Submitted by Laura Miller on
Ross Irvine, corporate activist and president of ePublic Relations, points out how business PR can learn from anti-biotech activists and NGOs. Irvine recommends taking a broader view of the issue, going beyond traditional allies and PR activities. According to Irvine, "With creative thinking a great deal of synergy among biotech and other issues is possible and essential."
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
PR Watch reported in 1997 that the Burson-Marsteller PR firm created the Global Climate Coalition. They've never challenged this statement prior to July 2001, but after they issued a denial we checked our files, and it looks like we were wrong. This doesn't change the fact that B-M has been a major force behind industry campaigns to block measures aimed at preventing global warming. For a report on what they've actually done, read our correction.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
The American Chemistry Council, the trade association of the chemical industry, has signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences "to improve testing chemicals for potential human developmental and reproductive effects," according to a July 26 NIEHS press release.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Boise Cascade Corp. is targeting the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), the environmental group that has gotten major companies to stop buying wood from the remaining old-growth forests. Boise Cascade is working with two industry-supported front groups, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, trying to get the IRS to cancel RAN's tax-exempt status and to pressure its funders to cut off the group's money.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The head of Japan's fisheries agency admitted that his country uses foreign aid to pressure other countries into voting against restrictions on its whaling activities. Masayuki Komatsu added that there is "nothing wrong" with killing whales, comparing them to "cockroaches" and saying, "There are too many." We reported on the PR firms that help greenwash Japanese whaling in the 1st Quarter 2001 issue of PR Watch.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
Kevin McCauley, editor for PR trade publication O'Dwyer's PR, calls on General Electric CEO Jack Welch to dredge up the company's PCBs in the Hudson River. Welch has adamantly opposed GE cleaning up the Hudson and denied a relationship between exposure to PCBs and cancer. The company has had success in creating opposition to dredging by bankrolling PR and ad campaigns. However, McCauley says, GE could get a big image boost "if Welch switched course and said: 'GE wants to be the country's No. 1 environmental citizen. We will dredge the Hudson River.'"
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
In 1997, we noted that the anti-environmentalist Junk Science Home Page was sponsoring a Global Warming Sweepstakes as a way of opposing measures that combat global warming. Well, two can play at that game. Act for Change/Working Assets just announced its own sweepstakes, which supports measures to combat global warming.
Submitted by John Stauber on
In an industry-friendly puff piece bragging that Minnesota is the nation's number one producer of farmed elk used for food and "health supplements," Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Joy Powell makes no mention of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), the mad cow-type illness devastating elk and deer in western states and spreading across North America through virtually unregulated trafficking among game farms. CWD is already suspected in the cases of a number of young people in the US who have died in the last few years from CJD, the human equivalent of mad cow and mad elk disease.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Scientists and experts who advise the Environmental Protection Agency on a broad range of regulations governing toxic chemicals and air and water quality frequently have ties to the affected industries or other conflicts of interest, according to a new government study.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
An timber-industry sponsored children's book has been modeled on Dr. Seuss's "Lorax." The book, titled "Truax," by Terri Birkett was funded by the Hardwood Forest Foundation and the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association. Four hundred thousand copies of "Truax " have been distributed to elementary schools nationwide.
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