Trust Us, We're Experts PA Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  PREFACE

  PART I - THE AGE OF ILLUSION

  Chapter 1 - The Third Man

  Chapter 2 - The Birth of Spin

  Chapter 3 - Deciding What You’ll Swallow

  PART II - RISKY BUSINESS

  Chapter 4 - Dying for a Living

  Chapter 5 - Packaging the Beast

  Chapter 6 - Preventing Precaution

  Chapter 7 - Attack of the Killer Potatoes

  PART III - THE EXPERTISE INDUSTRY

  Chapter 8 - The Best Science Money Can Buy

  Chapter 9 - The Junkyard Dogs

  Chapter 10 - Global Warming Is Good for You

  Chapter 11 - Questioning Authority

  APPENDIX - Recommended Resources

  NOTES

  INDEX

  CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

  ALSO BY SHELDON RAMPTON AND JOHN STAUBER

  Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!

  Mad Cow U.S.A.

  Most Tarcher/Putnam books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs. For details, write Putnam Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam

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  Penguin Putnam Inc.

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  First trade paperback edition 2002

  Copyright © 2001 by the Center for Media and Democracy

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not

  be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14406-0

  1. Industrial publicity—Corrupt practices—United States.

  2. Corporations—Public relations—Corrupt practices—

  United States. 3. Public relations consultants—Corrupt

  practices—United States. 4. Public relations firms—

  Corrupt practices—United States. 5. Expertise—Corrupt

  practices—United States. 6. Endorsements in

  advertising—Corrupt practices—United States.

  7. Deceptive advertising—United States. 8. Risk

  perception—United States. 9. Consumer protection—

  United States. 10. Business ethics—United States.

  I. Stauber, John. II. Title.

  HD59.6.U6 R-062920

  659.2—dc21

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy, for whom we wrote this book and love working, and thanks to our CM & D colleagues Margo Robb and Laura Miller. The Center extends its appreciation to the staff and board members of the following nonprofit foundations whose financial support helped make this work possible: The Jenifer Altman Foundation, The Bydale Foundation, Carolyn Foundation, Changing Horizons Charitable Trust, Deer Creek Foundation, DJB Foundation, Foundation for Deep Ecology, Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, Grodzins Fund, HKH Foundation, The Litowitz Foundation, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, Inc., Rockwood Fund, Inc., The Stern Family Fund, The Florence and John Schumann Foundation, Turner Foundation, and The Winslow Foundation.

  Many individuals provided us with friendship, support, ideas, criticisms, and inspiration over the years spent discussing, researching, and writing Trust Us, We’re Experts. In particular we thank Grant Abert, Dan Barry, Sharon Beder, Ellen and Eddy Bikales, Charlie Cray, Chris Crosby, Harriett M. Crosby, Ronnie Cummins, Carol Bernstein Ferry, Sharon Holland Force, Michele Gale-Sinex, Jonathan Frieman, Ross Gelbspan, Wade Greene, Wendy Gordon, Michael Hansen, Emily Headen, Linda Jameson, David King, Eric Koli, Sheldon Krimsky, Donna Balkan Litowitz, Sue and Art Lloyd, Chris Manthey, Gerald Markowitz, Camy Matthay, Kevin McCauley, Bob McChesney, Joe Mendelson, Dave Merritt, Alida Messinger, Margaret Mellon, Peter Montague, Tim Nelson, Dan Perkins, Tom Pringle, Arpad Pustzai, Carolyn Raffensperger, Scott Robbe, Abby Rockefeller, David Rosner, Debra Schwarze, Judith Siers, Louis Slesin, Paul Alan Smith, Sandra Steingraber, Virginia Waddick, Nancy Ward, Denise Wilson, John Woodmansee, and Winifred Woodmansee.

  We especially welcome the contributions of three gifted investigative journalists who allowed us to incorporate into the text some of their research and writing that originally appeared in the quarterly journal PR Watch: Joel Bleifuss for parts of Chapter 3, “Deciding What You’ll Swallow”; Bob Burton for parts of Chapter 5, “Packaging The Beast,” as well as Chapter 10, “Global Warming Is Good for You”; and Karen Charman for parts of Chapter 7, “Attack of the Killer Potatoes.”

  John extends special appreciation to his parents, John H. and Jean M. Stauber, and to his wife, Laura—thanks for your endless faith, love, and patience. Sheldon thanks Dr. Carol Bernstein Levy and family members Renee Rampton, Debi Blanco, and Kenny Rampton for providing inspiration and examples.

  Finally, we give our deep appreciation to some people without whom this book would not be: our insightful and patient editor, “Hurricane” Mitch Horowitz; our agent and sage adviser, Tom Grady; our trusting publisher, Joel Fotinos; Ken J. Siman and Allison Sobel of Jeremy P. Tarcher; and John’s longtime friend and mentor, Jeremy Rifkin.

  PREFACE

  The Smell Test

  This world is run by people who know how

  to do things. They know how things work.

  They are equipped. Up there, there’s a layer

  of people who run everything. But we—

  we’re just peasants. We don’t understand

  what’s going on, and we can’t do anything.

  —Doris Lessing, in The Good Terrorist

  Thisbook really began while we were researching our first book together, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! In the course of that research, we came across a striking passage in a public relations strategy document, published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for marketing sewage sludge as farm fertilizer. The document noted that there was a “major public acceptance barrier” to this practice—namely, “the widely held perception of sewage sludge as malodorous, disease causing or otherwise repulsive. . . . There is an irrational component to public attitudes about sludge which means that public education will not be entirely successful.”

  In other words, people are irrational because they think sewage stinks.

  We found a strikingly similar passage while writing our next book, Mad Cow U.S.A., as we researched some of the unsavory practices used by the meat industry to dispose of its waste. One practice, called “rendering,” involves grinding up and cooking inedible animal parts and the corpses of diseased animals, which often arrive at the rendering plant in advanced stages of decomposition. It’s a smelly process, as bad as or worse than what goes on in sewage treatment plants. Once again, we were struck by the way the industry dealt with odor complaints. Renderers had gone so far as to devise an instrument called a “scentometer”—a “small rectangular chamber that contains two sniffing tubes for insertion into the nostrils.” Using the tubes, a rendering plant manager could inhale filtered, theoretically odor-free air to get a sense of how it compared with “ambient air odors.” Based on this pseudoscientific testing system, the industry had managed to convince itself that its odors were nonexistent or negligible. One industry consultant termed neighbors’ odor complaints a “form of Parkinsonian madness.”

  Once again, it seemed, the public was crazy if it detected any unpleasant odors. The evidence of neighbors’ nose
s couldn’t be trusted. Their complaints were “anecdotal,” as compared to the reliable, scientific data produced by the “scentometer.”

  The amazing thing about these passages was the serious, authoritative tone in which they were written. It would be one thing if these people were joking, but they were serious. They didn’t just think that they were pulling off a good scam. They literally believed that their “analysis” was rational, objective, and reasonable, while their critics were deluded, prejudiced, and even emotionally unbalanced. They were the experts, and the public merely needed to be “educated.”

  In the popular image, scientists are dispassionate, objective searchers after truth. A scientist, this model assumes, is someone whose pursuit of the truth begins with independent discovery, proceeds to criticism by peers, and then to publication and use for the common good. In recent years, however, this idealized image has come under challenge from a variety of critics. Most academic critics of science focus on structural and economic factors that create unconscious bias, whereas the activist camps—environmental activists as well as the pro-corporate activists who campaign against “junk science”—focus on deliberately deceptive manipulations by “corporate whores” or “environmentalist fearmongers.” Unconscious biases do undoubtedly exist, as do deliberate deceptions. Yet neither of these explanations is adequate. In order to understand the manipulations that are practiced today in the name of science, it is necessary also to understand the particular habits and practices of a particular class of experts who specialize in the management of perception itself—namely, the public relations industry.

  “Perceptions are real,” proclaims the website of Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest PR firm. “They color what we see . . . what we believe . . . how we behave. They can be managed . . . to motivate behavior . . . to create positive business results” (ellipses in the original).1

  This credo does not necessarily tell you much else about what Burson-Marsteller believes. Just as attorneys are hired to advocate the point of view of their clients, Burson-Marsteller’s job is not to hold opinions of its own but to promote those of its clients. And yet companies like Burson-Marsteller have become important arbiters in determining which experts appear on the public stage. Burson’s clients have included the Philip Morris tobacco company, for which it created the National Smokers’ Alliance, and Union Carbide, whose reputation it helped repair in the wake of the Bhopal disaster. Like the experts that Burson-Marsteller helps cultivate and train to perform in the public arena, B-M’s own experts in perception management believe that the public needs to be manipulated for its own good. James Lindheim, B-M’s worldwide director of public affairs, offered an example of his reasoning in a speech to the British Society of Chemical Industry. The key, he said, lay in “some very interesting psychological and sociological research on risk perception,” which “suggests that the obvious, rational approach is not likely to succeed. . . . In fact, the research tells us that people’s perceptions of the sizes of various risks and the acceptability of these risks are based on emotional, and not rational, factors. . . . All of this research is helpful in figuring out a strategy for the chemical industry and for its products. It suggests, for example, that a strategy based on logic and information is probably not going to succeed. We are in the realm of the illogical, the emotional, and we must respond with the tools that we have for managing the emotional aspects of the human psyche. . . . The industry must be like the psychiatrist: rationally figuring out how it can help the public put things in perspective, but knowing that dialogue can only begin with the trust on the public’s side that says these people are taking my concerns seriously.”2

  How does Lindheim propose to serve as the public’s “psychiatrist”? How does he reconcile his role as a professional perception manager with his desire for “trust on the public’s side”? These are interesting questions, but it is even more interesting to ask why he believes the public is emotional and incapable of rational discourse. This assumption underlies the thinking not only of the PR industry’s own experts, but also the thinking of the experts whom it promotes for public consumption.

  While this assumption is somewhat amazing, it is not necessarily insincere. It reflects a set of elitist values that have become all too common in modern society. Functioning at a philosophical and psychological level, it amounts to a kind of anti-popular prejudice that is dangerously corrosive of democratic values. We have written this book both to expose the PR strategies used to create many of the so-called experts whose faces appear on TV news shows and scientific panels, and to examine the underlying assumptions that make these manipulations possible.

  PART I

  THE AGE OF ILLUSION

  1

  The Third Man

  A third party endorsement can position a new brand so that it’s poised for great success or, conversely, can blunt a serious problem before it gets out of hand and proves disastrous for a particular product or for a company overall.

  —Daniel Edelman founder of Edelman PR Worldwide

  Suppose we told you that this book holds the key to wealth beyond your dreams—and that it can make you stronger, healthier, more intelligent, and in every way a better person. More love in your life. Freedom from worry and want, and knowledge that will protect you from illness of all kinds.

  As a discerning reader, you would probably greet these claims with skepticism. “These guys are obviously snake oil salesmen,” you might think. “They would probably dress up in chicken suits if they thought it might get me to buy their book. There’s no way I’m falling for this.”

  Yet suppose we could supply testimonials from important-sounding people—from people whose names you’ve heard and respect, or who carry impressive titles and credentials. You’ll see that the publisher has placed a few testimonials on the back cover. We hope you’ll take a moment to read them and ponder their significance.

  Better yet, suppose the testimonials came from people with no apparent connection to us. If that were the case, you might be less skeptical. And suppose we had some way of contriving things so that these other people were actually speaking on our behalf, while merely appearing to be independent. If we could put words of praise in the mouths of seemingly disinterested, knowledgeable third parties—if we could get a buzz going even among your friends and neighbors—and if we could do all that while keeping you completely in the dark about our behind-the-scenes scheming—then, ironically, you might start to believe us.

  Of course, it’s highly unlikely that we could ever pull this off. Neither we nor our publisher could ever afford a scheme this grandiose. We’re doing the best that we can, but we’re no Microsoft.

  Trust Us, We’re Anti-antitrust

  In April 1998, as the Justice Department’s antitrust investigation of the Microsoft corporation began to evolve from a background nuisance into a serious challenge to the company’s future, a large binder of confidential company documents found its way into the hands of the Los Angeles Times. Leaked by an anonymous whistle-blower, the documents detailed a multimillion-dollar media campaign designed for Microsoft by Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, one of the world’s largest PR firms. The plan aimed to head off new antitrust investigations being considered by attorney generals in eleven U.S. states. The Times described the Edelman plan as “a massive media campaign designed to influence state investigators by creating the appearance of a groundswell of public support for the company.” It proposed to hire local PR firms as subcontractors in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Freelance writers would be hired to write opinion pieces, which the local PR firms would then submit to local newspapers. “The elaborate plan . . . hinges on a number of unusual—and some say unethical—tactics,” noted L.A. Times writers Greg Miller and Leslie Helm, “including the planting of articles, letters to the editor and opinion pieces to be commissioned by Microsoft’s top media handlers but presented by local firms as
spontaneous testimonials.” In the words of the leaked documents, the goal was to generate “leveragable tools for the company’s state-based lobbyists,” positive press clippings that “state political consultants can use to bolster the case” for Microsoft.1

  With documents in hand, the reporters played a cat-and-mouse game with Microsoft spokesman Greg Shaw, who denied knowing about the plan until they informed him of the internal memos in their possession, in which Shaw’s own name figured prominently. Presented with this reality, he smoothly adjusted his story, admitting that the Edelman plan existed but describing it as merely a proposal. “The idea that we’d hire people who wouldn’t identify themselves as representing Microsoft is totally false,” Shaw said. “Actually, the proposal we received is quite mundane.”2

  After a few days of embarrassing editorials in the computer trade press, the Edelman plan was largely forgotten. A year later, it went un-mentioned when several news stories discussed an “Open Letter to President Clinton from 240 Economists” that appeared in the form of full-page advertisements in the Washington Post and New York Times. The ads were paid for by a California-based, nonprofit think tank named the Independent Institute, a conservative organization that had been a leading defender of Microsoft since it first came under fire from federal prosecutors. “Consumers did not ask for these antitrust actions—rival business firms did,” the Open Letter stated. “Many of the proposed interventions will weaken successful U.S. firms and impede their competitiveness abroad. . . . We urge antitrust authorities to abandon antitrust protectionism,” stated the economists, who came from institutions as far apart and as prestigious as the University of California, Johns Hopkins, the University of Miami, American University, Loyola, Ohio State, Dart-mouth, Northwestern, Columbia University, Stanford, and Cornell.3