at the centre of Clintons plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which he aimed to reduce to 1990 levels by 2000.Big business was unhappy with the plans however. The National Association of Manufacturers (a sponsor of the Global Climate Coalition), the American Petroleum Institute, over 1,600 companies, large and small, and farmers organised themselves to create the American Energy Alliance (AEA), specifically to derail the BTU tax[37].The AEA hired B-M to orchestrate the campaign. Deploying around 45 staff in 23 states, B-M organised a grass roots letter writing and phone-in campaign. They placed anti-BTU articles and editorials in the press, commissioned sceptical economists to write reports and obtained media access for businessmen to express their views. Naturally they also lobbied against the Tax in Washington D.C.[38]Congressional support for the BTU tax quickly withered away and Clintons plan was defeated. Congress voted for the tax to be kept below the five cents level. Treasury Secretary Lloyd-Bentsen described the campaign as one of the most sophisticated jobs I've seen by lobbyists in a long time.

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<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="rio" id="rio" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.4 Stuffing Rio</a></h3>In the early '90s, Burson-Marsteller was instrumental in setting up, and subsequently flacked for, the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), whose members include Chevron, Volkswagen, Ciba-Geigy, Mitsubishi, Dow Chemicals, Du Pont and Shell. B-Ms mission was to greenwash the image of big business in the run-up to the Earth Summit and to ensure that no binding regulations were passed to control the activities of TNCs.The BCSD was headed by Stephen Schmidheiny, a Swiss billionaire industrialist; and also a close friend of the Secretary-General of the UN Council on Environment and Development (UNCED). Substantial representations were made by the BCSD at UNCED, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit; with the result that proposals drawn up by the UN's own Centre for Transnational Corporations - concerning the environmental impact of these large companies, and issues of corporate responsibility and accountability - were not discussed or even circulated to delegates. The best hope for imposing accountability on the activities of TNCs was lost[39]. Furthermore, climate change was left off the agenda due to

lobbying.In 1994 the BCSD merged with the World Industry Council for the Environment, [ Europe Inc., p151; WICE was another industry front group created by the International Chamber of Commerce to promote the industry agenda at Rio] and became the World Business Council on Sustainable Development which continues to oppose enforceable environmental legislation and pushes for voluntary corporate action on environmental issues. The WBCSD is now gearing up for Rio + 10 the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg[40].

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<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="antienv" id="antienv" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.5 Organising anti-environmental action</a></h3>
The Wise Use Movement

The Wise Use movement is a loose network of groups within the USA that are held together by a common loathing of environmental pressure groups and environmental legislation and an agenda stressing the rights of private property owners to make their own decisions as to how best to exploit natural resources. The movement is a broad church uniting workers in the extractive industries, libertarian free marketers, and the extreme right. Many commentators believe that B-M was instrumental in setting up the Wise Use movement. Many of B-Ms more unsavoury clients have sponsored Wise Use groups, and in the 1980s when the movement began 36 of the companies known to be sponsoring Wise Use groups were clients of B-M[41]. Direct proof of B-Ms involvement has so far remained elusive.

British Columbia Forest Alliance

An anti-environmental group that B-M certainly did create is the British Columbia Forest Alliance. In late 1990 B-M was hired to re-engineer the public image of Canadas forest industries. The cornerstone of its campaign was a new front group, the British Columbia Forest Alliance. Environmental researcher, Andy Rowell described it thus The Alliance was designed as the industrys stealth bomber, packed with influential people and fuelled with industry dollars, to blast holes in the environmentalists forestry campaigns. However, it came packaged as a dove of concern and conciliation.[42]The BC Forest Alliance was launched in April 1991 under the leadership of Jack Munro, formerly the Chairperson of the International Wood Workers of America Union. Gary Ley, of B-M, was appointed executive director. In its first year it received $1m from corporate sponsors[43].The Vancouver Sun, the biggest newspaper in British Columbia, with a daily circulation of 260,000, soon fell under the influence of the Alliance. Forest company officials and Alliance members were soon visiting its offices. Before the launch of the BC Forest Alliance, the Sun had five full-time reporters covering forestry, native affairs, and other environmental issues. Soon only one environment journalist remained. The rest were assigned to a category called "resources" in the business section.Reporters who wrote critically about the forest industry, and those who probed the workings of the Forest Alliance and Burson-Marsteller itself, say they were subjected to pressure. The Sun's forestry reporter, Ben Parfitt, was pulled from environmental issues after writing about Burson-Marsteller and the Forest Alliance, and reporter Mark Hume was grilled by a logging company official and an industry consultant, in the editors office, about columns he had written about a pro-logging coalition, while the editor, Hume says, stood by in silence[44].Ken Rietz of Burson Marsteller produced a seven- part TV series, entitled The Forest and the People to spread pro-industry propaganda[45].The BC Forest Alliance now claims a membership of 10,000 individuals and 300 companies and industry groups[46].

Forest Protection Society (Australia)Throughout the 1980s the Australian timber industry was targeted by ecological campaigns and direct action. In response the industry spawned a new front group, the Forest protection Society, with start-up money from the Forest Industry Campaign Association[47].Employing Wise Use-style rhetoric, the FPS got itself listed as an environmental protection organisation in the Directory of Australian Associations. It promotes a balanced use of Australias forests and claims that the best way to protect forests is to extract the wood and sell it. From the start the FPS aimed to build a large grass-roots membership to suggest an independent standpoint[48]. The FPS involves itself in as many forest campaigns as it can, fighting for the rights of local communities to exploit the forests, and of course the for the timber industry. By April 1998 the FPS had 56 local branches across Australia[49].Amongst other tactics the FPS has used include taking over local environmentalist meetings, with the result that they became distracted from their ongoing campaign[50]. Like many groups associated with the American Wise Use movement, the FPS is a client of Burson-Marsteller.

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<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="tobacco" id="tobacco" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.6 Defending Big Tobacco</a></h3>National Smokers Alliance

The National Smokers Alliance is a front group, formed by B-M, which mobilised the support of smokers around the US to oppose new anti-smoking legislation. Members are recruited through direct marketing, free phone hotlines, and on-the-street canvassing. By 1995 the NSA claimed a membership of 3 million. The NSA encourages its members to oppose smoking bans and other restrictions on smoking[51].

<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="pollution" id="pollution" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.7 Fighting for Environmental Pollution</a></h3>Crisis management for Union Carbide following Bhopal Disaster

In India in 1984, B-M handled crisis management for US company Union Carbide when its pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked more than 40 tonnes of toxic gas. 2000 people were killed instantly and after three days 5000 had died; at least 20,000 have died since, as a result of the disaster, and hundreds of thousands are suffering lung, eye and gastric complaints. Tuberculosis incidence in Bhopal is 3 times the Indian average. Following B-Ms PR and lobbying work, in 1989, as part of a court settlement, Union Carbide paid US$470 million on the condition that it could not be held liable in any future criminal or civil proceedings, and the Indian Supreme Court dropped all charges of manslaughter against Union Carbide, although safety mechanisms at the plant were appallingly inadequate. The company has now left India, leaving most of the responsibility with the Indian government[52].

Crisis management for Exxon Valdez oil spill

In the wake of the Unabombers allegations that Burson-Marsteller was hired to manage Exxons PR crisis over the Exxon Valdez oil spill, B-M has officially denied conducting crisis management over the issue. It does, however, admit to conducting a study of the case for Exxon after the event.Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards

Burson-Marsteller is also behind a front group called "Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards," formed to oppose restrictions on automobile emissions of nitrogen oxide and other polluting gases. "The address of the month-old lobbying group is the Sacramento headquarters of the California Chamber of Commerce, while the group's phone number is that of the Sacramento office of Burson-Marsteller, an international public relations firm often used by the auto industry. Detroit auto makers provided the bulk of the money for the new group[53].

Three Mile Island

Whilst Hill & Knowlton flacked for Metropolitan Edison, the plants operators, B-M conducted crisis PR for Babcock & Wilcox, the company that built the reactor at Three Mile Island[54].

Keep America Beautiful

B-M works for the best-known anti-littering campaign in the USA, Keep America Beautiful (KAB). KAB attempts to educate and motivate the American public to reduce littering and is funded by many corporate interests. While superficially it appears to promote a worthy cause, the corporate interest is in its implicit message that littering, amongst other environmental issues, is the responsibility of the individual citizen.

In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental and consumer groups accused it of opposing various state and national efforts to establish mandatory bottle and can recycling. The proposed legislation would have helped the litter problem, but offended the interests of some of KAB's corporate sponsors including Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and the Reynolds Metal Company[55]. Its long term ignoring the of the issue of cigarette butt littering, is best explained by its funding from the four largest U.S. tobacco companies, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard.

Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment

In Europe, BM set up the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, in 'defence of the beverage carton against environmental and regulatory pressures'. Its purpose is to make disposable cartons look environmentally friendly, and is sponsored by packaging interests such as Tetra Pak, Elopak, Bowater (now called REXAM) and Weyerhauser[56].

BPs Torrey Canyon oil spill

B-M handled crisis management for, long-standing client, BP in the wake of the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil spill that devastated wildlife along the Cornish coastline[57].

Czech Mining

B-M conducted a PR campaign in the Czech Republic on behalf of TVX Gold, a Canadian mining corporation. TVX needed help in renewing its exploration license for a gold deposit near the town of Kaperske Hory and countering local opposition. The project posed a substantial threat to the unique environment of the Sumava Mountains and became a major controversy in the Czech Republic.In January 1997, TVX halted pre-mining exploration in Kasperske Hory when authorities would not renew its drilling license.B-Ms campaign began as a relatively modest attempt to allay fears about the environmental impact of the project but later became a blatant attempt to replace Frantisek Stibal, the mayor of Kapserske Hory. Along the way they hired Czech celebrities to promote the project and published a free local newsletter in the area. Vojtech Kotecky, of Friends of the Earth Czech Republic, described the campaign as unscrupulous, full of dirty personal attacks, sophisticated and well-directed propaganda, combined with offers of financial support to the local community.Ultimately it was to no avail. After two years of campaigning on either side, the Czech government cancelled TVXs concession after Stibal was re-elected in landslide victory. "Fortunately the Czech people remember methods of Communist propaganda and therefore are rather immune to TVX's similar ones," says Stibal[58].<a href="https://corporatewatch.org/content/burson-marsteller-corporate-crimes#top" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Back to top</a>

<h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="other" id="other" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">4.8 Other</a></h3>
Breast Implants

In 1991 B-M began a crisis PR campaign for Dow-Corning to handle the growing public health controversy over silicone breast implants. B-M had been retained by Dow Corning for years previously, but as the controversy exploded in late 1990 and early 1991 so did B-Ms account fees. In 1990 B-M billed Dow-Corning just $6000, but from May 1991 to Feb 1992 that fee rose to nearly $3.8m[59].Whilst Dow-corning and the wider medical industry had known about the problems of breast implants since the 1970s, they and the multi-million dollar cosmetic surgery industry had managed to ignore it until it gained significant TV coverage in Dec 1990.B-M organised an astro-turf campaign to save silicone breast implants, organising women who were victims of breast cancer and had implants for reconstruction, into an effective and very public campaign. Ultimately, in 1992, the FDA banned them except for use with cancer victims.

NAFTA

Hired by the Salinas administration in 1990 to promote Mexico's NAFTA agenda, Burson-Marsteller spearheaded a successful campaign to sell NAFTA in the USA. The Center for Public Integrity estimates that overall the PRI govt of Mexico spent in excess of $25m on the NAFTA campaign, in the USA alone. To secure passage of the agreement, Burson- Marsteller prepared numerous reports, press releases and video news releases. Generally, their public relations work focused on the themes of jobs, the environment and support for NAFTA among Latin Americans. Burson-Marsteller targeted newspapers, radio and TV stations, civic groups, public officials, press services, educational institutions and industry groups for dissemination of pro-NAFTA information. B-M also sidelined opposition to NAFTA from groups concerned with economic justice and human rights issues in Mexico, portraying their objections as idle "Mexico-bashing." This spin was later refined to combat the Zapatista PR crisis by portraying the rebellion and the trade deal as two separate issues.

B-M picked up plenty of work from the Mexican govt before and after the NAFTA campaign. When Mexicos challenge to the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, under the rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was upheld in August 1991, sparking public outrage in the US, Burson-Marsteller immediately issued press and video releases proclaiming Mexicos commitment to dolphin protection. By the mid 90s Young & Rubicam, B-Ms parent company was making over $100m a year from contracts in Mexico[60].

Animal Industry Foundation

In response to mounting criticism from animal rights and environmental activists, the agricultural industry in the USA has fought back with SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), using libel and defamation laws in order to try to gag their critics. They have also lobbied successfully for food disparagement laws, which strengthen the corporate legal position against public criticism.One group that conducted much of the campaign for food disparagement laws and other protections for the agricultural industry was the B-M funded Animal Industry Foundation[61], replaced in 2001 by the Animal Agriculture Alliance[62].

CTN

The Corporate TV Network began life as a joint venture between B-M and ITN, making extra profits for ITN by using its staff and equipment to make videos for the corporate market. There have been allegations that the link between ITN and CTN may effect the reporting of stories about CTN clients on ITN News, particularly regarding ITNs reporting of Shells involvement in the repression of the Ogoni people in Nigeria[63]. Bruce Whitehead of ITN felt that his investigation of the Ogoni controversy may have been dropped due to a conflict of interests in ITN as CTN was also making a film on the same subject on behalf of Shell, to put across the oil companys side of the story.

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<hr style="border: none; height: 1px; background: rgb(221, 221, 221); clear: both; float: none; width: 710px; margin: 0px 0px 1.45em;" />References...stumbled on, fe vs clean power plan9/03 sfBM<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bhopal-Bloopers-How-Dow-and-Burson-Marsteller-2680954.php">http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bhopal-Bloopers-How-Dow-and-Burson-Marsteller-2680954.php</a>his is a story about how hard it is to shut someone up online, and how it's sometimes a bad idea to even try, because it lets everyone know you're trying to hide something. It's also a story about pranksters taking political action by making people laugh.Here's what happened: Dow Chemical and Dow's PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, tried to shut down some parody sites and ended up bringing themselves a heap of negative publicity. But before we go into that, first, a little background:Back in 1984, the Indian subsidiary of <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Union+Carbide%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Union Carbide</a> made a <a href="http://www.bhopal.net/background.html" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">big whoopsie</a> with some deadly gas used in making pesticides. After a gas tank was accidentally breached, Bhopal's 900,000 residents were exposed to some 40 tons of the known carcinogen methyl isocyanate. Up to 4,000 people (figures vary) were killed on the spot, and anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 still suffer from serious, potentially deadly health effects such as cancer and respiratory problems.<div class="A300-placeholder collapse" style="float: right; margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What was arguably the world's most horrific industrial disaster soon gave rise to a massive lawsuit, and Union Carbide was ordered to pay $470 million into a victims' fund set up by the Indian government. Bhopal victims correctly called it a "pittance" -- the average payout to almost 560,000 survivors who received settlements as of June 2001 was $580. Even worse, Union Carbide was not forced to clean up the chemicals that leaked unabated from the now-abandoned Bhopal factory site....Fast-forward to 2001: Union Carbide merged with Dow Chemical Co., makers of the Vietnam War's notorious Agent Orange, and Dow took on Union Carbide's plants, business processes and customers. It also took on the company's neglect of the Bhopal situation. Dow continues to refuse to clean up the Bhopal site, denying liability and refusing to release precise details of the chemicals released during the accident, which could help treat those who remain ill. Carcinogens and other poisons continue to leach into underground drinking water, and the Bhopal death toll continues to mount.<div class="S300-placeholder collapse" style="float: right; margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Enter the Yes Men, a group of Internet activists, pranksters and philosophers who gained some notoriety years back by posting satirical sites about the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22World+Trade+Organization%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">World Trade Organization</a> (WTO) and the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22General+Agreement+on+Tariffs+and+Trade+%28GATT%29%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)</a>. Some of the Yes Men started hearing stories about Bhopal and icky things about Dow Chemical and Burson-Marsteller -- the firm whose crisis-management practice helped Union Carbide minimize its PR damage after Bhopal. Not content with just passing said icky things on to their activist friends, the Yes Men wanted to cast some light on Dow's current actions.On December 3, 2002, the 18th anniversary of Bhopal, the Yes Men posed as Dow representatives and sent out a cleverly snitty e-mail press-release "explanation" of its actions to journalists and activists, made all the more stinging because of how closely the parody rings true. The <a href="http://www.dowethics.com/r/about/corp/bhopal.htm" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">fake release</a> is a masterwork of irony, quoting a Dow spokesperson as saying, "We understand the anger and hurt. But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and compensation ..."The fake release was immediately forwarded around the world, and the Yes Men put up a fake-yet-official-looking Web site at <a href="http://www.dow-chemical.com/" style="text-align: center; background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.dow-chemical.com</a> to showcase the release, which received hundreds of enraged e-mail responses from those who didn't realize the site, which strongly resembled Dow's corporate site, was a spoof. The flap was reported in national and international news sources, and the Dow parody site got hundreds of thousands of hits -- and it wasn't long before Dow also came calling.Within a day of the release, Dow threatened the <a href="http://www.dow-chemical.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.dow-chemical.com</a> upstream provider, Verio. Under the rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Dow's legal reps said, the Yes Men's site violated Dow's copyright in Web design, images and text. Chastened, Verio shut the Yes Men's ISP, Thing.net, down for 24 hours and informed the tiny ISP that it'd have to find itself a new backbone provider. In the meantime, Dow did some swift legal maneuvering. The company discovered that the prankish Yes Men had actually registered <a href="http://www.dow-chemical.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.dow-chemical.com</a> in the name of the son of former Dow President <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Michael+Parker%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Michael Parker</a> as a joke. Parker's kid did his dad's company a favor and claimed the site from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Icann%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">ICANN</a>), arguing successfully that the site was, after all, registered in his name. If you click on <a href="http://www.dow-chemical.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.dow-chemical.com</a>, you'll see it now redirects to Dow's official site. The original Yes Men parody site, however, is still mirrored <a href="http://www.dowethics.com/r/Homepage/index.html" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">elsewhere.</a>Meanwhile, yet another thread in the story was developing elsewhere. In the midst of writing a paper on the WTO, Hampshire <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/education-guide/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">College</a> student <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Paul+Hardwin%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Paul Hardwin</a> inadvertently ended up at a Yes Men parody page. He liked what he saw and decided to use a Yes Men software program, an automatic site-parody production tool called (heh, heh) Reamweaver, to create a site spoofing Burson-Marsteller. It wasn't a particularly brutal parody -- Reamweaver acts as a "fun-house mirror," allowing spoofers to duplicate a site while substituting certain words or phrases for others. Hardwin's spoof was a pretty tame takeoff of Burson-Marsteller's site.But when Burson-Marsteller saw Hardwin's parody site, it immediately filed a complaint with the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22World+Intellectual+Property+Organization+%28WIPO%29%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)</a>. Yeah, it was just "a simple little parody site," as Hardwin called it, but he'd posted his little site at <a href="http://www.bursonmarsteller.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.bursonmarsteller.com</a>, which Burson-Marsteller complained was confusingly similar to its own trademarked domain name, <a href="http://www.bm.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.bm.com</a>.Hardwin got a little hot under the collar when Burson-Marsteller filed its <a href="http://www.reamweaver.com/bm/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">complaint</a>, and he beefed his anti-Burson-Marsteller page up massively. Instead of being a simple little site parody, the page now discusses Burson-Marsteller's purported wrongdoings for a variety of clients, from <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Philip+Morris%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Philip Morris</a> to Monsanto to Union Carbide. At press time the blistering page was still hosted at <a href="http://www.bursonmarsteller.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.bursonmarsteller.com</a>, but it will soon be moved to <a href="http://www.bmfacts.com/" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">www.bmfacts.com</a> because the WIPO decided Dec. 13 that Hardwin was indeed illicitly squatting on a domain name that rightfully belonged to Burson-Marsteller.To sum up, both the Yes Men and Paul Hardwin created sites that poked fun at big corporations for alleged wrongdoings. Both the Yes Men and Hardwin were forced to take their content off domains where it was decided they were squatting, but both sites are still alive and well at other domains. And, most important, both the Yes Men and Hardwin received widespread attention for their parodies and subsequent swift corporate suppression. In the Yes Men's case, their story was covered by tickled journalists from the London Times, The <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22New+York+Times%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">New York Times</a> and many other sources and organizations, including <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=news&inlineLink=1&searchindex=solr&query=%22Greenpeace%22" style="background-color: transparent; display: inline; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Greenpeace</a>.The upshot is that thousands upon thousands more people heard about Bhopal and the shameful conduct of both Dow and Burson-Marsteller than would have had the stung corporations not chosen to respond with threats. If Dow and Burson-Marsteller had simply ignored the sites, few people would have ever heard of them. Instead, Dow and Burson-Marsteller brought down a chorus of snickering and scorn upon themselves -- and a whole lot of attention to aspects of their businesses they'd probably rather be kept quiet."BM would have been so much better off just leaving my original mild parody site as is," Paul Hardwin says, while Yes Men conspirator Mike Bonanno says Dow "made a big deal out of something small, and now, ironically, it is a big deal. Our ultimate goal of bringing attention to Bhopal is accomplished!"Let that be a lesson to all those big companies out there that don't like it when a couple pissed-off people say what they like and it's read by millions. Hush it up, and the furor only gets louder. Now that you know a little more about Bhopal, Dow and Burson-Marsteller, you can consider yourself part of the furor, too.</div>-----together at last: peabody <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/11/11/peabody-energy-goes-offense-new-pr-campaign-designed-sell-same-old-dirty-coal">http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/11/11/peabody-energy-goes-offense-new-pr-campaign-designed-sell-same-old-dirty-coal</a>Correction: Burson-Marsteller and the Global Climate Coalitionby Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
http://www.prwatch.org/files/pdfs/prwatch/prwv8n3.pdf  (dnlded)
Nearly four years ago, a report on global warming inthe Fourth Quarter 1997 issue of PR Watch stated thatthe Burson-Marsteller PR firm created the Global ClimateCoalition to help the oil and auto industries downplaythe dangers of global warming. We based thisstatement on a source which we regarded as reliable.Burson-Marsteller made no attempt to deny this claimuntil July 2001. Following a recent denial from BursonMarsteller,however, we have undertaken a thoroughreview of our files and have spoken with several sources,none of whom can substantiate this claim. We are thereforeretracting our statement that Burson-Marstellercreated the Global Climate Coalition.We should point out that Burson-Marsteller has beensubscribing to PR Watch since 1995, so they received ourFourth Quarter 1997 issue at the time of its publication.Since Burson-Marsteller is in the business of “reputationmanagement,” its failure to request a correction previouslyon this point is rather striking—particularly sinceour article was subsequently cited on this point in dozensof other published news stories.The most important issue, however, is the questionof whether Burson-Marsteller has participated in thepetroleum industry’s campaigns to block measuresaimed at preventing global warming. B-M may not haveactually created the GCC, but its work for the petroleumindustry on this issue is beyond dispute.In 1993, for example, Burson-Marsteller led a $1.8million campaign to defeat President Clinton’s proposedBTU tax on fossil fuels, the centerpiece of Clinton’s planto combat global warming. Journalist David Helvargdescribed this campaign as follows in the December1996 issue of The Nation: “Clinton committed theUnited States ‘to reducing our emissions of greenhousegases to their 1990 levels by the year 2000.’ The Administration’splan to accomplish this included a deficit reducingenergy tax and increased gasoline taxes of upto 25 cents a gallon. Then a computer-driven ‘grassroots’ letter and phone-in campaign orchestrated by theAmerican Energy Alliance, along with an oil-fundedpush by PR giant Burson-Marsteller, helped underminesupport for the energy tax. The Administration abandonedthe tax in the Senate after House Democrats,braving the wrath of industry, had passed it. Relationsbetween the White House and Congressional Democratssoured quickly after that. Congress also voted to keepthe gas tax below 5 cents, guaranteeing that with thelowest fuel prices in the developed world, alternativeenergy sources would remain noncompetitive.”Burson-Marsteller’s campaign against the BTU taxwas also described in Time, which reported on June 21,1993 that the National Association of Manufacturers(the original sponsor of the Global Climate Coalition)“got together with the American Petroleum Institute,1,600 large companies, small businesses and farmers toform the American Energy Alliance (AEA), a groupdesigned solely to defeat the BTU tax. The coalition paidmore than $1 million to Burson-Marsteller, a public relationsfirm, to deploy nearly 45 staff members in 23 statesduring the past two months. . . . Burson’s operativesdrafted anti-BTU editorials and sent them to copyhungryweekly newspapers. They helped school boardsfigure their estimated annual energy taxes. They commissionedlocal economists to produce studies aboutpotential job loss and then organized rallies and pressconferences to publicize the results. They bombardedTV and radio stations with feeds from local businessowners angry about the BTU tax. ‘It was unlike anythingI’ve ever seen,’ said Brent Stanghelle, farm-news directorof radio station KMON in Great Falls, Montana. ‘Itwas like spring planting—frantic, crazy. I couldn’t beginto take all the calls.’”
Campaigns and Elections magazine noted in May 1994that the campaign against Clinton’s BTU proposal wasrun by a Burson-Marsteller division called the “AdvocacyCommunications Team,” headed by James E.McAvoy, a former aide to Dan Quayle and Bob Dole.Burson-Marsteller’s role in the campaign was also notedin the Legal Times (May 31, 1993), New York Times (June14, 1993), Christian Science Monitor (June 15, 1993) andPolitical Finance and Lobby Reporter (June 25, 1993). Itwas also mentioned on May 4, 1993 in the Oil Daily, apetroleum industry trade publication, which stated,“Among the petroleum industry groups joining the multimillion-dollarcampaign are the American PetroleumInstitute, the National Petroleum Refiners Associationand major oil companies, including Amoco Corp., AshlandOil Inc., Chevron Corp., Diamond Shamrock Inc.,Exxon Corp., Fina Inc., Phillips Petroleum Co. andTexaco Inc. The alliance is spearheaded by the NationalAssociation of Manufacturers (NAM). . . . The alliancehas hired the public relations powerhouse BursonMarstellerand a direct-mail firm called Direct ImpactInc. to conduct the public relations campaign.”
Finally, Burson-Marsteller itself has boasted aboutthe success of this campaign. The February 1994 issueof O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report carried a section titled“Profiles of Top Environmental PR Firms,” submittedby the PR firms themselves. Burson-Marsteller’s profilestated, “B-M’s client the American Energy Alliance wascredited by Treasury Secretary Lloyd-Bentsen in aWashington Post article as ‘one of the most sophisticatedjobs I’ve seen by lobbyists in a long time.’” The 1994issue of Washington Representatives, a comprehensivedirectory of Washington lobbyists and PR firms, also liststhe American Energy Alliance as one of BursonMarsteller’sclients.We have been trying to determine how our sourcemight have concluded that Burson-Marsteller created theGlobal Climate Coalition. It is hard to reconstruct whatmight have happened four years ago, but it is possiblethat confusion might have arisen about the differencebetween the GCC and the American Energy Alliance.In any case, Burson-Marsteller continues to workclosely with the petroleum and automobile industries.The 1997 issue of O’Dwyer’s Directory of Public RelationsFirms listed the American Petroleum Institute, BritishPetroleum, Chevron, Ford Motor Company, Mitsubishi,and Pennzoil among its clients. Other clients historicallyhave included Occidental Petroleum, Caterpillar and thegovernment of Saudi Arabia.
On November 3, 1998, the New York Times reportedthat Burson-Marsteller was behind a front group called“Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards,” formed tooppose restrictions on automobile emissions of nitrogenoxide and other polluting gases. “The address of themonth-old lobbying group is the Sacramento headquartersof the California Chamber of Commerce,while the group’s phone number is that of the Sacramentooffice of Burson-Marsteller, an internationalpublic relations firm often used by the auto industry.Detroit auto makers provided the bulk of the money forthe new group,” the New York Times stated.Burson-Marsteller is also behind a deceptively-namedgroup called the “Foundation for Clean Air Progress”(FCAP). Judging from its name, you might think thatFCAP supports measures to control air pollution. In fact,it was formed specifically to pressure the U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA) not to adopt tougherair pollution controls. The Washington Post reported onJune 17, 1997 that FCAP participates in a “multimillion-dollarcampaign to turn back EPA regulations forsmog and soot. . . . The nerve center behind the attackis a coalition of more than 500 businesses and tradegroups that calls itself the Air Quality Standards Coalition.Created specifically to battle the clean air proposals,the coalition operates out of the offices of theNational Association of Manufacturers, a Washington basedtrade group. Its leadership includes top managersof petroleum, automotive and utility companies as wellas longtime Washington insiders such as C. BoydenGray, a counsel to former president George Bush. Thesame industries would likely bear the brunt of the costsfor the new regulations, which the EPA estimates at morethan $ 6 billion a year. . . . Exxon, a member of the coalition,recently sent notices to its credit card customersurging them to oppose the EPA regulations. Other companieshelped pay for TV and newspapers ads producedby the Foundation for Clean Air Progress, a nonprofitinstitute funded by energy, transportation and manufacturingcompanies that operates out of the offices ofthe public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller.”According to Frank O’Donnell, executive director ofa genuine environmental group called the Clean AirTrust, FCAP “was formed to distract the public fromthe dangers of air pollution. It tries to ignore the fact thatair pollution—much of it produced by the foundation’sfinancial backers—is still linked to tens of thousands ofpremature deaths a year.” O’Donnell noted that FCAP’smembers are also major sources of greenhouse gases(U.S. Newswire, March 16, 1998).The Tennessean reported on July 14, 1996 that FCAPwas “made up of 20 organizations” including “the AmericanPetroleum Institute, Petroleum Marketers Associationof America, American Trucking Associations,American Farm Bureau Federation and the TransportationCoalition for Clean Air. . . . The foundationitself is not listed with Washington, D.C., telephonedirectory assistance. Burson-Marsteller staffers answercalls made to a number listed in a handout.” 
PR Week Offers FreeAdvice to Philip MorrisThe Philip Morris tobacco company was recentlyforced to apologized for its role in commissioning areport which claimed that the Czech Republic benefitseconomically from the premature deaths of citizens. Evereager to help an old friend, the August 6 issue of PR Weekasked PR pros, “How can Philip Morris regain PRground following the publication of the Czech report?”Advice from the experts included:• “More advertisements praising the philanthropic activitiesof its Kraft and Miller subsidiaries would be wise.”• “The best thing for it to do is minimize its publicprofile.”• “Partner itself with a consumer watchdog group.”• “Fire all of those involved in commissioning thesestudies, and obtain confidentiality statements fromeach of them.”• “Resist interview requests; any interviews on  this willbe no-win situations.” endit
===Lloyd G. Carter, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/090629251_the-pr-firm-from-hell" style="line-height: 1.5em; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">The PR Firm from Hell</a>," as published in the Fresno Community Alliance newspaper, June 30, 2009.

...

Gov. Schwarzenegger, on April 17, at the San Luis Reservoir, following a four-day grower-funded march in which non-union farmworkers were paid to walk 50 miles from Mendota.  Chavez’ United Farm Workers union did not participate.  UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta called it shameless exploitation of the late labor leader’s legacy.

The masters of “astroturfing” are trying to convince you, the media, California and Washington, D.C. that San Joaquin Valley farmworkers’ new best friend is Big Agribusiness, the same industry that has exploited them for decades.  Say what?

Campaigns & Elections magazine defines astroturfing as a "program that involves the manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them."  In other words, rich people with a lot of money but no popular support for their cause (getting richer), will create the illusion of broad public support by half truths, manipulation, disinformation, spin doctoring, creating false impressions, and cash.  It also involves ghost writing op-ed columns and letters to the editor from little people, to generate the perception there is widespread public support for the client’s position.  Grassroots is bottom up.  Astroturf is top down.

The late Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, a vice-presidential candidate and a lobbyist, is credited with coining the term "astroturf  lobbying" to describe the synthetic grassroots movements conjured up by powerful lobbying and public relations firms.  Astroturfing  is specifically prohibited by the code of ethics of the Public Relations Society of America, the national association for members of the public relations profession.

But that hasn’t stopped the spin doctors at Burson-Marsteller (B-M), the astroturfing PR firm that has been hired by the California Latino Water Coalition (created around 2006-2007), headed by comedian Paul Rodriguez, and Orange Cove Mayor Victor Lopez, co-chairs of the coalition, and technical advisor Mario Santoyo, assistant general manager at the Friant Water Users Authority,which represents federal irrigation districts on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley from Madera County south to Bakersfield.

B-M has been helping the Friant growers for three years, trying to derail the lawsuit settlement to restore a living San Joaquin river to 60 miles of dry riverbed on the San Joaquin Valley floor. Republican Rep. Devin Nunes has been the most outspoken of the settlement critics and has called for the Governor’s resignation for failing to push new water projects hard enough. (Nunes seems blissfully unconcerned California is facing a $24 billion budget deficit.)

MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow, in a March telecast, called B-M “the PR firm from Hell” and said it had been hired to improve the “image” of AIG, the company which has received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money. (You can see Maddow ripping B-M on YouTube below.)

How much B-M is being paid by the growers who fund the Latino Water Coalition - if it is being paid - is not publicly available.  No one in the mainstream media has inquired about the financing, except the New York Times, which noted in a story on the mid-April, four-day “March for Water” that farmworkers were paid to participate. Classic astroturfing tactics.

Founded in 1953, B-M is now one of the largest public relations firms in the world, and in 2000 was the first PR outfit to hit $300 million in revenues.  In 1999, Harold Burson was named by PR Week magazine and website as the PR industry’s “most influential person of the 20th Century.” The PR Watch website has considerable material on B-M’s past and present outrages.  Big name employees include George W. Bush’s first press secretary, Karen Hughes, and his last press secretary, the acid-tongued, irritable Dana Perino.  However, the agency is not just staffed with Republican mudslingers. Spinmaster Mark Penn, the staunchly anti-union polling consultant and former chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, is the current Chief Executive Officer of B-M.

B-M’s client list includes a who’s who of corporate scoundrels and tin horn dictators, including:

1. Blackwater USA - After the private security firm killed 17 Iraqi civilians, they turned to B-M for “crisis management.”  Former B-M executive Robert Tappan, who had been a State Department official, worked at the PR firm’s lobbying subsidiary, BKSH & Associates. Tappan helped Blackwater founder and head Erik Prince prepare for his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (In February, Blackwater, purportedly on the advice of B-M, changed its name to the mysterious Xe, pronounced Zee.) ZOE?

2. Babcock & Wilcox, manufacturers of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, hired B-M to “manage” public perception after the 1979 meltdown.

3. Nigeria’s brutal regime employed B-M in the late 1960s to counteract allegations it was committing genocide in the breakaway province of Biafra.  “Crisis management” was also provided the Indonesian regime accused of abuses of its citizens.

4. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, at the behest of the Argentinian military dictatorship, headed by General Jorge Videla, B-M organized a campaign against Argentinian human rights organizations which were contending a “Dirty War” against the populaton was taking place, including the murder and disappearance of thousands of people.  In her book “The Shock Doctrine”,  Naomi Klein wrote:

“Victor Emmanuel, the Burson-Marsteller public relations executive who was in charge of selling the Argentine junta's new business-friendly regime to the outside world, told a researcher that violence was necessary to open up Argentina's "protective, statist" economy. "No one, but no one, invests in a country involved in a civil war," he said, admitting that it wasn't just rebels who died. "A lot of innocent people were probably killed," he told author Marguerite Feitlowitz, but, "given the situation, immense force was required." ”

5.  Saudi Arabia’s medieval royal government has employed B-M for more than 30 years to promote its interests and image.  B-M prepared U.S. advertisements for Saudi Arabia following the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, due, in part, to the fact 15 of the 19 airplane hijackers were Saudi citizens.

6. B-M handled public relations for Union Carbide Corporation following the 1984 explosion and disaster at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India which killed 2,000 employees and neighbors and injured or blinded thousands more.

7.  B-M set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s.

8.  Bromine Science and Environmental Forum (BSEF), which Burson-Marsteller created on behalf of chemical companies from the U.S., Israel and Japan who wanted to avoid an EU ban on bromine flame retardants suspected to have serious environmental and health impacts. For years the BSEF (lobbyists from the Brussels offices of Burson-Marsteller) lobbied against the EU ban on these substances, without clearly disclosing the nature of the group and the clients.

Major companies in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries currently utilize B-M’s services, according to B-M’s own website.  In 2006, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

B-M, according to the May 17, 2007 issue of The Nation magazine, is owned by an even larger PR empire called the WPP Group.  The decision to hire Mark Penn as the head of B-M was heavily influenced by Howard Paster, President Clinton's chief lobbyist to Capitol Hill and an influential presence inside WPP.  "Clients of stature come to Mark [Penn]constantly for counsel," claimed Paster, who informally advised Hillary Clinton.  The press release announcing Penn's promotion noted his work "developing and implementing deregulation informational programs for the electric utilities industry and in the financial services sector." (Italics added.)

Both these PR and lobbying efforts  - to deregulate energy and financial services - led to the California electricity crisis and manipulation of the state’s energy supply by Enron, the 2003 blackout in the Northeastern U.S. and the current collapse of the financial services sector.

So, what then does B-M expect to do for the California Latino Water Coalition?  B-M’s Patrick George, who works out of B-M’s Sacramento office is listed as the media contact on the Latino Water Coalition press releases. The B-M website boasts that it has won the last nine California statewide initiative campaigns it has been involved in and it was expected to be involved in a $10 billion water bond issue in 2008 before the economy collapsed.  There will undoubtedly be an effort to put another water bond on the 2010 or 2012 California ballot.

Some Western San Joaquin Valley growers acknowledge they are contributing to the Latino Water Coalition. It is clear the poverty-stricken farmworkers aren’t paying the tab, and that it is agribusiness bankrolling the operation.  The coalition website (www.gotwater.org ) and KMJ radio commentator Ray Appleton, a major supporter of the Coalition, both solicit donations from the general public.  Appleton does it on air.  Mario Santoyo said on former Fresno Mayor Alan Autry’s radio show that Comedian Rodriguez is not being compensated for any of his efforts.  In an interview with the Yuma, AZ newspaper Rodriguez called himself the “poster boy” and claimed Cesar Chavez was “like an uncle” to him.  Presumably, the Friant growers were paying B-M big bucks before the PR firm got involved in the Latino Water Coalition.

...

<div style="">http://www.lloydgcarter.com/</div>

===

Ms. Jacobson is a longtime Democratic Party fundraiser. In addition to helping found Third Way, she also serves as Senior Advisor to Senator <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Evan_Bayh" title="Evan Bayh" style="line-height: 19.5px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Evan Bayh</a>, National Finance Chair for the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Democratic_Leadership_Council" title="Democratic Leadership Council" style="line-height: 19.5px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Democratic Leadership Council</a>, and Founder and Executive Director of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Next_Generation&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Next Generation (page does not exist)" style="line-height: 19.5px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Next Generation</a>, a <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Political_action_committee" title="Political action committee" style="line-height: 19.5px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">political action committee</a> devoted to supporting moderate, centrist Senate candidates. Ms. Jacobson was an early supporter of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bill_Clinton" title="Bill Clinton" style="line-height: 19.5px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Bill Clinton</a>’s 1992 Presidential campaign, and was Finance Director of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Democratic_National_Committee" title="Democratic National Committee" style="line-height: 19.5px; text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Democratic National Committee</a> when he assumed office in 1993. Ms. Jacobson received her B.A. in Political Science from Syracuse University and a Masters in Public Relations from American University. She is married to <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mark_Penn" title="Mark Penn" style=" text-decoration: none; background: none;">Mark Penn</a>, the worldwide CEO of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Burson-Marsteller" title="Burson-Marsteller" style=" text-decoration: none; background: none;">Burson-Marsteller</a>, who served as pollster and strategic advisor to President Clinton and Senator <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton" title="Hillary Rodham Clinton" style=" text-decoration: none; background: none;">Hillary Rodham Clinton</a>.

===

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">Personnel</h2>

From the CLWC website: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Latino_Water_Coalition#cite_note-about-0" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[1]</a>

<li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Paul_Rodriguez&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Paul Rodriguez (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Paul Rodriguez</a>, Chair</li>

<li style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Mayor <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Victor_Lopez&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Victor Lopez (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Victor Lopez</a>, Co-Chair, Central Valley, City of Orange Cove</li>

<li style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ruben_Guerra&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Ruben Guerra (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ruben Guerra</a>, Co-Chair, Southern California, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Latin_Business_Association&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Latin Business Association (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Latin Business Association</a></li>

<li style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tony_Estremera&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Tony Estremera (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tony Estremera</a>, Co-Chair, Director, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Santa_Clara_Valley_Water_District&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Santa Clara Valley Water District (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Santa Clara Valley Water District</a></li>

</ul>

<h2 style="font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">Contact information and Burson-Marsteller connections</h2>

Website: <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.gotwater.org/" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">gotwater.org</a>

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_George&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Patrick George (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Patrick George</a>, cell phone number 310-487-3001, is listed as the CLWC contact on the group's press releases. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Latino_Water_Coalition#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a> George is a director of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Burson-Marsteller" title="Burson-Marsteller" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Burson-Marsteller</a>'s media practice, working out of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Public_relations_firm" title="Public relations firm" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">public relations firm</a>'s Sacramento, California office. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Latino_Water_Coalition#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[3]</a> The same phone number, along with Patrick George's name and sometimes his Burson-Marsteller email address (patrick.george AT bm.com), is listed on press releases for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Accenture" title="Accenture" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Accenture</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Latino_Water_Coalition#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[4]</a>, the newsletter of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Cotton_Ginners_and_Growers_Associations&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Latino_Water_Coalition#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[5]</a>, and announcements for the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friant_Water_Users_Authority&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Friant Water Users Authority (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Friant Water Users Authority</a>. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=California_Latino_Water_Coalition#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[6]</a>

</div>

==

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nuclear spin

Burson-Marsteller

A Corporate Profile

By Corporate Watch UK

Completed July 2002

4. Corporate Crimes

4.1 Working for Repressive Regimes

4.2 Greenwashing Biotech

4.3 Climate Change

4.4 Stuffing Rio

4.5 Organising anti-environmental action

4.6 Defending Big Tobacco

4.7 Fighting for Environmental Pollution

4.8 Other

4.1 Working for Repressive Regimes

Nigeria

B-M flacked for both the Nigerian Government and Royal Dutch/Shell during and after the Biafran war. Reports of instability and genocide at the time had hurt Nigeria’s international image, they hired B-M to discredit these reports[24].

The relationship continued long after the Biafran war. From 1991-2 the Nigerian military junta paid B-M’s lobbying subsidiary, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (acquired in 1991) over $1m in fees[25].

Indonesia

After the invasion of East Timor around 200,000 people, one third of the population were murdered, the Indonesian government has also been accused of genocidal policies against the peoples of Irian Jaya, amongst many other human rights abuses. In 1996, BM was hired by the Indonesian government to clean up its image[26]. B-M does however deny handling the issue of genocide in East Timor.

Argentina

BM worked for the Argentinian military junta led by General Jorge Videla, which seized power in a coup d'_tat in 1976. B-M’s job was to improve the country's international image and create the impression of stability to attract foreign investment. During Videla's reign, 35,000 people 'disappeared' and thousands of political prisoners were tortured. Videla is now serving a life sentence for murder.

Harold Burson commented that, "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clear-cut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities."[27]

Saudi Arabia, et al.

B-M has worked for a host of regimes with appalling human rights records including the notoriously repressive and corrupt government of Saudi Arabia, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, and the governments of Sri Lanka and Singapore[28]. Three days after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, in which 13 of the 16 alleged suicide bombers were Saudis, Saudi Arabia again hired B-M to ensure that its national image remains untarnished[29].

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4.2 Greenwashing Biotech

rBGH/BST

In the 1980s recombinant bovine growth hormone or bovine somatatrophin (rBGH/BST) was Monsanto’s flagship biotechnology product. A genetically engineered substitute for the cows’ growth hormone, rBGH was developed to increase the milk yield of dairy cows, a market that Monsanto’s CEO R.J. Mahoney estimated in 1985 to be worth $1bn a year. It was also one of the first biotech products to be readied for the market and as such the whole biotech industry had an interest. The only problems were gaining approval for its commercial use and some unfavourable scientific opinions of the artificial hormone. Monsanto’s own tests showed an increased risk of mastitis in rBGH treated cattle, that the milk went off quicker and that it contained higher levels of pus. FDA scientist, Dr Richard Burroughs concluded from analysing test data that Monsanto was manipulating the figures. In 1989 he was sacked after complaining to Congress that his superiors were suppressing his accusations.

To deal with the expected controversy Monsanto assembled an army of PR companies to aid them of which B-M was one. Pro-rBGH information was rapidly distributed to the dairy industry, the press and the general public. In this way a ‘grass-roots’ coalition was formed and extensive lobbying of legislators began[30].

B-M employees were twice exposed working covertly during the rBGH campaign.

Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union was the author of a report on rBGH. Before the report was published, he was contacted by a B-M employee claiming to be a scheduler for ABC Television’s show, “Nightline”. She asked for a preview of the report and Hansen’s CV, under the pretext of researching rBGH for a “Nightline” program on the issue. Hansen was suspicious however and inquiries at ABC revealed that no one from Nightline had called Hansen. The fax number she gave turned out to belong to B-M[31].

B-M also tried to infiltrate the campaign against rBGH, run by academic, author and environmental campaigner Jeremy Rifkin. A B-M employee claiming to represent a non-existent group called Maryland Citizen Consumers Council, attended anti-rBGH meetings, but her manner aroused suspicions amongst the activists who quickly exposed her. Burson-Marsteller disavowed all knowledge of her activities, suggesting that she was attending in her free time[32].

Europabio

Burson-Marsteller also devised the PR strategy for Europabio, the European industry association for biotech companies. They famously advised the industry to stay off the “communications killing fields” that are the “public issues of environmental and human health risk”, i.e. to avoid participating in any public debate on these issues. The strategy recommended leaving it to regulatory bodies and other third parties to deal with these issues, and to communicate through symbols and stories, not logic. A positive image of biotechnology may be created through highlighting new products and potential beneficiaries, and developing a very close relationship with the media; “EuropaBio must turn itself into the journalist's best and most reliable continuing source of biotechnology/bioindustries inspiration and information - the first-stop help desk where they get no industry propaganda but practical, editor-pleasing, deadline-beating, connect to interesting stories and personalities - even adversarial - relevant to their readerships.”[33]

Monsanto

Details of further lobbying and PR operations conducted by B-M client, Monsanto can be found here.

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4.3 Climate Change

In July 2001 B-M issued a denial that it had set up the Global Climate Coalition, a controversial lobbying group for the fossil fuels industry that works toward voluntary codes of conduct and market based solutions to climate change and against mandatory emissions limits. The allegation, which has been quoted in many other sources, originated with PR Watch who, after much fact checking, had to admit that they had made a mistake[34]. Although it remains a mystery why B-M, an industry leader in ‘perceptions management’, should have taken so long to refute the claim.

Despite this B-M has worked hard to oppose emissions capping legislation. They helped to set up the Business Council on Sustainable Development [see below] which successfully prevented the 1992 Rio Earth from dealing with climate change, and have orchestrated many other anti-emissions control campaigns.

Foundation for Clean Air Progress

Burson-Marsteller is behind a deceptively-named group called the "Foundation for Clean Air Progress" (FCAP), which was founded in 1995. Describing itself as “Your source for public information and education about improving air quality in America”[35], you might think that the FCAP supports measures to control air pollution. In fact, it was formed specifically to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to adopt tougher air pollution controls. The Washington Post reported on June 17, 1997 that FCAP participates in a "multimillion-dollar campaign to turn back EPA regulations for smog and soot. ... The nerve centre behind the attack is a coalition of more than 500 businesses and trade groups that calls itself the Air Quality Standards Coalition. Created specifically to battle the clean air proposals, the coalition operates out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade group. Its leadership includes top managers of petroleum, automotive and utility companies as well as long-time Washington insiders such as C. Boyden Gray, a counsel to former president George Bush. The same industries would likely bear the brunt of the costs for the new regulations, which the EPA estimates at more than $ 6 billion a year.”[36]

BTU Tax

In 1993 Burson-Marsteller led a $1.8 million campaign to defeat a proposed tax on fossil fuels. President Clinton’s BTU Tax was the most ambitious measure to combat climate change yet proposed by an American government. The BTU Tax was to be levied on fossil fuels, specifically on the heat generating capacity of fossil fuels – a BTU (British Thermal unit) is a measure of how much heat will be released by a given mass of fuel. The tax would have added 25 cents to the price of a gallon of petrol.

The tax was at the centre of Clinton’s plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which he aimed to reduce to 1990 levels by 2000.

Big business was unhappy with the plans however. The National Association of Manufacturers (a sponsor of the Global Climate Coalition), the American Petroleum Institute, over 1,600 companies, large and small, and farmers organised themselves to create the American Energy Alliance (AEA), specifically to derail the BTU tax[37].

The AEA hired B-M to orchestrate the campaign. Deploying around 45 staff in 23 states, B-M organised a ‘grass roots’ letter writing and phone-in campaign. They placed anti-BTU articles and editorials in the press, commissioned sceptical economists to write reports and obtained media access for businessmen to express their views. Naturally they also lobbied against the Tax in Washington D.C.[38]

Congressional support for the BTU tax quickly withered away and Clinton’s plan was defeated. Congress voted for the tax to be kept below the five cents level. Treasury Secretary Lloyd-Bentsen described the campaign as “one of the most sophisticated jobs I've seen by lobbyists in a long time.”

4.4 Stuffing Rio

In the early '90s, Burson-Marsteller was instrumental in setting up, and subsequently flacked for, the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), whose members include Chevron, Volkswagen, Ciba-Geigy, Mitsubishi, Dow Chemicals, Du Pont and Shell. B-M’s mission was to greenwash the image of big business in the run-up to the Earth Summit and to ensure that no binding regulations were passed to control the activities of TNCs.

The BCSD was headed by Stephen Schmidheiny, a Swiss billionaire industrialist; and also a close friend of the Secretary-General of the UN Council on Environment and Development (UNCED). Substantial representations were made by the BCSD at UNCED, the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’; with the result that proposals drawn up by the UN's own Centre for Transnational Corporations - concerning the environmental impact of these large companies, and issues of corporate responsibility and accountability - were not discussed or even circulated to delegates. The best hope for imposing accountability on the activities of TNCs was lost[39]. Furthermore, climate change was left off the agenda due to

lobbying.

In 1994 the BCSD merged with the World Industry Council for the Environment, [ Europe Inc., p151; WICE was another industry front group created by the International Chamber of Commerce to promote the industry agenda at Rio] and became the World Business Council on Sustainable Development which continues to oppose enforceable environmental legislation and pushes for voluntary corporate action on environmental issues. The WBCSD is now gearing up for ‘Rio + 10’ the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg[40].

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4.5 Organising anti-environmental action

The Wise Use Movement

The Wise Use movement is a loose network of groups within the USA that are held together by a common loathing of environmental pressure groups and environmental legislation and an agenda stressing the rights of private property owners to make their own decisions as to how best to exploit natural resources. The movement is a broad church uniting workers in the extractive industries, libertarian free marketers, and the extreme right. Many commentators believe that B-M was instrumental in setting up the Wise Use movement. Many of B-M’s more unsavoury clients have sponsored Wise Use groups, and in the 1980s when the movement began 36 of the companies known to be sponsoring Wise Use groups were clients of B-M[41]. Direct proof of B-M’s involvement has so far remained elusive.

British Columbia Forest Alliance

An anti-environmental group that B-M certainly did create is the British Columbia Forest Alliance. In late 1990 B-M was hired to re-engineer the public image of Canada’s forest industries. The cornerstone of its campaign was a new front group, the British Columbia Forest Alliance. Environmental researcher, Andy Rowell described it thus “The Alliance was designed as the industry’s stealth bomber, packed with influential people and fuelled with industry dollars, to blast holes in the environmentalists’ forestry campaigns. However, it came packaged as a dove of concern and conciliation”.[42]

The BC Forest Alliance was launched in April 1991 under the leadership of Jack Munro, formerly the Chairperson of the International Wood Workers of America Union. Gary Ley, of B-M, was appointed executive director. In its first year it received $1m from corporate sponsors[43].

The Vancouver Sun, the biggest newspaper in British Columbia, with a daily circulation of 260,000, soon fell under the influence of the Alliance. Forest company officials and Alliance members were soon visiting its offices. Before the launch of the BC Forest Alliance, the Sun had five full-time reporters covering forestry, native affairs, and other environmental issues. Soon only one environment journalist remained. The rest were assigned to a category called "resources" in the business section.

Reporters who wrote critically about the forest industry, and those who probed the workings of the Forest Alliance and Burson-Marsteller itself, say they were subjected to pressure. The Sun's forestry reporter, Ben Parfitt, was pulled from environmental issues after writing about Burson-Marsteller and the Forest Alliance, and reporter Mark Hume was grilled by a logging company official and an industry consultant, in the editor’s office, about columns he had written about a pro-logging coalition, while the editor, Hume says, stood by in silence[44].

Ken Rietz of Burson Marsteller produced a seven- part TV series, entitled “The Forest and the People” to spread pro-industry propaganda[45].

The BC Forest Alliance now claims a membership of 10,000 individuals and 300 companies and industry groups[46].

Forest Protection Society (Australia)

Throughout the 1980s the Australian timber industry was targeted by ecological campaigns and direct action. In response the industry spawned a new front group, the Forest protection Society, with start-up money from the Forest Industry Campaign Association[47].

Employing Wise Use-style rhetoric, the FPS got itself listed as an environmental protection organisation in the Directory of Australian Associations. It promotes a “balanced use” of Australia’s forests and claims that the best way to protect forests is to extract the wood and sell it. From the start the FPS aimed to build a large ‘grass-roots’ membership to suggest an independent standpoint[48]. The FPS involves itself in as many forest campaigns as it can, fighting for the rights of local communities to exploit the forests, and of course the for the timber industry. By April 1998 the FPS had 56 local branches across Australia[49].

Amongst other tactics the FPS has used include taking over local environmentalist meetings, with the result that they became distracted from their ongoing campaign[50]. Like many groups associated with the American Wise Use movement, the FPS is a client of Burson-Marsteller.

4.6 Defending Big Tobacco

National Smokers Alliance

The National Smokers Alliance is a front group, formed by B-M, which mobilised the support of smokers around the US to oppose new anti-smoking legislation. Members are recruited through direct marketing, free phone hotlines, and on-the-street canvassing. By 1995 the NSA claimed a membership of 3 million. The NSA encourages its members to oppose smoking bans and other restrictions on smoking[51].

4.7 Fighting for Environmental Pollution

Crisis management for Union Carbide following Bhopal Disaster

In India in 1984, B-M handled crisis management for US company Union Carbide when its pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked more than 40 tonnes of toxic gas. 2000 people were killed instantly and after three days 5000 had died; at least 20,000 have died since, as a result of the disaster, and hundreds of thousands are suffering lung, eye and gastric complaints. Tuberculosis incidence in Bhopal is 3 times the Indian average. Following B-M’s PR and lobbying work, in 1989, as part of a court settlement, Union Carbide paid US$470 million on the condition that it could not be held liable in any future criminal or civil proceedings, and the Indian Supreme Court dropped all charges of manslaughter against Union Carbide, although safety mechanisms at the plant were appallingly inadequate. The company has now left India, leaving most of the responsibility with the Indian government[52].

Crisis management for Exxon Valdez oil spill

In the wake of the Unabomber’s allegations that Burson-Marsteller was hired to manage Exxon’s PR crisis over the Exxon Valdez oil spill, B-M has officially denied conducting crisis management over the issue. It does, however, admit to conducting a study of the case for Exxon after the event.

Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards

Burson-Marsteller is also behind a front group called "Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards," formed to oppose restrictions on automobile emissions of nitrogen oxide and other polluting gases. "The address of the month-old lobbying group is the Sacramento headquarters of the California Chamber of Commerce, while the group's phone number is that of the Sacramento office of Burson-Marsteller, an international public relations firm often used by the auto industry. Detroit auto makers provided the bulk of the money for the new group”[53].

Three Mile Island

Whilst Hill & Knowlton flacked for Metropolitan Edison, the plant’s operators, B-M conducted crisis PR for Babcock & Wilcox, the company that built the reactor at Three Mile Island[54].

Keep America Beautiful

B-M works for the best-known anti-littering campaign in the USA, Keep America Beautiful (KAB). KAB attempts to educate and motivate the American public to reduce littering and is funded by many corporate interests. While superficially it appears to promote a worthy cause, the corporate interest is in its implicit message that littering, amongst other environmental issues, is the responsibility of the individual citizen.

In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental and consumer groups accused it of opposing various state and national efforts to establish mandatory bottle and can recycling. The proposed legislation would have helped the litter problem, but offended the interests of some of KAB's corporate sponsors including Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and the Reynolds Metal Company[55]. Its long term ignoring the of the issue of cigarette butt littering, is best explained by its funding from the four largest U.S. tobacco companies, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard.

Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment

In Europe, BM set up the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, in 'defence of the beverage carton against environmental and regulatory pressures'. Its purpose is to make disposable cartons look environmentally friendly, and is sponsored by packaging interests such as Tetra Pak, Elopak, Bowater (now called REXAM) and Weyerhauser[56].

BP’s Torrey Canyon oil spill

B-M handled crisis management for, long-standing client, BP in the wake of the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil spill that devastated wildlife along the Cornish coastline[57].

Czech Mining

B-M conducted a PR campaign in the Czech Republic on behalf of TVX Gold, a Canadian mining corporation. TVX needed help in renewing its exploration license for a gold deposit near the town of Kaperske Hory and countering local opposition. The project posed a substantial threat to the unique environment of the Sumava Mountains and became a major controversy in the Czech Republic.

In January 1997, TVX halted pre-mining exploration in Kasperske Hory when authorities would not renew its drilling license.

B-M’s campaign began as a relatively modest attempt to allay fears about the environmental impact of the project but later became a blatant attempt to replace Frantisek Stibal, the mayor of Kapserske Hory. Along the way they hired Czech celebrities to promote the project and published a free local newsletter in the area. Vojtech Kotecky, of Friends of the Earth Czech Republic, described the campaign as unscrupulous, full of dirty personal attacks, sophisticated and well-directed propaganda, combined with offers of financial support to the local community.

Ultimately it was to no avail. After two years of campaigning on either side, the Czech government cancelled TVX’s concession after Stibal was re-elected in landslide victory. "Fortunately the Czech people remember methods of Communist propaganda and therefore are rather immune to TVX's similar ones," says Stibal[58].

4.8 Other

Breast Implants

In 1991 B-M began a crisis PR campaign for Dow-Corning to handle the growing public health controversy over silicone breast implants. B-M had been retained by Dow Corning for years previously, but as the controversy exploded in late 1990 and early 1991 so did B-M’s account fees. In 1990 B-M billed Dow-Corning just $6000, but from May 1991 to Feb 1992 that fee rose to nearly $3.8m[59].

Whilst Dow-corning and the wider medical industry had known about the problems of breast implants since the 1970s, they and the multi-million dollar cosmetic surgery industry had managed to ignore it until it gained significant TV coverage in Dec 1990.

B-M organised an astro-turf campaign to save silicone breast implants, organising women who were victims of breast cancer and had implants for reconstruction, into an effective and very public campaign. Ultimately, in 1992, the FDA banned them except for use with cancer victims.

NAFTA

Hired by the Salinas administration in 1990 to promote Mexico's NAFTA agenda, Burson-Marsteller spearheaded a successful campaign to sell NAFTA in the USA. The Center for Public Integrity estimates that overall the PRI govt of Mexico spent in excess of $25m on the NAFTA campaign, in the USA alone. To secure passage of the agreement, Burson- Marsteller prepared numerous reports, press releases and video news releases. Generally, their public relations work focused on the themes of jobs, the environment and support for NAFTA among Latin Americans. Burson-Marsteller targeted newspapers, radio and TV stations, civic groups, public officials, press services, educational institutions and industry groups for dissemination of pro-NAFTA information. B-M also sidelined opposition to NAFTA from groups concerned with economic justice and human rights issues in Mexico, portraying their objections as idle "Mexico-bashing." This spin was later refined to combat the Zapatista PR crisis by portraying the rebellion and the trade deal as two separate issues.

B-M picked up plenty of work from the Mexican govt before and after the NAFTA campaign. When Mexico’s challenge to the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, under the rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was upheld in August 1991, sparking public outrage in the US, Burson-Marsteller immediately issued press and video releases proclaiming Mexico’s commitment to dolphin protection. By the mid 90s Young & Rubicam, B-M’s parent company was making over $100m a year from contracts in Mexico[60].

Animal Industry Foundation

In response to mounting criticism from animal rights and environmental activists, the agricultural industry in the USA has fought back with SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), using libel and defamation laws in order to try to gag their critics. They have also lobbied successfully for ‘food disparagement laws’, which strengthen the corporate legal position against public criticism.

One group that conducted much of the campaign for food disparagement laws and other protections for the agricultural industry was the B-M funded Animal Industry Foundation[61], replaced in 2001 by the Animal Agriculture Alliance[62].

CTN

The Corporate TV Network began life as a joint venture between B-M and ITN, making extra profits for ITN by using its staff and equipment to make videos for the corporate market. There have been allegations that the link between ITN and CTN may effect the reporting of stories about CTN clients on ITN News, particularly regarding ITN’s reporting of Shell’s involvement in the repression of the Ogoni people in Nigeria[63]. Bruce Whitehead of ITN felt that his investigation of the Ogoni controversy may have been dropped due to a conflict of interests in ITN as CTN was also making a film on the same subject on behalf of Shell, to put across the oil company’s side of the story.

Back to top

References

[24] Guardian 8 Jan 2002

[25] Stauber J and Rampton S, 1995, ‘Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry’ pp150, 209

[26] Observer, 8 Dec 96

[27] Carmelo Ruiz, “Burson-Marsteller: PR for the New World Order”, http://home.intekom.com/tm_info/ge_bm.htm

[28] ibid.

[29] O’Dwyers PR Daily, Nov 12 2001

[30] Stauber J and Rampton S, 1995, ‘Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry’p56-7; Rowell A, 1996, ‘Green Backlash:Global Subversion of ther Environment Movement’ pp113-4

[31] John Dillon, “Poisoning the Grassroots”, Covert Action Quarterly 44, Spring 1993

[32] ibid.

[33] Communications Programmes For EUROPABIO Prepared by Burson-Marsteller Government & Public Affairs, January 1997, Organic Consumers Association web site, www.organicconsumers.org/bmplan.html

[34] PR Watch vol 8 no 3, <www.prwatch.org prwissues="" q3="" cx.html="" />

[35] www.cleanairprogress.org/

[36] PRWatch vol 8, no 3, <www.prwatch.org prwissues="" q3="" cx.html="" />

[37] Time, 21-6-1993

[38] PR Watch vol.8 no.3

[39] Ecologist, vol.22, no.4, 1992

[40] WBCSD Annual review 2001, www.wbcsd.com

[41] Rowell A, 1996, ‘Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement’ p115

[42] Rowell A, 1996, ‘Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement’ p195

[43] Kim Goldberg, Columbia Journalism Review, Nov/Dec 1993, <www.cjr.org year="" logging.asp="">, date viewed 20-6-2002</www.cjr.org>

[44] ibid.

[45] Rowell A, 1996, ‘Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement’ p196

[46] <www.forest.org>, date viewed 3-5-2002</www.forest.org>

[47] Beder S, 'Ecological Double Agents', Australian Science, Vol. 19, no 1, February 1998, pp19-22

[48] Beder S, 1997, ‘Global Spin: the Corporate assault on Environmentalism’, p238-40

[49] Waranga News, April 23, 1998

[50] Boycott Woodchipping Campaign, ‘PR and the Timber Industry’, www.green.net.au/boycott/timber.htm <www.green.net.au boycott="" timber.htm="">, date viewed 3-5-2002</www.green.net.au>

[51] Stauber J and Rampton S, 1995, ‘Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry’pp29-31

[52] Pesticide Action Network Update Services, Dec 5 2001, www.organicconsumers.org/toxic/bhopal120601.cfm <www.organicconsumers.org toxic="" bhopal120601.cfm="">, date viewed 2-5-2002</www.organicconsumers.org>

[53] New York Times, Nov 3 1998; PR Watch Vol.8 no.3

[54] S Elsworth, 1990, ‘A Dictionary of the Environment’

[55] PR Watch vol.8 no.3

[56] www.ace.be

[57] Guardian, Jan 8 2002

[58] Drillbits & Tailings, September 21, 1997 and July 7, 1998

[59] PR Watch vol.3 no.1, <www.prwatch.org prwissues="" q1="" index.html="">, date viewed 20-6-2002</www.prwatch.org>

[60] Stauber J and Rampton S, 1995, ‘Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry’pp175-6; Multinational Monitor

[61] PR Watch vol.4 no.2, www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1997Q2/slapp.html <www.prwatch.org prwissues="" q2="" slapp.html="">, date viewed 20-6-2002</www.prwatch.org>

[62] www.soundagscience.org/q-a.html <www.soundagscience.org q-a.html="">, date viewed 20-6-2002</www.soundagscience.org>

[63] Bruce Whitehead, Feb 3 2000, ‘A Shell over the Truth’, <www.mediachannel.org views="" whistleblower="" whitehead.shtml="">, date viewed 20-6-2002</www.mediachannel.org>

<www.mediachannel.org views="" whistleblower="" whitehead.shtml="">

</www.mediachannel.org>

<www.mediachannel.org views="" whistleblower="" whitehead.shtml=""></www.mediachannel.org>

<www.mediachannel.org views="" whistleblower="" whitehead.shtml="">From: Reclaim The Streets <a href="mailto:rts@gn.apc.org">rts@gn.apc.org</a></www.mediachannel.org>

<h1>BURSON-MARSTELLER: PR FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER</h1>

</center>

By: Carmelo Ruiz

The public relations (PR) business is one of the fastest growing industries in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions, organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated. Using the latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage" issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or dangerous outsiders.

Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is the world's largest PR firm, with 63 offices in 32 countries and almost $200 million in income in 1994. Although its name is unknown to most people-- even to many in activist circles-- B-M is fast becoming an increasingly important cog in the propaganda machine of the new world order.

Human Rights, Anyone?

On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our age. These include:

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<li>The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

</li>

<li>The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

</li>

<li>The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

</li>

<li>The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

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<li>Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

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<li>Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.</li>

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Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all. Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities".

Corporate Environmentalism

For years B-M has been involved in major environmental issues all over the world, not hesitating to give polluters a helping hand when confronted by activist groups and/or government regulations. Many transnational corporations have turned to B-M for help in the creation of a pedantic, elitist and corporate-oriented brand of environmentalism. It is the hope of entrepreneurial sectors and neoliberal demagogues that this type of safe and harmless environmental activism will displace the more militant and agressive grassroots groups.

B-M's environmental services have benefited industrial polluters, such as the following:

</li>

<li>Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island had its famous mishap in 1979.

</li>

<li>Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.

</li>

<li>Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.

</li>

<li>Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.

</li>

<li>The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its union- busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for anti- environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its employees and the public that ruralunemployment in North America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.

</li>

<li>B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members. BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is actively work ing to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.

</li>

<li>B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu [nuclear] reactor sale to Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993 B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar) has been representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear power company.

</li>

<li>B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.

</li>

<li>A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a national bottle bill in the US.

</li>

<li>B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes at the 1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices critical of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with little interference from NGO's or government leader s". Nowadays BCSD is advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and Venezuela.</li>

</ul>

Dirty Tricks and Front Groups

B-M was hired by the pharmaceutical corporation Eli Lilly and Monsanto subsidiary Nutra Sweet to promote the use of the genetically-engineered synthetic bovine growth hormone rBGH. This hormone, which increases milk output in cows, is strongly opposed by dairy farmers and consumer and environmental activist groups. Their two main arguments are that 1) There is already a milk glut in the US. To bring more of it into the market would depress prices so severely that small dairy farmers would be run out of business; and 2) the use of rBGH has already been linked to severe health problems in cows and to calves born with grotesque birth defects.

B-M's campaign to neutralize the opposition to rBGH included the use of spies to penetrate activist groups. This fact became public when University of Vermont spokesperson Nicola Marro admitted that a mole had been placed in an anti-rBGH ad-hoc group headed by Jeremy Rifkin, a well- known critic of biotechnology and author of several books. Participants in the group singled out a woman named Diane Moser as a suspect. Moser, who attended a Washington DC meeting of the group, avoided small talk and read a paperback during the meeting. Vermont state representative Andrew Christiansen, who a ttended the meeting, told journalist John Dillon that "She said she represented housewives concerned about BGH...I had suspicions immediately. I've never seen anybody with a paperback coming to a me eting like that". When the activists called the number she left in the sign-up sheet, it rang in the Washington DC offices of Burson- Marsteller. B-M executive Timothy Brosnahan acknowledged that Moser was a B-M employee but denied knowing of any snooping on her part.

A freedom of information act (FOIA) request by activists Tim Atwater and John Stauber, who were then with Rural Vermont and the Foundation on Economic Trends respectively, uncovered a broader pattern of espionage against foes of rBGH. Atwater and Stauber's FOIA request uncovered documents of the quasi-governmental, farmer-funded National Dairy Board (NDB), which promotes rBGH. These documents revealed that the NDB hired the PR firm of Creswell, Munsell, Fultz & Zirbel (CMF&Z). This firm is a subsidiary of communications conglomerate Young & Rubicam (Y&R), which happens to be B-M's parent company. Given that Y&R represents rBGH backer Monsanto, Stauber concluded that "The day-to-day work is done out of Burson-Marsteller and CMF&Z. But I'm sure there's overall coordination with Young & Rubicam". Stauber is now editor of PR Watch, a newsletter that provides critical reporting on the PR industry, and is co-author, along with Sheldon Rampton, of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press, 1995).

B-M works for Hydro-Quebec (H-Q) promoting the James Bay 2 project. If the final stages of the construction of James Bay 2 are finished, it will become the most destructive hydroelectric project in the history of North America, disrupting the ecological balance of an area the size of France and permanently displacing the Cree and Inuit indigenous populations in the area. To undermine grassroots opposition to James Bay 2, B-M created a phony group of concerned citizens called the Coalition for Clean and Renewable Energy (CCRE), which was headed by Harvey Schultz, former head of New York City's department of environmental protection. According to John Dillon, "Schultz, Burson-Marsteller, and (CCRE) have hosted briefing sessions for academics, and business and community leaders-- opinion makers who can carry the good word about Hydro-Quebec back to their institutions".

The state of Vermont has proved particularly reluctant to buy electricity from H-Q because of pressure from local activists. In order to counteract this threat, B-M hired the Vermont law firm of Sherman & Kimbell to lobby the state government in favor of electricity purchases from H-Q. This law firm registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires America n lobbyists to list their foreign clients and how much they're being paid to represent them. However, since B-M itself has refused to register as a foreign agent for H-Q, most of its work for the James Bay 2 project remains a secret.

Selling NAFTA

In 1990 the Mexican government hired B-M to sell NAFTA to the American public, media and politicians. B-M subcontracted this job to one of its subsidiaries, The Brock Group (TBG), a consulting firm that has done work for American Express, Bell Atlantic, Bacardi, Toyota and the Taiwanese government. TBG is headed by former senator, Republican National Committee chairman, US trade representative and labor secretary William Brock. He was certainly qualified for the job. As US trade representative, Brock engineered the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and began the negotiations that would eventually culminate in the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

William Brock co-chairs the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) Coalition, which was founded in 1990 to 'educate' the public-- and lobby for--the now-completed Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The coalition's members include American Express, General Motors, IBM, General Electric, Cargill, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble and other companies and trade associations. According to Malaysian activist Martin Khor Kok Peng, the MTN Coalition had a big influence on the 1990 G-7 Summit meeting held in Houston, USA, in which GATT figured prominently. At the Houston Summit, MTN held a high- profile press conference and released a report by an 'eminent persons group' on world trade.

The Contra Connection

One of TBG's top executives happens to be former Miami businessman and ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich. During the Reagan administration, the Cuban-born Reich headed the US state department's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), whose task was to disseminate disinformation about the Sandinistas and discourage reporting critical of the contras. This outfit, whose operations were later found to be illegal by the US General Accounting Office, was staffed with five psychological warfare specialists from the 4th Psychological Operations Group of Fort Bragg. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, "the OPD...helped spread a scurrilous story that some American reporters had received sexual favors from Sandinista prostitutes in return for writing slanted stories". In 1987, after the US Congress shut down the OPD, congressman Jack Brooks called it "an important cog in the (Reagan) administration's effort to manipulate public opinion and congressional action".

Interestingly enough, the OPD was conceived at an August 1983 meeting between then CIA director William Casey and a small group of PR industry executives. The meeting, whose purpose was to create a propaganda strategy for the Nicaraguan contras, was attended by B-M senior vice- president Kenneth D. Huszar and Philip Morris publicist James Bowling, who later moved to B-M. Their advice to Casey included the creation of a communications function within the White House, a recommendation that led to the creation of the OPD.

B-M, Mexico and the Neoliberal Project

B-M's success in insuring the passage of NAFTA encouraged the Mexican governing elite to retain the firm's services. It now has a luxurious office in the posh Colonia Anzures district on Mexico City that caters to customers like the Council of Businessmen, the National Stockbrokers' Association, the ministry of commerce and industrial development, and the Office of the President of the Republic. In addition to this, B-M parent Young & Rubicam rakes in over $100 million every year from Mexican clients. It is not an exaggeration to say that the credibility of the neoliberal project in the western hemisphere hinges on Mexico. Businessmen, politicians and neoliberal ideologues all over the hemisphere have touted Mexico as a symbol of capitalist success because of its privatization policy and its faithful adherence to the economic formulas prescribed by multilateral development banks (a.k.a. the Bretton Woods institutions). After the massive expenditure of political energy in getting NAFTA passed, business elites in both Mexico and the US are hard-pressed to put on a convincing performance in order to give credibility to future trade agreements. Bringing Guatemala and Chile into NAFTA has already become an agenda item.

However, neoliberal designs for Mexico are endangered by a series of crises, including the blatantly fraudulent elections of 1994, the embarassing collapse of the peso, revelations of drug-related corruption that compromise the Mexican elite all the way up to the president's office, a spate of political assassinations that seems to be beheading the ruling political party's leadership, and the popularity of the EjE9rcito Zapatista de LiberaciF3n Nacional (EZLN). B-M has a lot of work to do in Mexico. In the words of reporter Jon Reed, who investigated B-M's activities in Mexico, "Burson-Marsteller and other Mexican and transnational PR firms have demonstrated their effectiveness by working behind the scenes-- gauging public opinion, counseling government and corporate leaders, shaping media coverage, and facilitating elite-to-elite communications-- in short, guaranteeing that the inevitable upheavals in an authoritarian and unjust society do not interrupt business as usual".

Destroying Health Care

One of NAFTA's most nefarious consequences will be the dismantlement of Canada's government-run health care system. Since it places very strict limits on what domestic or foreign corporations can do, its more progressive features--such as compulsory licensing in order to control drug costs-- will eventually be challenged as barriers to trade. Once the Canadian system is gutted by NAFTA's notoriously secretive and undemocratic dispute resolution mechanisms, Canadian citizens will have no choice but to turn to the 'free market' for medical services and insurance.

However, American and Canadian pharmaceutical and insurance companies that want to crack open the Canadian market are frustrated by the fact that Canadians are very happy with their health care system. Worse yet, more and more Americans, especially in Vermont, are now calling for the introduction of single-payer health insurance in their country--a step in the direction of a Canadian-style system. This presents a grave problem for neoliberal demagogues, since it exposes the basic conflict between capitalism and democracy.

Enter Burson-Marsteller's health care unit, whose staff includes "a medical doctor/physician; former FDA (Food and Drug Administration) commissioner; former hospital administrator; former pharmaceutical communications executives; former non-profit communications chiefs; grassroots specialists, and former reporters" according to the senior editor of O'Dwyer's newsletter, which monitors the PR business.

B-M has plenty of experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris, B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a state-of-the-art campaign that uses full- page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week. By 1995 NSA claimed a membership of 3 million smokers". The NSA is headed by B-M vice-president Thomas Humber and its members include B-M executives Pierre Salinger and Kennetz Rietz, as well as Peter Kelly, senior partner of B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar). In addition to this, B-M was hired by the A.H. Robbins company when its Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive injured thousands of women who used it, and it is now currently promoting the 'virtues' of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac.

The winners of the health care debate in the US were beyond any doubt the pharmeceutical transnational corporations (eleven of which are B-M clients) and the major insurance companies (which include B-M clients Met Life, Equitable Life, Aetna, State Farm and Mutal of Omaha). Now both businesses are vertically integrating themselves into superconglomerates known as health maintenance organizations (HMO's). According to Joyce Nelson, "During 1994 both the pharmaceutical industry and the private insurance industry consolidated into even bigger players on the health care scene, with B-M playing a major role in arranging the mergers among its clients". HMO's are not required to cover all illnesses or people, but can instead discriminate against elderly citizens and/or people with health problems in order to reduce operating costs.

What can we do?

The awesome power of the 'manufactured consent' of the mass media, created in no small part by PR firms like Burson-Marsteller, can be discouraging to many politically aware citizens. However, despair is what the PR business sells: despair from even the smallest possibility of positive social change from below. If we are to believe that organized citizens cannot effectively challenge corporate and government power, then the PR flacks will have truly triumphed. But, as Rampton and Stauber say in their book, "The fact that corporations and governments feel compelled to spend billions of dollars every year manipulating the public is a perverse tribute to human nature and our own moral values".

The author is a Puerto Rican journalist living in Vermont, where he is a guest lecturer and research associate at Goddard College's Institute for Social Ecology.

Recommended reading:

PR Watch. This quarterly newsletter, edited by John Stauber, provides a progressive and critical perspective on the public relations business. 3318 Gregory Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53711, USA.

Sources:

<www.mediachannel.org views="" whistleblower="" whitehead.shtml="" />

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<li style="">Center for Public Integrity. Private Parties: Political Party Leadership in Washington's Mercenary Culture. 1992.

</li>

<li style="">Center for Public Integrity. The Trading Game: Inside Lobbying for the North American Free Trade Agreement. 1993.

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<li style="">Deal, Carl. The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Front Groups. Odonian Press, 1993.

</li>

<li style="">Dillon, John. "Burson-Marsteller: Poisoning the Grassroots" Covert Action Quarterly: Spring 1993.

</li>

<li style="">Greenpeace. The Greenpeace Book of Greenwash. 1992.

</li>

<li style="">Khor Kok Peng, Martin. The Uruguay Round and Third World Sovereignty. Third World Network. 1990.

</li>

<li style="">Nelson, Joyce. "The Time of the Hangman" Adbusters: Winter 1989-1990.

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<li style="">Nelson, Joyce. "Burson-Marsteller, Pax Trilateral and the Brundtland Gang vs. The Environment" Covert Action Quarterly: Spring 1993.

</li>

<li style="">Nelson, Joyce. "Dr. Rockefeller Will See You Now" Z Magazine: May 1995.

</li>

<li style="">Nelson, Joyce. "NAFTA's Nuclear Agenda" Z Magazine: June 1995.

</li>

<li style="">Parry, Robert. Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom. Morrow, 1992.

</li>

<li style="">Rampton, Sheldon & Stauber, John. Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. Common Courage Press, 1995.

</li>

<li style="">Reed, Jon. "Interview with the Vampire: PR Helps the PRI Drain Mexico Dry" PR Watch: fourth quarter, 1994.</li>

<li>

</li></ul>

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